After we left the Ranchan Recreational Park, we went to the Danau Lake Garden (Taman Tasik Danau in Malay language) about 2 or 3km away from the park.

It’s a nice place to take potrait when the sky is clear and blue.  We went on a hazy day, and what we got is the white coloured sky.

There are a few roofed huts in the middle of the lake and each of them are connected with bridges.

It was a very quiet Sunday afternoon at the lake garden, we could hardly see anybody there except SiewPeng and me.

The wooden structures on the lake (the huts and bridges) has added the uniqueness to the lake.  They help forming a good element such as lines and pattern in my photographs.  I have added this place to my list of “Places to take outdoor potrait”.

An old hut in the shape of a boat, lack of maintenance, and the damage can be seen.

There is a small concrete to allow motorcycle and bicycle to pass through the mini road in the middle of the lake.

It can be seen from far away because the railing on the bridge was painted in black and white.

This structure looks like a bridge but it was built on land instead of above water.  I cannot understand why not they just continue the mini road or the walking path to the other side.  If the ground was muddy they could just remove it and make a concrete path.  ?!?

And there is a warning sign for this structure.

“This structures are not secure for carrying heavy load.  You are advised not to use these facilities in group of more than 2 (Two) persons.”  It looks funny.

The authority prefers to use the money to make this red ugly signboard instead of repairing the structure.  This is not the only signboard, we saw at least 2 or 3 warning signs for the bridge as well.

To be continued…

We were at the Ranchan Recreational Park’s entrance.

We were the explorers and started to walk into the park. This park seems to be a new place to me although I have been here years ago because it might have changed and I have forgotten how it looked like last time.

The trees at both sides of the path were shaking hands.  They formed a shape which looks like a door because the trees on both sides were falling towards each other.  We found a similar thing while we were jogging in the Stutong Park recently.  There was a monkey climbing from the branch on the left of the walking path to the right.  It can be a sky bridge for monkeys.

There are at least 3 or 4 bridges in the Ranchan Park which can become a great background for taking potraits.

This is a Chinese style bridge.  They used 3 types of materials to build this bridge:- Steel, wood and concrete.

A wooden bridge behind us.

The suspension bridge became our background.

We spent about an hour in the park, and the tree tower took us half of the time.  It is a nice place if you want to enjoy the nature.  It is also fun to swim or play in the stream but everyone must take note of the safety.

Next we went to the Serian lake, I will show you in the next posts.

This is the sign at the entrance of the Ranchan Recreational Park.  I came here many years ago and I have forgotten when.  This time, I came here with SiewPeng.  We have brought some food and had a short picnic here.

It’s a rocky park.

We walked through this bridge, there are only four main poles in pink.

As you can see there are supports on the bridge all the way and no pole in the middle, it is a hanging or suspension bridge.

This bridge is not static, it was shaking and produced sound when we walked through.  Another group of people have waited us to get through before they used it.  One of the member ( a young lady) in that group felt scared and she was reluctant to walk across.

Recently there is an incident where a group of students camping near a bridge at Kampar and the bridge had collapsed while the students were walking on it and it had taken 3 students’ lives.  The government are now checking on all the suspension bridges across the nation.  I think this bridge in Serian Ranchan Part is not excluded.

There are ponds in the park.  Some of them are human-made so that it can form mini or even a micro dam.

We did not prepare our swimwear, we just walked around, taking photographes and enjoyed our food.

There is a short walking path in the park where it lead us into the deeper part of the park.  Nothing special there, except we found a group of youngster sitting there making noises.  They seemed happy, and enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

Were we running?  No, we were just walking.

The root of a tree has damaged the concrete walking path.

Big leaves are very common in any park in Malaysia.

This is the area when we reached the top.

Time for macro photography.

Another common things that can be found in the tropical forest.

We were on the bridge when taking this photo.  It is the leaves of a palm tree, viewed from top of it.  Yes, we stood higher than a tree.

The dropped leaves had fallen into the ponds.  Nobody was swimming here.

Someone left rubbish on the stone bench.  We had no choice but sat here to have our food while watching the water of the stream flowing.  We found that we were surrounded with rubish left by other visitors.

While we were having our food, we saw a cat meowing at us.  I thought it wanted some food too, but when I stood up and walked to it, it started moving.  It seemed that it wanted to bring me to somewhere.  But later it hid itself in a hole among stones ( a mini cave for it).

We found another b/w (black and white) cat.

Is there any message on the stone?

This is the way to the tree tower.

We found that there were at least 2 or more disclaimer signboards that tell the visitors that the authority is not responsible for anything (especially bad things) that might happen in the park.

It was a hazy day when we visited this park, and the weather was hot.  The waterfall and the stream seemed to have dried up.  We could even walk across the rocks (a stream when there is water) and did not get wet.  We will come here again and see if the waterfall is “working”.

Months ago, when there was haze in Kuching, we went to Serian Ranchan Recreation Park.  Serian is a small town which is about 60km from Kuching.  At that time, my car was just back from the workshop for replacing the broken timing belt.  I wanted to test my car for a longer distance instead of just driving around Kuching, and SiewPeng and I ended up in Serian.

Plus another 3km from Serian town, we reached Ranchan Recreation Park.  The most special thing here is the tree tower.

It is a big tree, and the tower is built with the tree as the natural piling in the center of the wooden structure.

SiewPeng and I were excited, we climbed up and took photo of ourselves there.

The head of the tower tree as our background.

The staircase were built surrounding the tree.

There are at least 3 or 4 stories before we reach the top.  It was not top of the tree, but top of the tower where we can have a wider view.

We kept on climbing the staircase.

Looking down the staircase.

Finally we reached the top floor.

We can see the telecommunication tower on a mountain quite far from us.

This is the top part of the tree.  They can make few more stories for the tower, but they did not.  It’s good because the beauty of the tree has been preserved.

Looking up at the tree from different angle.

We are surrounded by trees.

Let’s look downwards.

There is a hut on the ground.

I zoomed in again, and found a kid playing around.

I like the design of this tree, it is natural.  I will consider make one in front of my future dream house.

The tree is protected but we can still see writings on the tree.

We stepped our feet on the tower.

This tower was not maintained properly.  Luckily we have watched our steps otherwise we may have fallen down from 4th floor to 3th floor.  There is a big hole on part of the staircase.

This is the top floor (4th floor).  At each floor, there is a flat platform for visitors to view the scenery.  What I mean is, there is not only staircase along the way to the top, but visitors can stop at each floor.

The only thing that they don’t have is benches or chair.  Next time, we will bring our own.

We can see they had built a mini tar road  for motorcycle or bicycle in the park.

The tree seems like in a cage.

This may not be the best photo, but I like the lighting.

I found a round-shaped moss on a piece of wood.

This is the root of the tree for the tower.  Everything started here.  I will continue to show you more photos of the Serian Ranchan Recreation Park.

A lonely Orang Utan (a type of ape).  In Malay language “orang” means human, “utan” or “hutan” means jungle.  Yes, it is the human of the jungle.  It looks similar to human especially when they show their expressions like human being.

Right after we have visited the Kubah National Park, we made use of our ticket to enter this wildlife center without any extra charges, we still had the time, and we took a 15 minutes distance by car to reach here.

According to the map, we were actually taking a big round, but the direct path would be through the jungle which take hours climbing up and down.  Which one would you take?

Orang Utan is the main attaction here.

Please take time to watch the video that I have taken on Orang Utan.

If it is a human hand, the caption would be, “Help… help…!”

Another type of ape.

Deers.  (I guess)

Some of them have antler on their heads.  May be that’s an easier way to differentiate which one is the male and female.

We were given a map before we entered the wildlife center and were told that some places we should not go because some fo the apes were released to the nature and they might attack human.

I wondered if the ticket seller at the entrance who gave me the map have ever walked into the park.  She used a pen to draw this and that onto the map but finally ended up that we reached an area where it was not on the map and we could not find some sections that were labelled on the map.  We almost missed Orang Utan.  We had to walk on the road inside the park, and there was no proper signboard to tell us where to go, and the map seemed to have something wrong.

Finally, We forgot about map and put it aside, and we explored by ourselves.  Our conclusion about this park is:-  ”It is big but SMALL“.  Why?  It is big because we had to walk for quite a distance to see the wildlife (wasting time ), but the number of animals is small.  We were disappointed because there were not many animals there.  Another main reason, we were exhausted and tired to continue walking (after we have spent the whole day in Kubah Nationaal Park), we were just there for about 30 minutes and left.

It was just like a big house with no furniture, or a beautifully designed website with no content.

I hope the condition of this wildlife center can be improved especially on the signboard to show the direction, do not let any part of it to be closed down.

I like this pose.  Animal can kneel down to show respect too.

Another good example is a baby goat usually kneel down to drink milk from its mother to show respect.  It is grateful whereas not all human beings are like that.

If is quite challenging while taking photos of animal behind the fences.  First, the auto focus may not work properly, because most of the time it will focus on the fence instead of the animal.  Second, it becomes worst when the animals keep on moving which add the difficulty to manual focus.

Some of the pictures here are taken under manual focus mode, I should have shown you the pictures of hornbill ( a type of big bird that can be found in Borneo island), but all of them are blur because it was quite difficult for me to focus under low light condition and the hornbills were moving.

Leopard Cat.  Read the following for details:-

Some of the wildlifes were labelled properly with detail description, but not all.

If I am not mistaken, I have seen one of the description about the Orang Utan that says, “its hands are 10 times more powerful than human.”

Do and Don’t in the park.

We saw this signboard not far from the entrance and we are interested in some of the Waterfall.  They are all jungle trails which take hours.  We will try these trails next time.