Sunrise view from our villa deck. The haze is due to all the burning (clearing old palm trees) in Indonesia. They don’t burn in Malaysia and Singapore, but Indonesia seems a little less concerned about the air quality.
On our way to breakfast this morning, we noticed a lot of activity in the trees on shore, not far from our elevated walkway. As we got closer I noticed the trees shaking a lot, and then a small monkey stuck his head out of the leaves, and ducked back in. He was really active, and then we saw a big water monitor (lizard) on the rocks beneath the monkey. He looked like he was hoping to catch the monkey falling out of the tree, but it didn’t happen. As we continued to watch, the water monitor crawled up into the jungle, and more monkeys began to appear. I think we found seven different monkeys, climbing around and eating berries off the trees. There were big tropical birds in the area, and the monkeys and birds seemed to be discussing who had the rights to the berries. See the link below for the video I shot of the scene.
VIDEO LINK: coming as soon as it downloads to dropbox
Zoom in close to the center of the photo and you can spot the really big water monitor
Baby monkey scampering around
After breakfast we headed over to Emerald Bay, on the other side of the island for a morning of beach laziness. We enjoyed the serenity. Later in the afternoon we moved back to the front side of the island, and indulged in the pool area, eventually topping off the day with some ice cream. I think I could learn to live like this, if I had to.
Garden & Hill villas, viewed from our breakfast table.
There are some really unusual plants here.
Left by our maid, a “towel monkey”.
Back at our villa, we began to pack and prepare for our trip back to Beijing tomorrow. It’s been a great trip and we hate to leave. Much like several of our other trips this past year, we’re trying to figure out how we can work it out to come back. There are too many places we want to visit to repeat a destination, no matter how beautiful it is. Just around the corner is another beautiful and interesting spot, and our time in Asia is limited.