Before I left Umphang to go to the Gibbon project, I still had a weekend in Umphang. Together with Lisa (German) and Steffie and Britt (both Dutch) I decided to nothing on Saturday and just relaxt. On Sunday we wanted to do some exploring in a cave and go back to the small waterfall, the one we visited on Wednesday, again to chill a bit.

The cave started with big areas and became more narrow when we travelled further in the cave. It was pitch dark in the cave and we had to bring our own flash- and headlights to see where we were going. The guide had a big light with him so vision was no problem with all the equipment. When we needed to climb and descent some ledges, one of the girls panicked and didn't want to continue. Therefore we all needed to go back unfortunately. We went to the waterfall and after one and a half hour of climbing and jumping we headed back to the Umphang house.

On Monday morning we left the Umphang house to go to the accomodation where we would stay for the Gibbon project. We needed to go through the mountains again and this time we didn't have our own truck but we went by public transport. Luckily we had enough room in the truck to sit properly when one Thai sat on the roof and the dozen school kids were dropped off. It took us 4 hours to get to the Highland Farm, also known as the Gibbon Sanctuary.

We were awaited by Pharanee, Mr Mangal and Petra. Pharanee Deters is the owner of the Gibbon Sanctuary and was our host for the entire week. She is such a great woman. Her personality is heartwarming and full of passion. Her food was very good(garlic bread, fries, chicklegs, pancakes, nutella(!), bananacakes etc etc.), especially compared to the food I had so far. She was like a surrogate grandmother who would make sure you ate way too much good food before you head back home again. Mr Mangal is a man from Nepal who wants to start a similar project in his home country. Therefore he stayed a couple of days with Pharanee to learn the ins & outs of starting up and running a succesfull Gibbon Sanctuary. Petra was a Dutch woman who worked as a volunteer as well. Later that day I would meet Kyle, a soon to be ranger from the States who would work at Pharanees project for 10 weeks in total.

The Gibbon Sanctuary has 62 gibbons and a few dozen monkeys. One of the first things I learned, was the difference between apes (Gibbons are apes) and monkeys since monkeys have a tail and apes don't. Pharanee corrected people quite seriously when we said monkeys instead of apes when we were talking about the gibbons.

The sanctuary was started unintended when Pharanee moved back to Thailand to retire and a Thai came up to her to sell a baby gibbon to her. She bought the gibbon when she asked where the mother was and she was told that the mother was shot in order to get the baby. This happens quite a lot to the gibbons and this is one of the reasons that the gibbon is an endangered species. She called several zoos to see if they wanted the baby but they didn't want to take the gibbon in. She asked what a baby gibbon would need to eat and nurtured her. When the years passed by, people came to Pharanee whom took in the gibbons that needed a place to stay.

The voluntary work was mainly to prepare the meals and feed the gibbons and monkeys on Highland farm. At 07:00 in the morning we started preparing breakfast and after the breakfast of the animals it was time for our own breakfast. After that we started sweeping the paths of the sanctuary at 09:30. From around 10:00 to 11:15 and then we handed out lunch which was prepared by the Thai employees. After handing out the lunch we had our own lunch and free time till 14:30 when we prepared and handed out dinner.

The gibbons and apes got five different kinds of fruits for breakfast and dinner and we needed to wash and cut the fruits before we distributed it amongst the feeding baskets of the animals that were spread out on a table. The sanctuary was divided in three feeding sectors and when the meal was prepared, all the baskets for a feeding area were put in a big basket (reminded me of a big laundry bucket that people use when they hang out their clothes to dry in the sun). One of the first rules that we learned from Pharanee is to always keep one meter away from the fence of the enclosures because of the long arms of the gibbons. Some of the volunteers were not paying enough attention and got grabbed at some point in the week.

During my free time I mostly went to my favourite apes and monkeys. Every ape/monkey has his/her own story and has an own personality. The resemblence to humans is very noticable, especially when you see the apes walking around on two legs just like we humans do. Dorian is one of the friendly animals you could get close to and when you did he would groom the hair on your hands, arms and head. This enabled me to have a close look on his hands and hand movement and it looked just like baby hands.

George, Jerry, Annie, Dorian and Sompis were my favourites. Sompis is a monkey that would make a face that appeared like smiling when I passed by. Kyle explained me that the monkeys showed their teeth as a sign of recognising your dominance and it looked just like smiling. Dorian is one of the monkeys you could get really close to and he would groom you. You could have like conversations with him since he would make noises with his tongue out of his mouth ("pffft") and you could reply to him with a 'fake fart sound' with your own mouth to keep the converstation going.

Annie is one of the most friendly gibbons I have met. On my first day, Kyle showed me that you could hold hands/feets with Annie if she would reach out to you. At first I was a bit nervous since I was told to keep at a distance from the enclosures but after the first time I returned to Annie several times a day to give her some attention. Jerry is a gibbon with a intergrown (= vergroeide) spine. When he was younger, he attacked a kid and the owner kicked him so hard that he broke his back. I don't know it the owner noticed this, but the spine was not properly healed and therefore Jerry looks like a comic version of a normal gibbon that got a refrigerator on his head that would make him shorter and fatter. When I would get near his enclosure, Jerry would come up to the fence and put his back against it, basically "asking" me to give him a nice backscratch. The story of George is one of the most saddest I've ever heard. When Georges mother was shot, they fell down a tree and George landed on his head, leaving him paralyzed on the right side of his body. This made him unable to use his right arm and he can only use his right leg to balance himself while hopping around. George also lost more than half of his left arm. He played with the bear that was also at the Gibbon Sanctuary and on one day the bear was in a bad mood and bit off a part of his left arm. George was always happy when he got a backscratch and would hop through his cage to put his back against the fence. Since he is not able to climb without any arms, his enclosure was filled with small tables he could hop on. Some of them gave him a nice place to just chill and relax in the sun while hoping for a volunteer to pass by and give a backscratch.

The Gibbon Sanctuary also has two juvenile (= voor jonge apen) enclosures with seven and four younger gibbons in it. It was very fun to just sit in front of the enclosures and watch the apes play with and chase each other around. Pharanee and her manager Nok went into the enclosures to play with the gibbons. Since the gibbons are familiar with them, they are able to go into the enclosures and play with the gibbons. It was such an amazing sight to see the apes play with them. The passion and love from Pharanee and Nok for the gibbons does not differ (much) from the bond between a parent and a child.

At the moment, Nok is sleeping with a baby gibbon in her bed (around 8 months old) and a young gibbon (I don't know the precise age, but I guess around 1,5 year). Julia, the youngest, wears a diaper and sits in what seems to be a big bird cage. It is filled with several blankets and stuffed animals for her to play on and there is a stick that she can grab and hold on to to stimulate her training her climbing skills. She gets milk from a bottle and is really adorable. Unfortunately she is afraid of men. I don't really know why, but she would duck away (@ Daan, like "get down" Arnie style) everytime I would look at her. It got better in the next few days. She would allow me to pet her without trying to hide but she clearly preferred the women. They were able to hold her from day one.

The week went by really fast. The voluntary work was nice, the house we stayed in was good, the people were so nice and the animals (besides apes and monkeys there were also turtles, bears, jackals, cats, chickens, turkeys, dogs and birds) were really entertaining. I wasn't bothered by the noise the apes made in the morning (they started shouting and screaming around 06:00, really loud) so that was not a problem either.

We left on Saturday morning 06:30 and Pharanee would not be Pharanee if she didn't give us a nice breakfast before we went on our way. On the way to the bus station, we stopped at a place that made some sort of pancakes with condensated milk (rotee or something, google and practice dear mama :)). The trip back to the Twinhouse was just fine. It is a shame that a lot of people that I met in my first few weeks have left the Twinhouse already but it's also nice to get to know new people over here. Next week is Muay Thai week, a week in which I will have Muay Thai (national (fight) sport in Thailand) training twice a day. I am looking forward to it!

Ps I haven't been able to upload videos so far. I tried to upload a 15 sec video from the Umphang week but it takes hours to upload it. I will try to find an alternative but until then I won't be able to show them to you.