Imagine my joy when I heard a French voice at the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Under my breath I muttered, "Le singe est dans l'arbre".

(if this means nothing to you, don't worry)

The Orangutan, meaning man of the forest, is utterly beautiful. Mysterious and human-like, this ginger ape has 96.4% of our DNA, and it shows in their every facial movement. You can see in an instant why people entirely devote their lives to protecting them.

There's little that can be said about watching feeding time up in the trees, except to note that the tourists were spellbound. All ages, races and tendencies unified in quietly watching these wise-looking animals.

The macaques monkeyed around hoping to pick up bIts of leftover food, but the big apes weren't even slightly hurried. They're shy and quiet, but 4 times stronger than us, and their arm span is around 8 feet, so you aren't going to risk annoying them if you're just a tiny monkey.

Once feeding time was over, we made our way back through the forest to the visitors' centre. What struck me was the sound of the jungle. I'm not exaggerating: it sounded like there had been a break in at World of Car Alarms. Buzzing, tweeting, squawking, yelping. Fabulous.

Then over to the proboscis monkey sanctuary.

This set-up was twice the price and half as nice. Geoff explained quietly, Tom this is privately-run. It was built by the owner of the surrounding plantation, when he realised how many monkeys were being cleared out by the creation of the plantation.

In other words, he was selling conservation at the same time as contributing to the need for it! Geoff also pointed out that during the 5 hour bus trip yesterday that I wouldn't have passed anything but plantations. No forests left. He was entirely right. Now Geoff is no environmentalist any more than I am, he was not criticising the situation, it was simply an economic reality. How long had it taken to clear all that forest and build plantations? Four years.

I am no green, but I am concerned by what I've seen. At 300km in 4 years, who the hell wouldn't be?

So, on to the Rainforest Discovery Centre or RDC. En route, Geoff admits to me that he is struggling with an upset tummy. After my experiences of last week, this gives me some twisted comfort: even the locals suffer from gut rot. But I make sure he has a bottle of water and a loo nearby before going into the RDC.

The RDC is an impressive facility. Over forty years they've effectively refurbished a patch of rainforest back to it's original state. Rainforest canopy walkways, a terrifying suspension bridge and some nice bodies of water are laced with pretty plaques explaining what you are looking at. If it were there, I should say. It invariably wasn't. There were a couple of butterflies that could have swiped a foal without breaking sweat, but apart from that I was drawing a blank. The cacophony of sound was as before, and plaques said helpful things like "once heard, this animal's call is never forgotten". Great, thanks for that. The key words are "once heard".

Then what sounded like a small lawnmower was started in the tree above me. No, turns out it was a flying squirrel. Wow. Obviously it didn't actually fly because it didn't need to at that moment. It was more of a Sitting Squirrel.

Still it was enough to justify a bit of smugness as I pottered back to the car.

The next bit of the day was terribly sad, so I'll post separately on it.