Visitors Volume 2

With Dick and Anna leaving, Hannah arrived. Hannah is Viv's god daughter and is on a post university tour around the world. As Hannah's plan was to spend 3 weeks in Hainan Island in China around this time, tacking on a week before would be easy. It didn't turn out that way later on but nobody had heard of coronavirus at that time.

We decided that amongst all the hanging out, eating and drinking we'd also head off for some outings and as Hannah's degree was to do with marine biology and environmental protection, we thought take her out for some animal-y things, starting with the butterfly farm called Entopia.

This was the first time we'd been there and it was really good. Lots of butterflies of course but also the big monitor lizards and other things were there too. Sort of an aquatic zoo as opposed to an aquarium.

Clever, they had laid out these hibiscus flowers and covered them with I think honey so the butterflies swarmed all over them for the benefit of we patrons to enjoy

Another day we drove out to Bukit Merah to check out the orang utans again. We'd done this before with Hannah's mum and it was really nice to go back particularly when we ran into one of the celebrity occupants who was riveted by the actions of a workman and tracked what he was doing. We'd had virtually no rain for months by this point so the lake in which the orang utan refuge island stood was at a very low level exposing lots of the foreshore. As there had been a fire at the centre a short while before, there was plenty of debris lying around and it was this that the workmen were clearing up.

I watched for ages and of course this is ridiculous but after a while I had the notion that I knew what the orang utan was about to do. I used the 'well of course their DNA is a 97% match to humans' hypothesis for my incredible scientific breakthrough, but its true. I just knew that when the workman got close enough, the orang utan would just scrabble away at the sand and throw a handful at him. And he did! Really hilarious to watch!!

Mind you, I didn't share this mind meld that I had just experienced with anyone else. I kept that to myself.

We also went back to Kee Lok See temple at night to check out the lights which were truly spectacular. This time we climbed the 7 storeys of the pagoda and were rewarded with fantastic views. The lights were terrific.

All along Hannah had been in touch with the school in Hainan where she was supposed to be teaching English for 3 weeks when all of a sudden she told us there may be a problem with her getting there as there was a disease that was spreading all over, a new type of virus.

We'd heard that there was something going on in Wuhan in China but not much else. However as we all know now, things moved fast from this point and the virus spread out exponentially to the point where the school said sorry, no children to teach so no need to come. I think we were all a bit peeved that that had happened for Hannah's sake not realising the enormity of things for after this cases started cropping up in other countries too. We suggested that Hannah should therefore head south to Australia instead as she had another internship organised in Sydney after the proposed Hainan trip which in the end did happen.

Our farewell dinner -- Korean BBQ

In fact all ended well for Hannah organised a nice road trip along the east coast of Australia to her new internship. Bon voyage and thanks for coming!