Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary and Deer Land

Hubby was away for the long Labour Day weekend, and I had resigned myself to staying home with the two girls, and scratching my head thinking of how to keep them occupied and keep them out of mischief. Then on Saturday, I found out that BIL was also away, so sis and I thought it’d be nice to go for a short getaway with the children. We wanted somewhere near, so Port Dickson was an obvious choice but since it was such a last minute decision, all the hotels that we wanted to stay in was fully booked.

Then Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary came to mind, since I’ve read so many mums blogged about it. And I thought since we were there, might as well visit Colmar Tropicale and Genting Strawberry Farm. Then I remembered seeing a signpost for a waterfall near Bentong when we took the Bentong – Cameron Highlands road back to Ipoh during CNY. Whoa! Suddenly we had so many places to visit. Since it would be impossible to do a day trip, we decided to stay a night at Bukit Tinggi.

So after breakfast on Sunday, we started our journey and reached Selesa Hill Homes at about noon. We quickly checked into our two bedroom apartment before continuing on to Kuala Gandah, since the activities with elephants take place at 2pm. Still we were late and were only given the red tags instead of yellow which would allow for interaction with the elephants.

The swimming with elephants was canceled that day, as apparently the water level in the river was high and it would be unsafe. When it’s time for riding the elephants, Yiu Yiu wanted to do so but we couldn’t since we didn’t have the coveted yellow tags. I spotted a young family with yellow tags, and they were not queueing up for the ride so I approached them and voila, they kindly gave us their yellow tags, so I got to ride with Yiu Yiu.

After the elephant sanctuary, we made a quick stop at the nearby Deer Land.

Feeding the deers in an enclosure

Some other animals in Deer Land

The five cousins

It started to rain just as we were leaving Deer Land, so we headed back to the apartment to shower, before going out for dinner at Bukit Tinggi Village.

Making funny faces while waiting for food to arrive

Yiu Yiu and Yihao chilling out in front of the TV at the apartment before bed

I didn’t manage to take much photos, since we have to take care of so many children, two of whom needed to be carried most times since we were in crowded places, so I don’t need a DVD-R to store those photos. Just as well, since I don’t have any CD DVD duplication equipment, even if I have some blank media to work on.