The Tropical Fruit Farm

We got up on Saturday morning with the intention of going to a place called Monkey Beach with another American family from our ward. We planned to leave at 10 and as the morning progressed the clouds started rolling in and by 10:15 it was pouring rain. So beach plans got cancelled. We took advantage of the cooler weather and drove to the other side of the island to go to the Tropical Fruit Farm here. It is 25 acres of area where they grow everything you think of when you think of Tropical fruit. I have to say that I think I like the pineapple plant the best. I think it is so cool! I learned that Dragon Fruit is a blossom of a cactus. That Durian goes really high up in the trees, they have to climb them to harvest them. (still haven't got up the nerve to try it!!) The man that was giving the tour said this about Durian, "Smells like hell, tastes like Heaven." I have smelled it several times and it really stinks, like B.O. but everyone says it tastes delicious. One of these days!!!

The fruit farm was on the steep side of a mountain. They had carved out steppe of land to grow the fruit on. Surrounding the Farm was a Durian Plantation. We had a tour guide show us around and then when the tour was finished, we sat down to a giant fruit buffet, where you could eat as much as you wanted. We tried lots of new fruits yellow watermelon, a couple of different kids of guava, papaya, pineapple, the mangosteins again (yummy!), a water apple, a custard apple, rambutans, and I can remember the rest. We were also able to get some fresh juice. It was so good! After we left the Tropical Fruit Farm, we started to drive around towards the other side of the island. It was time for the kids to nap. So we were able to see the parts of Malaysia that are not so urban. We drove around a small fishing village and through this really windy, curvy two lane road. It was like driving in Atlanta where you can see through the trees, and at time the trees even covered the sky. We found a beautiful waterfall and right by it was this little market. They had two monkeys in a cage, we took Cannon to see them and when we walked up to the cage one of the monkeys started peeing and almost sprayed all of us. I felt sad for them, they just stared out into the jungle like, let us out of here!

We cut through the center of the island to get back and we drove by this absolutely giant statue of the Chinese God of Mercy. It was huge! It looks like they are just building it. We didn't realize we can see it for our Condo til we got back. You can't tell what it is from far away. I would like to go and walk around it. I am not sure if we are allowed, but it would be cool to see up close! I also put a pistue in of the traffic. The Malaysians can always turn a two lane road into a four land road, with the scooters going in between. :) Crazy! It was a really fun day, not too sad the beach got rained out!