Kotakinabalu, Malaysia

Sunday, April 12
The Lok Kawi Wildlife Park was a wonderful way to start our day in this lovely little Malaysian town. The park has an elephant recovery program and is designed to bring people closer to nature. Their motto is "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but foot prints". They've done a great job and we enjoyed watching all the animals. The three baby elephants were particularly fun to watch and the very proud keeper was happy to tell us about them. Two females and one little male to raise this group to 12. All have the same father and were really cute!
It was probably the hottest day this far so when the rain came we were all happy to see it! We needed to cool down. We went downtown and checked out some of the markets. There was a Sunday street market, a Phillipino craft market and a huge mall. We wandered through it all and thoroughly enjoyed the different colors, smells, wares and people. I don't know which I liked more because they were all worth visiting.
The Malaysian people have been very welcoming and seem happy to see us. They've had dancers and greeters at the boat in each port. I think it's a pretty big deal for some of these small towns to suddenly have over 1400 tourists descend and spend their money!
Pictures are below.
Kelly