Dear 94robinj,
We would like to apologize for your recent experience. We are sorry to hear you were less than satisfied with our boat tour. We pride ourselves on our Langkawi Mangrove Night Safari tour and the high-quality standards we maintain (by referring to the reviews at our Trip Advisor page and Facebook page by our previous guests). We would like to make things right. Here are our justifications on your above review:
1) Monkey feeding activity and guests were disturbed.
- There are more than 260 types of monkeys in the world. The one that you have seen during our boat tour is called “Crab-eating Macaque”. The species is a cercopithecine primate native to Southeast Asia. Despite their name, crab-eating macaques typically do not consume crabs as their main food source. They are opportunistic omnivores, eating a variety of animals and plants. This species has become a proficient swimmer and diver for crabs and other crustaceans in mangrove swamps.
Humans and crab-eating macaques have shared environments since prehistoric times, and both used to share the forest and river edge habitats.
A study in Singapore recorded that their diets are consisting of 44% fruits and nuts, 27% animal matter, 15% flowers and other plant matter, and 14% food provided by humans.
Nuts (in our case, peanuts) are high in carbohydrates, protein, and fats. This species is using nuts as its main protein supplements. The peanuts that our Nature Guide had use during the tour were natural seeds, which were not harmful to the monkeys. In fact, the monkeys use the peanuts as their source of protein. That was the reason why our Nature Guide was feeding them with peanuts.
That was not true that the rest of the guests in your boat were disturbed by the monkey feeding activity. I personally asked one couple from Luxembourg who were in the same boat with you, about their opinion of the boat tour and both of them were extremely happy and enjoying the trip and according to them, the tour was so informative and gave them a new experience.
Besides, our Naturalists / Nature Guides are trying to change the perception of human towards the monkeys (monkeys are said to be wild, aggressive, dangerous, and harmful). Furthermore, our Nature Guides are all certified Naturalists, with a Green Badge License. In order to get the license, they must attend and pass the Local Nature Tourist Guide Course that is conducted by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, under the supervision of Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture of Malaysia. Our guides are highly trained and experienced to deal with the wildlife, especially monkeys.
2) Ecological threat to the monkey (By feeding them).
- The IUCN Red List categorizes the Crab-eating Macaque species as Least Concern, and CITES lists them as Appendix II ("not necessarily threatened with extinction", in which trade must be controlled to avoid use incompatible with their survival).
A recent review of their populations suggests a need for better monitoring of populations due to increased wild trade and rising levels of human-macaque conflict, which are reducing overall population levels despite the species being widely distributed. The crab-eating macaque has the third-largest range of any primate species, behind only humans and rhesus macaques.
3) 10 obnoxious tourists who would rather document the sites than view them.
- In Langkawi, we are currently and actively practicing ecotourism. Generally, ecotourism deals with interaction with biotic components of the natural environments. Ecotourism is defined as “the segment of tourism that involves travelling to relatively natural areas with the specific objective of admiring, studying and enjoying the scenery and its plants and animals, as well as cultural features.”
Our guide encourages our guests to take the photos because photos physically preserve your memories. The memories that live in our minds and hearts are powerful and unique, but they tend to fade with time. Documenting a trip digitally allows you to create books, framed artwork, or other mementos by which to remember the trip further down the road. Moreover, photography can be a powerful tool for telling stories and creating awareness and understanding across cultures, communities, and countries
4) The dinner we served was not good.
- Traveling includes new experience of culture, people, lifestyle and foods. So, your travel would be meaningless at all if you do not try different foods that are native to the place you are visiting. You should experience new taste and favour of the country you are visiting. Food represents an ethnic group’s rich culture, and it is a central part of its soul that ties generations of people together.
Taste can be affected by culture, biology, memory, and so forth. Also, people even define taste differently. In my opinion, taste belongs to a person, thus it is subjective, and "bad taste" is wrong to say.
For example, most Malaysians will say that they love durians, but Caucasians generally hate it. Or a Malay brought up with cuisine that has extremely complex flavours, they may think that Japanese food is way too simple and lacking in flavour.
Conversely, Japanese may find Malay food too complex for them. It cannot be said that either of these people do not have taste buds. They simply have different taste buds because taste is subjective.
We value our customer's opinions and would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We really appreciate your feedback. We are always looking for ways to improve guest experience.
Thank you.