Find your New Senses in Langkawi

A Sense of the Tropics,

Sense of Adventure. Sense of Fun,
Sense of Relaxation, Sense of Well-being

( By the way you will find the technical definition of the Five ‘Senses’, plus a few you didn’t know you had.. at the end.. if you can absorb all that technical jargon, but it is very revealing in its way too….!! My thanks to Wikipedia!!)

We have the beautiful scenery to admire, and very interesting places to visit, we are sure that all of your sense will be needed. But perhaps there are other ways of expressing a ‘sense’ and those we will try to introduce in our own inimitable way.

Taste is something that can be defined by the scientists, but we would like to point out that in our colloquial English this has a greater meaning. Perhaps we regret that there are not many places that one can enter, and say that it has been done with ‘good taste’, but there are some and we will point them out.

Perhaps lying on the beach in the heat, just listening it to the sound of waves which are a very gentle, and possibly high up in the blue sky a single shriek of an eagle. Feeling the warmth of the sea on your feet and soft sand below, may encompass many of the senses.
Hopefully you have left behind the mad rush and pressure of work and modern life in general, and ghastly noises of incessant invasive music!!! This will give you the rest that you need.
A sense of ‘well being’….

I ask of you one day to go, with somebody with expert knowledge, and walk through some of our beautiful primary rainforest, which we call jungle, on the hills of preferably Mount Chinchang. Absorb the background sounds of a few birds, and may be some angry monkeys, but as you walk along surrounded by what seems to be massive towers of trees leading to the sky, look down. You may be lucky to see the flowers of such massive giants, which have fallen from on high, which you would never have known about. Surrounded by greenery, every now and then you'll be advised to pluck a leaf, crush it, and from what looks like plain normal plant, comes amazing delicate smell or an incredible taste, (which you have been advised safe to try). Ask any questions and maybe you'll be shown certain things which you knew not, and when shown something you can at least use, the colloquial expression of,
“Oh I see, I didnt know that is what it comes from! “ ………

In the technical section it mentions some long or words which are the same as the perception of body awareness.
Long time ago deep in the jungle, with a some of the great experts of that world, I remember being asked, after hours, which was the way I would like to go home. And as you were taught in the jungle, if you wish to survive more than the first 5 minutes, you carry a parang and mark your passage through the mass and tangle and swamp land that we worked in, all of the time, just in case. So I turn and pointed to the last mark somewhere behind us. Great laughter, and information that that had taken us a five hours' hard slog, my way. One of my guides stood up, turned his head very very slowly, stopping and looking in a completely different direction and said, “that is the way home”. So we wiggled a way through in his direction,  for some half-an-hour and found ourselves back at the river from where we had started.
This is a sense of direction we have lost, this is a sense of all things around us we don’t now use..
Even in that dark world of the jungle, with no sight sometimes of the Sun or any other indicators which we normally use, but this is something they find to be normal. But then I am predjudiced as I was with peoples such as the Orang Asli the aborigines of Malaysia, the Dusuns of Sabah and the Ibans of Sarawak who have this knowledge and ‘senses’ passed down through very many thousands of years……
Maybe that is the 'Sixth Sense' we hear about, and doubt ??

It is also well-known it in and because of our modern living we have lost a huge percentage of our hearing smell and probably a eyesight as well in detail... I have sat at night with an only the tiny light of a fire somewhere away, resting when asked by one of my particular jungle experts not to move as he could hear snake coming towards us, I had no idea what he was talking about and sometime later, very calmly a snake and slithered its way across and front of us. He remarked that he wasn’t bothered, that sort was no good to eat anyway! And any way the snake had ‘looked at us’ and decided that we were too big to eat!!
Walking another time in the jungle looking down a track in front of us I see the clear footprints of one of our local tigers, the big one, using our track as it easier for him to walk as well. Extremely worried I turned my then guide, and asked if it was safe to keep going, despite the fact that I was carrying a rifle.He stopped, listened for a while, smelled the air, which I don't know if you know in the jungle is very humid, and musty, and very little movement, and said that I should not bother as there was obviously a nice rotting dead body probably a jungle pig some 20/30 yards to our right to the jungle, and that's what he would be interested in eating and not us.

Forgive the ramblings of an old jungle wallah, and just come here and realise the use of all of your senses in enjoying everything, that will please us all very much .

The Technical Section

Definition of sense
There is no firm agreement amongst neurologists as to exactly how many Senses there are, because of differing definitions of a sense. In general, one can say that a “sense” is the faculty by which outside stimuli are perceived. It is generally agreed that there are at least nine different senses in humans but Aristotle taught us that there are five senses: 

sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste.

Sight
Sight or vision, describes the ability to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible range (light) by the eye and the brain that to interpret the image as “sight”. There is disagreement as to whether this constitutes one, two or even three distinct senses. New role Neuroanatomists generally regarded it as two senses, given that different receptors are responsible for the perception of colour (its the frequency of photons of light) and brightness (amplitude/intensity- number of photons of light). Some argue that steropsis, the perception of depth, also constitutes a sense, but it is generally regarded that this is really a cognitive (that is, a post-sensory) function of the brain to interpret sensory input to derive new information.

Hearing
Hearing or audition is the sense of sound perception and results from tiny hair fibres in the inner ear detecting the motion of a membrane which vibrates in response to changes in the pressure exerted by atmospheric particles within (at best) a range of 9 to 22,000 Hz, however this changes for each individual. Sound can also be detected as vibrations conducted throughout the body by tactition. Lower and higher frequencies that can be heard art detected this way only.

Taste
Taste or gustation is one of the two main “chemical” Senses. It is well known that there are at least four  types of taste “bud” (receptors) on the tongue and hence, as should now be expected, there are anatomists who argue that these in fact constitute four or more different senses, given that each receptor conveys information to a slightly different region of the brain.
The four well-known receptors detect sweet, salt, sour, and bitter, although the receptors for sweet and bitter have not been conclusively identify. A fifth receptor for a sensation called umami was first theorised in 1908 and its existence confirmed in 2000. The umami receptor detects the amino acid glutamate, a flavour commonly found in meat and in artificial flavourings such as monosodium glutamate.

Smell
Smell or olfaction is the other “chemical” sense. Unlike taste, there are hundreds of olfactory receptors, each binding to a particular molecular feature, according to current theory. The combination of features of the odour molecule makes up what we perceive as the molecule’s smell. In the brain olfaction is process by the olfactory system. Olfactory receptors and neurons in the nose differ from most other neurons in that they die and regenerate on a regular basis.

If the different taste-senses on not regarded as separate senses, one may argue that Taste and Smell should be likewise were grouped together as one sense.

Touch
Touch or tactition is the sense of pressure perception generally in the skin. There are a variety of pressure receptors that respond to variations in pressure (firm, brushing, sustained, etc)

Extras…

Thermoception
Thermocepton is the sense of heat and the absence of heat (cold), also by the skin and including internal skin passages. There is some disagreement about how many senses this actually represents- the thermoceptors in the skin are quite different from the homeostatic thermoceptors which provide feedback on internal body temperature.

Noiception
Noiception is the perception of pain. It can be classified as from one to three senses, depending on the classification method. There are three types of pain of receptor are cutaneous (skin), somatic (joints and bones) and visceral (body organs). For a considerable time it was believed that came it was simply the overloading of pressure receptors, but research in the first half of the 20th century indicated that pain is a distinct phenomenon that intertwines with all other senses, including touch..

The Others
Equilibrioception, the vestibular sense, is the perception of balance and is related to cavities containing fluid in the inner ear. There is some disagreement as to whether this also includes the sense of “direction” or orientation. However as with depth perception earlier, it is generally regarded that “direction” is a post sensory cognitive awareness.

Proprioception, the kinestethic sense, is the perception of body awareness and is a sense that people rely are enormously, yet are frequently not aware of. More easily demonstrated than explained, proprioception     is the “unconscious” awareness of where the various regions of the body are located at any one time. (This can be demonstrated by closing one's eyes is and waving the hand around. Assuming proper proprioception function, at no time will the person lose awareness of where the hand actually is, even though it is not being detected by any of the other senses)

Hope you have taken all that in and fully understand the implications ??? Really !!