Friday, October 20 - Taman Alam

This tree sends down stalks to take root in the soil. They're really spectacular to see, and this park was full of them!
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Last night I spent the night at a nature park – a first for me!

My coteachers and I headed out Thursday after school and drove westward to Kuala Selangor, a small city on the west coast of Malaysia.

Most people go to Kuala Selangor to see the kelip kelip – "fireflies" in Bahasa Melayu – but my coteachers prefer to watch birds. Besides, they had already seen the fireflies a couple times!

When we arrived, the park appeared to be closed, but as we looked around, we realized that the gate was merely shut, not locked. We were disappointed, though, that no one was around to rent us a chalet, but at least the 2-hour trip would not be completely in vain. So, we got ourselves all bug-sprayed, grabbed our cameras, extra batteries, and some water, and we were off!

Aren't I brave? (and cute?) ;-)
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One big difference about nature parks here is that the "nature" gets pretty close to you! As soon as we entered the park area, there were the monkeys, and they can be pretty aggressive! We spent the next couple hours watching mudskippers and recording the bird-sounds, all the while hoping we wouldn't get rained out.

That's a major concern any time you make big plans here: Will it rain? How hard will it rain? How long will it rain? One never knows…

Well, we didn't get rained out. In fact, by the time it did start to sprinkle, we were already on our way out and under the cover of trees.

The view from the observation tower... From here, we were able to watch herons, egrets, storks, mudskippers, kingfishers, and many other birds as they hunted for their supper in the water and in the air.
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When we arrived back at our car, we stopped to talk to a girl from Holland who had managed to secure a chalet for that night. While we were chatting, the owner came back! We were able to rent a chalet after all – only RM45 for all three of us! Not a bad deal at all.

In the morning, one coteacher headed out to catch the early-morning sounds of the park, and his wife and I decided to have a little breakfast. In order to avoid attracting ants, she took our peanut butter, jam, and bread outside. Big mistake!

We weren't but two minutes walk from our chalets, and these guys were on our trail! Actually, they were trying to catch up with the alpha male who had climbed down the tree and onto the trail ahead of us. It did look like they were following us though. Creepy!!
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As soon as she set them down on the porch ledge, a monkey – a male – jumped up on the ledge and began to bare his teeth at her!

In the process of grabbing the bread from the ledge, she threw our knife to the ground nearby and knocked over the jam onto the porch floor... So much for not attracting ants! When we returned from our morning walk, our porch was swarming with ants from a dozen different directions!!

As we left the chalet area, I wandered off the path, entranced by the streams of ants as thousands of them smoothed a trail on the rain-pocked sand around the chalets. My coteacher warned me to watch for stinging red ants, but it was too late!

On the way home, we passed an Indian funeral procession. The "hearse" is, I suspect, the third vehicle in the line of cars (the flower-covered van).
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OUCH! A red ant – nearly half an inch long – had already crawled over the edge of my hiking boot and to the top of my sock! OUCH!! A second one was halfway up the shin of my other leg!

How could they have moved so fast?? I was sure I hadn't even walked near any, but I guess I was wrong! My coteacher had two of her own to deal with. OW-OW-OW!!! A third one had made it all the way up to my hip!!

I threw the trash in my hands to the ground, swatted my side violently, and stomped up and down to dislodge the little monster. Finally, he fell to the ground, mangled and mouth full. Rotten little blankety-blank... (I'm being a little silly about it now, but it really stung at the time!)

My coteacher loves to record the sounds of nature. As usual, he brought along his stereo microphone set to record the sounds of the Kuala Selangor nature park.
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On the ride home, we took lots of pictures and even drove by an Indian funeral procession. The photo I got wasn't great since I didn't have my camera ready, but at least I got something!

We also stopped to take some pictures at a Chinese cemetery. Most of their tombstones are horseshoe-shaped and decorated with beautifully painted tiles, and many of the tombstones were covered with small pieces of paper tacked down by rocks, though I'm not sure of their meaning. So interesting!

Don't forget to click "View more photos" to see the rest of the gallery for this trip!