Kuala Selangor

Last week Maureen had her students present the hip-hop routines they had made up in PE class. She invited parents to come and watch the performance. Most of the moms here are stay at home mom (as the dads earn lots) so she had large audiences come for each class. Not sure how the rather proper administration felt about the kids wondering around out of uniform and showing 'attitude'.


We figured out one place we will take visitors to when they come to Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Selangor has the Firefly Park. The variety of firefly found in the park is quite large, about 6 cm long. They gather in a certain species of tree called berembang by the thousands after dark. The incredible thing about them is that they flash in synchrony. It is like watching a Christmas tree display minus the tinsel. We drove to the park after school on Friday, about 1 1/2 hour drive from KL. Our accommodation was right at the park in chalets that are on stilts out on the water. After dark we got in a electric motored boat for a tour up the river to view the fireflies. The display and experience were absolutely incredible. It really was quite magical drifting up the river in the silent boat watching the fireflies put on a show. Apparently there are usually hundreds of others viewing the firefly but for some reason we hit a quiet night and had a boat all to ourselves. We travelled with some other teachers from school, Chris and Cindy.

The next day we toured around the area visiting an old look-out hill used by the Indian, the Dutch, and British as a look-out onto the Straits of Malacca. At the base of the hill is Taman Alam Nature Park. We toured around and explored the park until the mid-day heat drove us back to our air conditioned car. HSBC is a big sponsor of the park and replanting of the of the mangroves in the swamp. We met a large crew of HSBC bank employees up to their armpits in mud having a great time planting trees. This was interesting for us as HSBC is the bank Pedja works for back in Vancouver.There were lots of monkeys at the look-out. They were of a much friendly variety then the ones at school. Most of them we just chilling out like this one in front of the cannon.
Maureen with Chris and Cindy on the boardwalk in the mangrove area of the nature park.

On Sunday we got up early and headed off on a bike trip to FRIM (Forest Research Instutute of Malaysia). It was an epic ride there of about 15 kms of freeway and interchange biking. We did have some great biking in the park itself. There were about 15 of us. Maureen was the only female but she showed us all how to endure the mud. We came in from the backside of the park and rode through to the entrance where we had a great breakfast from a vendor of Nasi Lemak. It was delicious. A heaping plate of this and some sweet hot tea set us back the equivalent of about $.75US. The bike trip of about 55 km took us about 5 hours to complete and we arrived home ready for a quiet afternoon.Riding on the trails in the forest reserve was quite nice. There were lots of people around enjoying the biking or hiking on the trails. The ferns and vegetation are something else.

The mud in places was something else also.Just at the foot of the FRIM park there are hundreds of flower and plant stalls. Many of them sell orchids like this.