Kuala Selangor’s wild menagerie

When traveling, have you noticed that every destination has its own defining characteristic? There’s something that always emerges as a place’s overriding aspect, becoming your main memory long after you’ve left.

In Kuala Selangor, Malaysia, that main theme is wild animals.

When Masayo and I arrived in Kuala Selangor, Malaysia from Kuala Lumpur we weren’t quite sure what to expect from the town. It’s a quiet place, very small, and is surrounded by some nice natural settings, but we had no prior ideas about what to expect.

My favorite way to travel!

The morning after we arrived we were in our small room at Hotel Kuala Selangor and had the window open. To our surprise, a monkey soon appeared, sitting on a ledge outside the window and looking unimpressed with us.

“Nothing would stop him from coming in the room,” I thought. But he didn’t. He just sat and beheld us a few minutes. I (slowly) grabbed my video camera just in time to catch him jumping onto a wire and shimmying up and away.

Masayo studied monkeys in college in the hills north of Osaka, so she was particularly excited. I was too. And it was the first of many encounters we would have with interesting creatures in Kuala Selangor.

Kuala Selangor Nature Park

Taman Alam Kuala Selangor, a.k.a. Kuala Selangor Nature Park, lies at the end of a short walkway from the teeny “downtown” area. We went one day and as soon as we started down the road to the entrance, I saw a gigantic dinosaur trotting amiably along the side of the road.

Yes! A real full-sized dinosaur!

At least, that’s what it seemed like. It was actually a monitor lizard, about a meter long, and looking like it could bite me in half if took a notion.

I couldn’t believe it; there were plenty of lizards around when I was growing up back in Georgia but they would all fit in my hand. The dumber ones would die while sitting on our windowsills and become little figurines until someone disposed of them.

I was used to cute, unthreatening lizards; this Malaysian beast was enormous.

My heart doing flips, I managed to grab my camera and take a single photo of him before he scampered off into the underbrush. Unfortunately, it was too dark under the trees, and too late in the day, and you can barely make him out in the photo.

Once inside the nature reserve, I saw another monitor lizard emerge from a large dusty hole and run off into the bushes, but this time he was too fast for any photo at all. Still, wow!

Jurassic holdouts aside, the Kuala Selangor Nature Park is really nice. It’s super-quiet, and I don’t think anyone else was there besides us. We saw orange and blue crabs in the mud, watched nervous, inquisitive little birds hop up and down on the path, crossed over water on rickety little bridges, and just soaked in the fecund atmosphere of the overwhelmingly green, wet place.

Melawati Hill

A few days later, having spent some time working online in an internet cafe full of game-playing teenagers who let us connect our laptops, we took a break to walk around Bukit Melawati, a.k.a. Melawati Hill, on one edge of the Nature Park. On top of the hill is a fortress that dates from the late 1700s, with canons lining the perimeter and views out to the Malacca Strait.

Bukit Melawati was the real monkey central of Kuala Selangor; hundreds of the furry grey humanoids sit on rocks, scoot along the ground carrying their orange young’uns, and jump around the many tree branches.

Visitors buy snacks to feed the monkeys and there were many apparently Malaysian tourists doing just that, although my personal monkey expert Masayo advised against it.

Royal Mausoleum

Elsewhere we saw the Makam Diraja Kota Malawati [sic], or Royal Mausoleum. It was an impressive, tastefully designed Islamic building, but trapped behind a closed gate. We could only see it from afar. Despite the big crowds closer to the entrance to the Hill feeding the monkeys, nobody had bothered to walk to this little path, and again we were alone. Just us and the buried remains of the Sultans. There weren’t even any monkeys; they know where the food is.

The fireflies

The most famous tourist experience in Kuala Selangor is a night trip by boat to a spot on the Selangor River a few miles outside of town to see the amazing gathering of the fireflies in the trees.

One night Masayo and I signed up for such a tour. We were taken by car to the spot, and paid in a state-of-the-art ticket booth and turnstile facility, from which you walk down a plank towards the river’s edge. Along with several other tourists, we donned our life jackets and situated ourselves in the little rowboats, about ten people each plus a staff guy to row.

We were instructed to keep quiet as the boat made its way almost silently through the dark water. And indeed, the fireflies were out in force in the trees. Their magical lights twinkled off and on, sometimes in this tree, sometimes in that one.

Somehow the fireflies of one group all knew when to start up at the same time, and when to stop. A twinkling yellow-green light show would erupt on the opposite shore and and our captain would quietly swing the boat around and try to get closer for us.

How I ruined my trip videos

I took no still photos, but a lot of video, of the fireflies, including some with my camera’s night vision setting. All the video turned out black. What’s worse, at some point I compressed all my video and deleted the original files to save room, and I chose a method that seriously reduced the quality. No amount of enhancement seems to bring out any details at all. So it’s one of those memories that remains mental and not photographic. I guess some memories are best that way.

Goodbye to the animals of Kuala Selangor

We moved to the Melawati Ria Hotel & Restaurant for our last couple days in Kuala Selangor, and in the clothing shop next door I bought some new short-sleeved, button-down shirts for the trip for very cheap. I like to buy local stuff to wear as I travel through places. It feels like I’m wearing my surroundings.

We are leaving for Klang next, but Kuala Selangor has been great to us, a nice, easygoing town that encourages relaxation and happiness. The monkeys, crabs, birds, fireflies, and gigantic mutant lizards make it especially fun. It may not be on many people’s tourist itineraries but it should – would that all destinations were as nice as Kuala Selangor!

What wild animals have you seen on your travels?

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