Taro's Travels

At around midnight yesterday I made the snap decision that since there were a couple of free days before Friday's trip to Taman Negara, it was logistically sensible to go to Kuala Selangor in the morning and return the next day. KS was known to Ray and Jo for its fireflies, but the prospect of me actually staying for longer than three hours boggled them: "There's nothing else there". I waved my Lonely Planet - source of all wisdom for the lazy traveller - and told them that it was meant to have a fort and mausoleum and a lighthouse and an animal park... so I could see those during the day, see the fireflies at night, and come back some time today.

Catching an intercity coach from KL is an adventure in itself. The interchange has not the two or three counters you find in Australia, but fifty or so all selling a different range of tickets, and KS is not a common stop; indeed my driver forgot to. Some time after I enquired about this, the coach did stop and the driver and co-driver got out and went into a restaurant for about ten minutes while the passengers waited. Another coach pulled up going the other way, and I was told to bring my bag, cross the road and catch it. The driver and co-driver accompanied me... and drove this second coach (the first one was still there as we drove off) back south to KS where they let me, and only me, out at the only traffic light in town.

KS is tiny - just a few streets of shops before the road becomes lined by schools and houses. Too lazy to pull out my Lonely Planet, I followed signs for accommodation. A couple of kilometres later, I'd discovered one motel with a locked and deserted office, a hotel that cost more than I had in my wallet, and an incentive to read, so I walked back to town and - about twenty metres from where I'd started - got a room in the Melawati Ria Hotel. The hotel is just down from Bukit (Hill) Melawati, so I climbed it to see the fort, mausoleum and the lighthouse. The fort wasn't much of a fort - a few cannons and some low, disjointed, and suspiciously modern-looking stonework - and the lighthouse (fenced-off), museum (being refurbished) and mausoleum (being refurbished) were off-limits, so I contented myself with feeding bread to the silvered leaf-monkeys ("Gentle. They don't bite"), avoiding the macaques ("Fierce. Don't feed them.") and admiring the mangrove swamps and tidal flats.

These swamps and flats are at the western edge of Taman Alor, the Kuala Selangor Nature Park which runs from the western base of Bukit Melawati to the sea. At the ticket and information office, the two nervous staff members were barricaded behind a heavy sliding grille as a macaque (presumably fierce) was feeding itself from an upended bin just outside. At an opportune moment they called me to scurry inside, and quickly slid the grille closed once in. Leaving after buying a ticket proved trickier as the macaque stopped eating and came towards me. I - nervous - retreated back in. The grille slid shut once more until the monkey left and so could I.

The conservation park was built nearly 20 years ago and the intervening years are evident - the netting on its heron aviary has been shredded, leaving it open to the sky but not the public; its rope bridge is losing rope and may not be a bridge much longer; the floorboards of its wooden towers are starting to crack; and some of its sidetrails are overgrown to the point of impassibility. During the week it's very quiet - it has cheap accommodation available but this was mostly vacant. Despite this, it was really very enjoyable to wander the recently mown grass on its main trail in the grey afternoon haze and follow its concrete walkway through the mangrove area to eyeshot of the sea. I saw no animals apart from a couple of macaques and the bumps and wake of what could have been a distant otter, but the brackish lake area and surrounding trees were full of birds, and mudskippers made short bursts across the swamp like flat stones skip across water. With sufficient mosquito repellent, I'd happily return.

The half-hour boatride to watch the fireflies were a disappointment. I was expecting a cloud of the things filling the air (I'm sure I've heard the term "cloud" used before), but these fireflies were content to sit quietly in the riverside trees and flash. Occasionally one would shift branches. They were pretty but uninteresting - Christmas lights without the variation in colour. There are reportedly more than nineteen hundred species of firefly but it was hard to differentiate one blinking light from another: Is that one a little less greenish or more yellowish? Is that one blinking faster? Is that minuscule point of light smaller than that other minuscule point of light? I think I would have appreciated it more had the boatride been shorter but some time was spent giving some explanation and context about the fireflies.

The bus back was a non-airconditioned one that seemed to travel regularly from KS to KL and back. It passed oil palm plantations for most of the way as it picked up and dropped passengers until we reached the interchange some two hours later.