Thursday, March 25, 2010

Kuala Selangor 2

Again,we have our explorer start the post. Fresh from the mangrove field trip, everyone stained grey with mud at one place or another. Whee~
Dr. Jones? Jinggut
Mediocre tasting lunch at a seafood restaurant - Chilli and thai fried rice were the only commendable dishes.
Girls sucking their nuts.. well, coconuts..
Mmm.. nom nom nom
Enough of you, Shen. Look what you've caused the camera beside you (TY's). haha

(coco)nut suckin man
Pardon the picture quality - 20x zoom of a kingfisher lurking at the mangrove by the restaurant.
My work of nut. Yes, I confess, I sucked a (coco)nut too. Stupid shells, only 1/3 or so of those I tried to get were get-able. Rest were sandy etc. pfft.
Stick it in the nut!
Ty's nut, badly pierced.
Cheryl: To poke, or not to poke...
Shen's

Back in Nature Park. Here's the Silverleaf Monkey series.
Shy guy up in the trees.
Ermm.. Next

Cool dude. Kinda hard to take a zoomed picture with such a bright background.

Monkey-ing around.
Enough Monkey ass business.
Click on this to see his epic face. Love this picture.

*not paying attention*
Emotional Monkey.. EMonkeyCaught me, dang. haha

Next up, a walk into the secondary forest trail connected to the Nature Park. Brought students there and like before, got sucked dry by mosquitoes. Not funny. This place used to mangrove forests, but most of it was destructed when the Nature Park was being built. Now that they've been allowed time to regrow, it's a forest again, but with different species since it's no longer flooded like a mangrove. There still are several old Avicenna sp. mangrove trees here that survived. Tell-tale signs of this past are in the soil. When you dig deep enough, you get mangrove soil beneath the surface layer.

Some hardcore roots on the forest floor.
yeap
Ferns and more.
Tangly jangly mangle
Berak break

Balls, glorious balls~
*gasp* Three!?
These trees are rather cool. They develop secondary roots/trunks from their branches that goes right back down to the ground again. Either Accacia or figs..
They get pretty big too.
Tree monster

A darker perspective.. literally, hahah.
Elegantly tangled mess

Sunset Watch on Bukit Melawati
Now we walk up Bukit Melawati where there's a sunset-watch spot (kinda..) and a lighthouse. On the way up...
I don't know what plant this is.
And my hands were shaking + the wind was blowing. I couldn't hold still enough for a clear shot. haha
I like this tree
"Bersama teguh, bercerai roboh"
Very nice bands of light and dark brown on its queer trunk.

Now it may seem simple to take all these photos on the way up the hill, but it isn't Kuala Selangor mosquitoes are not the friendly household ones that just go when you shoo them. They come in visible clouds that have to be repeatedly shoo-ed and when you're shooing one side, they attack the other. That's how I got >30 bites on my right leg alone. They bit through my shirt too. and hands. So, taking pictures here really was a(n) (b)itch, having to stay still as you're being sucked try.

Ran up the hill when I couldn't take it any longer - I actually stayed back alone to take pictures as the rest went on initially.
Silverleaf up in the trees! High up, a mother with its cute orange baby. I failed to get a good shot because of the distance, their movements and of course, the mosquitoes.
And here's our failed cloud-covered sunset. Whee
On to other things, here's a greedy lil Silverleaf that took a loaf of bread from somebody and greedily went up to a hard-to-get edge to munch it himself, before throwing away the plastic wrapping of the loaf down. Litter bug ape.
Yes, caught on film.
Meh

Friends forever. Monkey business. I heard these Silverleaf monkeys don't usually hang around the park. Loads of them when I was there though. Maybe they're beginning to befriend the macaque residents there.
Kaboom~
Anonymous models

Fabulous Dinner Spot

The sign leading to the place. If you ever wanna have seafood in Kuala Selangor..... come here! (maybe I shouldn't advertise so they'll have less business and more time to layan me when I'm there. haha)

No food pictures cuz I was too hungry.
Ate em.
Good price too, we only paid about 10-11 per person for about 10 people and 4-5 dishes.

The Nature Park - Hostel
Pre-departure photos. That's my bed and bag on the left, the white one. Not luxurious or anything, as you would expect of a Nature Park hostel, but good enough as a hostel. Gotta run out or prop your phone high to get reception for Maxis users though.

Trying to show you how many Mozzy bites there were on my ankle alone. Those red splotches are multiple bites close to each other. Not really close, but heck, that's my Kuala Selangor souvenir. Got it last year too.

"But you've been here before right, serves you right, don't wanna wear long pants some more"

Bloody Yong... Forgot ma!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like strangler figs, but I could be wrong :)

kienz said...

Uh huh =p Could be, but strangler figs usually look thinner and doesn't have such a thick main trunk? I think la, I dunno either. hah

Anonymous said...

They have main trunks? I'm also not sure about that.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2956099&id=502396076#!/photo.php?pid=2956093&id=502396076

That's a picture of a strangler fig from my field work last year. They can be quite big. Hollow ones are fun to take pictures too!
Hope you're doing well Jo! I'll see you in a few months!

kienz said...

Saw the picture. I think that looks more similar to the "Bersama teguh, bercerai roboh" tree than the earlier ones. Coming back already? Hmm, okay! haha