Jungle Hiking & Firefly Viewing in Taman Negara & Kuala Selangor

Continuing on from the Cameron Highlands, we headed to Kuala Tahan National Park (usually referred to as Taman Negara, which simply means "national park" in Malay).  We drove to a small village where we would pick up a boat to take us along the Tembeling River for the last part of the transfer.  We had to wait a while for the boat departure, but eventually all the tourists (and backpacks) piled in for the ride.

We arrived at the small town outside the park and found our way to our homestay.  That evening, we went on a night walk in Taman Negara with a friendly guide whose eagle eyes spotted some enormous (poisonous) centipedes, spiders, and scorpions.

The next morning we went back into Taman Negara to hike and do a canopy walk, which was a walkway suspended about 40 meters (131 feet) above the ground.  This particular canopy walk is supposedly the longest in the world at 530 meters (1700+ feet) long.  The view was very pretty, and it was neat to be up so high above the jungle.

We hiked further into the park and stopped a couple of times to take pictures and to rest.  We were all dripping with sweat since it was really hot and particularly humid.

Eventually we made it to Bukit Teresik (Teresik Hill) that overlooks deep into the national park.  In total we hiked about 7 KM (about 4.5 miles) through steamy Malaysian jungle.

While we didn't see any wildlife during our hike, back at the National Park entrance we saw lots of monkeys and a beautiful large bird.

We ate dinner one night at a floating restaurant, which required good balance to reach.

We left Taman Negara on a bus that took us to Kuala Lumpur.  We saw these banners on the side of the road, which advertise both a mosque and Christmas-related greetings.  We have been really impressed at the diversity of ethnicities and religions in Malaysia and the tolerance that all groups appear to show for one another.

From Kuala Lumpur, we Uber-ed northwest of the capital to Kuala Selangor, a small coastal town.  Our whole purpose for going there was to see thousands of fireflies who inhabit the mangrove trees along the Selangor River.  We took an electric boat out onto the river, which was great because it allowed us to enjoy the beauty of the fireflies in near-silence.

The fireflies congregate and flash their lights in the trees at night.  This results in a display that almost looks like twinkling Christmas lights.  It was so unique and beautiful!  While the fireflies were amazing, they were quite difficult to photograph.  The first picture below was one we took; the second picture I pulled from the internet.

We ate our dinners at seafood restaurants along the water and with very pretty views.

The next day we visited Bukit Melawati (Melawati Hill), where there were a lot of monkeys.

As soon as the monkeys realized we had a bag of food they started racing towards us, like some kind of sci-fi horror movie in which monkeys attack humans.  I like looking at monkeys, but only from a distance, so I dropped an entire bag of food just to make them leave. me. alone.  The monkeys ate the food and looked like they were plotting how to kill us, so we got the heck out of there.

At Bukit Melawati there was a local history museum, a lighthouse, and the remains of fortifications that were built from 1782-1826 to fight against the Dutch.

We could see the Strait of Malacca and even across to neighboring Indonesia!

Leaving Kuala Selangor marked the end of our whirlwind tour of northern/central Malaysia, and we headed towards Kuala Lumpur for the Christmas holidays and a BIG surprise (that was even bigger than I realized!)....