Kuala Selangor Nature Park

The park covers about three hundred hectares at the mouth of the Selangor river - mangrove on the seaward side, a brackish lake system behind it, and secondary forest on Bukit Melawati, the hill with a lighthouse and an old fort on it. Silvered leaf monkeys live around the hill and are habituated to the point of taking food from hands; the young are bright orange, which is what people photograph, and the feeding is a matter of some debate among people who care about wild primates. The bird list runs past a hundred and fifty species with migratory waders on the mudflats. The other thing here is upriver at Kampung Kuantan: synchronous fireflies, Pteroptyx tener, live in the berembang mangrove along the banks and flash in unison after dark, and small boats are rowed out among them - one of the more reliable such displays in Southeast Asia.

What you actually see

• Silvered langurs - habituated troops with bright orange young around the hill.
• Synchronous fireflies - flashing in unison in the mangrove upriver after dark.
• Mangrove and brackish lakes - three hundred hectares at the river mouth.
• Bukit Melawati - the hill with a lighthouse and old fort above the park.

When to go

All year; dark moonless nights for fireflies. A day.

Honest expectations

Firefly boats depend on weather and moon and are cancelled in rain; take the rowed boats, not the motorised ones, which disturb them. Feeding the monkeys is discouraged and they bite. Mosquitoes are severe.

Nearby

Kampung Kuantan firefly park is upriver; Sekinchan's paddy fields are north.