Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part three: 2013-2014
- Thread starter Chlidonias
- Start date
Just hijacking the thread momentarily to note I have now seen pangolin..... 
I have insect repellent (DEET) but I have been rarely using it. I don't like it to be honest, and only use it in heavy mosquito/leech areas. There's no point using it for bees because they are generally harmless.
what's that? Sorry, can't hear you, too many bees!!Just hijacking the thread momentarily to note I have now seen pangolin.....
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
You are indeed an intrepid traveller. Bees are the kamikaze warriors of the insect world, and I fear them.
The porcupines under the toilet remind me of stories I have read of sloths in South American going into the toilet to eat faeces (?). Nice! I imagined you sticking your head down one of these toilets to see the porcupines: BBC - Earth News - Sloths' bizarre 'toilet habit' recorded in Amazon, Peru
probably. In Thailand it is illegal to drive a car topless (both men and women) so birdwatching with no pants on almost certainly warrants a death penalty.
Last time I was in southern Thailand it was 2006 and I stopped in Krabi to visit the mangroves and make the side-trip to look for Gurney's pitta at Khao Nor Chuchi. I did not succeed with the pitta because pittas hate me, and there's no point going there now in 2014 because there are probably none left. That really sucks.
So I arrived in Krabi from Petchaburi at about 6.30 in the morning and caught a songthaew from the bus station to the town centre. Last time I stayed at Hollywood Guesthouse. I remembered nothing about it but it must have been cheap and habitable so I went there this time too. However it appears that most guesthouses in Krabi don't want to open until at least 8am, so I went round the corner to the famous Krabi restaurant May & Mark to wait. They weren't officially open either because of renovations but they let me in for breakfast anyway because they knew me from last visit, and let me leave my bags there while I went in search of somewhere cheap to stay. That place turned out to be the Green Tea Guesthouse which was 200 Baht per night and perfectly serviceable.
When most birders come to Krabi they want to find the Nordmann's greenshank (seen it), Chinese egret (seen it) and brown-winged kingfisher (seen it). I really just wanted to try and find a mangrove pitta. They live in mangroves. Did you guess? Fortunately there are lots of mangroves all about the place at Krabi and the mangrove pittas were supposed to be common. Oh, did I mention that pittas hate me?
Just up the road there's a raised concrete walkway through the mangroves, only about 15 minutes walk from my guesthouse. I went there on the first day, even though it was too hot, just to refresh the area in my mind. I found some new birds for the year-list – Pacific swallow, ashy tailorbird, collared kingfisher, yellow-vented bulbul and Brahminy kite (that last one was a bit weird since I have spent the last three months in Burma, Thailand and India and surely should have seen it already!) – as well as the first flying dragon of the trip (!) and a big troop of crab-eating macaques. I've seen probably thousands of crab-eating macaques over the years but I've never seen them swimming before, probably because I usually see them hanging round tourists hoping for food! Here they were cruising about in the channels between the mangroves, just their heads and shoulders above water like otters, and continually dipping under to search the bottom for crabs and shellfish. Others were doing “bombs” into the water from the branches, just like children at the local swimming pool. Pretty fun to watch. Not so fun was later when I was leaving and the macaques were all on the walkway, and I guess the biggest male wasn't too happy about me having been watching the lady macaques bathing through my binoculars. Most of the macaques jumped away into the trees as I approached but the big male stood firm on the walkway in defiance of my far greater size. We had a stand-off. He mock-charged me, I mock-charged him, neither let the other pass. I didn't really want to get bitten, as big angry macaques are given to do, but I wasn't going to stand there all day, so I broke a stick off a tree and threatened him with it. Unbelievably this worked. I say unbelievably because the stick was only about the size of a pencil!
I tried the walkway again early next morning when the pittas should have been active, but again there was little to see (but fortunately no macaques!). There are boats always available ready to take tourists on trips through the mangroves (and out to the river mouth for shore-birds) but I didn't want to spend the money on that. Instead I stuck with my half-hearted way of looking. Further along the road heading away from town (about 15 minutes walk further past the walkway) is the Maritime Hotel, now called by the rather fancier name of Maritime Park And Spa Resort. This is always recommended as a good spot for mangrove pittas and brown-winged kingfishers, so I went there the following morning. It is a very big flash-looking hotel I must say, with large gardens (which included some macaques). I found the hotel pier but there was nothing to see. It looks like they have cleared away a big section of mangroves from right next to it so there is just empty mud, with only a narrow fringe left along the water's edge. Maybe it has been like that for a long time, but it didn't look good. There were no pittas at any rate. I went back into the gardens and followed the path around the lake. On the far side the path runs alongside more mangroves and these were much more productive. When I say “productive” I don't mean I actually saw anything of course. I did hear a pitta whistling but that was it, but at least I know they are in there!
I've sort of always wondered what happened to the plagues of Egypt. I mean, did God just go “okay, all done,” and they vanished? Or did he put them somewhere in storage. Like the bees went to Kaeng Krachan, and the mosquitoes went to, oh I don't know, let's say the Maritime Park And Spa Resort? “If I wanted humans to go birdwatching,” thought God, “I would have given them zoom lenses in their eyes to begin with, me-dammit. Let's see them find mangrove pittas now!” and then he just dumped all the mosquitoes at the Maritime. Seriously, that hotel must be hell to stay at! I stuck it out for an hour and a half, walking back and forth along the available stretch of mangroves, then called it off on account of pain. Beijing has its pollution clouds, the Maritime has its mosquito clouds.
Tomorrow morning I am off in a mini-van to Penang (in Malaysia).
So I arrived in Krabi from Petchaburi at about 6.30 in the morning and caught a songthaew from the bus station to the town centre. Last time I stayed at Hollywood Guesthouse. I remembered nothing about it but it must have been cheap and habitable so I went there this time too. However it appears that most guesthouses in Krabi don't want to open until at least 8am, so I went round the corner to the famous Krabi restaurant May & Mark to wait. They weren't officially open either because of renovations but they let me in for breakfast anyway because they knew me from last visit, and let me leave my bags there while I went in search of somewhere cheap to stay. That place turned out to be the Green Tea Guesthouse which was 200 Baht per night and perfectly serviceable.
When most birders come to Krabi they want to find the Nordmann's greenshank (seen it), Chinese egret (seen it) and brown-winged kingfisher (seen it). I really just wanted to try and find a mangrove pitta. They live in mangroves. Did you guess? Fortunately there are lots of mangroves all about the place at Krabi and the mangrove pittas were supposed to be common. Oh, did I mention that pittas hate me?
Just up the road there's a raised concrete walkway through the mangroves, only about 15 minutes walk from my guesthouse. I went there on the first day, even though it was too hot, just to refresh the area in my mind. I found some new birds for the year-list – Pacific swallow, ashy tailorbird, collared kingfisher, yellow-vented bulbul and Brahminy kite (that last one was a bit weird since I have spent the last three months in Burma, Thailand and India and surely should have seen it already!) – as well as the first flying dragon of the trip (!) and a big troop of crab-eating macaques. I've seen probably thousands of crab-eating macaques over the years but I've never seen them swimming before, probably because I usually see them hanging round tourists hoping for food! Here they were cruising about in the channels between the mangroves, just their heads and shoulders above water like otters, and continually dipping under to search the bottom for crabs and shellfish. Others were doing “bombs” into the water from the branches, just like children at the local swimming pool. Pretty fun to watch. Not so fun was later when I was leaving and the macaques were all on the walkway, and I guess the biggest male wasn't too happy about me having been watching the lady macaques bathing through my binoculars. Most of the macaques jumped away into the trees as I approached but the big male stood firm on the walkway in defiance of my far greater size. We had a stand-off. He mock-charged me, I mock-charged him, neither let the other pass. I didn't really want to get bitten, as big angry macaques are given to do, but I wasn't going to stand there all day, so I broke a stick off a tree and threatened him with it. Unbelievably this worked. I say unbelievably because the stick was only about the size of a pencil!
I tried the walkway again early next morning when the pittas should have been active, but again there was little to see (but fortunately no macaques!). There are boats always available ready to take tourists on trips through the mangroves (and out to the river mouth for shore-birds) but I didn't want to spend the money on that. Instead I stuck with my half-hearted way of looking. Further along the road heading away from town (about 15 minutes walk further past the walkway) is the Maritime Hotel, now called by the rather fancier name of Maritime Park And Spa Resort. This is always recommended as a good spot for mangrove pittas and brown-winged kingfishers, so I went there the following morning. It is a very big flash-looking hotel I must say, with large gardens (which included some macaques). I found the hotel pier but there was nothing to see. It looks like they have cleared away a big section of mangroves from right next to it so there is just empty mud, with only a narrow fringe left along the water's edge. Maybe it has been like that for a long time, but it didn't look good. There were no pittas at any rate. I went back into the gardens and followed the path around the lake. On the far side the path runs alongside more mangroves and these were much more productive. When I say “productive” I don't mean I actually saw anything of course. I did hear a pitta whistling but that was it, but at least I know they are in there!
I've sort of always wondered what happened to the plagues of Egypt. I mean, did God just go “okay, all done,” and they vanished? Or did he put them somewhere in storage. Like the bees went to Kaeng Krachan, and the mosquitoes went to, oh I don't know, let's say the Maritime Park And Spa Resort? “If I wanted humans to go birdwatching,” thought God, “I would have given them zoom lenses in their eyes to begin with, me-dammit. Let's see them find mangrove pittas now!” and then he just dumped all the mosquitoes at the Maritime. Seriously, that hotel must be hell to stay at! I stuck it out for an hour and a half, walking back and forth along the available stretch of mangroves, then called it off on account of pain. Beijing has its pollution clouds, the Maritime has its mosquito clouds.
Tomorrow morning I am off in a mini-van to Penang (in Malaysia).
I'd never heard of the mangrove pitta before your entry here. Then I googled the image of the bird and WOW. It's like the scene in "Wizard of Oz" where it goes from black and white to Technicolor. What a magnificent bird.
http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/E9/E97...ation.Large/Adult-mangrove-pitta-portrait.jpg
http://cdn2.arkive.org/media/E9/E97...ation.Large/Adult-mangrove-pitta-portrait.jpg
now Google Image the Gurney's pitta
In Krabi I had been thinking about where to go to end off my time in Thailand. I thought my visa was due to expire on the 16 April so I had about five days left. I was strongly considering the Similan Islands for Nicobar pigeon – close to Krabi but also fairly expensive because the only access is via tour-operators. I mused over Thale Ban National Park, down by the border with Malaysia, but looking at it on the internet it didn't seem like I should bother. Then there was Hala-Bala National Park, also near the border and a great place for mammals apparently, but it seemed a bit tricky to get to with only a few days to spare (I think you need to pre-organise visiting). So instead I just went to Malaysia a bit early. While waiting for a bus changeover in Hat Yai I idly flicked through my passport and found the Thai visa – it didn't expire on the 16 after all, it expired on the 12 which happened to be tomorrow! Good thing I didn't find that out while sitting in the Similan Islands! And that means that, yes, it had already been an entire month since my trip finished....
Over the course of that month I picked up over ninety birds which were new for my Thailand list. Partly because I had only been to the north of Thailand once before and that was back on my first trip there so there was lots of stuff I missed or just couldn't ID. Partly it was because I haven't been to Thailand in winter before, and there are lots of migrants common then but not seen any time else.
And so I arrived at Georgetown on Penang Island, Malaysia. Back amongst the dumb-ass backpackers. They say that youth is wasted on the young. Well travel is wasted on the dumb. There was an early-twenties (maybe late-teens I guess) Canadian in my dorm room who was bragging to me he had “just done the whole of Malaysia in six days” and now he didn't know what to do so he was just sitting in Penang doing nothing. I could have given him some suggestions, mostly involving my boot.
In Georgetown I was staying at a place called Couzi Couji, a self-proclaimed party hostel. You know it's a party hostel because “Party Hostel” is actually part of the name, it says on the door “Party Friendly”, the reception desk is also a bar, the guy at the reception-slash-bar doesn't wear a shirt, and in the common-area there was a blow-up pool with balloons floating in it. I was only there because I had met a nice German girl (German girls are always nice!) on the bus down from Krabi and she was booked there and it was probably about as cheap as you're going to get in Penang (20 Ringgitt per bed). I didn't remember anything from my last visit to Penang in 2006, so I just went there with her. The good thing with a party hostel is that the noise doesn't interrupt my sleep (remember I'm deaf in one ear, so I just sleep on my good ear and I can't hear anything
) but in the morning when I get up the place is like a morgue because nobody else is in a fit state to get up before midday.
The first morning I went to the Penang Bird Park which was much more interesting than I expected, with a very diverse collection of mainly southeast Asian birds. I will definitely be back there again whenever I am next in the area.
http://www.zoochat.com/249/penang-bird-park-13-april-2014-a-360901/
I was also going to go to the Aquarium that day but at the Bird Park they told me that it was currently closed for renovations.
I ran foul of the Party Hostel on the second morning when I planned to leave early to get to the Penang National Park. The previous morning had been fine because the Bird Park didn't open until 9am so I left quite late in the morning. This morning I found that that the front doors of the hostel were padlocked shut, the back door was padlocked shut, and the windows are barred so couldn't even climb out one of those. Too bad if there's a fire I guess! Myself and an English guy who wanted to leave early as well had to hang around twiddling our thumbs until someone randomly stumbled into the reception at about 7.30am to unlock the doors.
The National Park is easy to get to. Just catch bus number 101 from by the ferry terminal and an hour later it stops almost literally at the gate of the park. It was of course quite late in the morning and very hot by the time I got there, so birds were not exactly in abundance. Funny thing, when I was leaving the park around 1pm was when most other tourists were arriving. Granted they aren't there for birds but surely common sense would say not to start off “trekking” (as they call it) in the middle of the day? Anyway, I saw a plantain squirrel which was new for the year, the second flying dragon of the trip, a small clouded monitor, a few many-lined sun skinks, and about three birds!
I took the bus back as far as Gurney Drive because I had read it was a good spot for wading birds. I wasn't sure if it was a good time of year or not, but worth a look. I only found a small area of mud-flat, perhaps the tide was wrong, but there were quite a lot of great and little egrets, a couple of green herons, a common sandpiper or two, and three whimbrels. Also a Chinese pond heron in breeding plumage. I have mostly been putting pond herons down as just “Ardeola sp.” because in non-breeding plumage they're impossible to ID, but they are colouring up now so I'm happy giving them titles. There were also a lot of water monitors amongst the shoreline rocks further along.
When I got back to the bus terminal I bought a ticket for tomorrow morning for the Cameron Highlands. I want to get somewhere cooler again! I've never been to the Cameron Highlands because it is a regular backpacker hangout thanks to Lonely Planet, and I prefer Bukit Fraser. However it is cheap and I thought I would give it a go. There should be lots of year birds there at least, and hopefully even a mammal or two as well.
Over the course of that month I picked up over ninety birds which were new for my Thailand list. Partly because I had only been to the north of Thailand once before and that was back on my first trip there so there was lots of stuff I missed or just couldn't ID. Partly it was because I haven't been to Thailand in winter before, and there are lots of migrants common then but not seen any time else.
And so I arrived at Georgetown on Penang Island, Malaysia. Back amongst the dumb-ass backpackers. They say that youth is wasted on the young. Well travel is wasted on the dumb. There was an early-twenties (maybe late-teens I guess) Canadian in my dorm room who was bragging to me he had “just done the whole of Malaysia in six days” and now he didn't know what to do so he was just sitting in Penang doing nothing. I could have given him some suggestions, mostly involving my boot.
In Georgetown I was staying at a place called Couzi Couji, a self-proclaimed party hostel. You know it's a party hostel because “Party Hostel” is actually part of the name, it says on the door “Party Friendly”, the reception desk is also a bar, the guy at the reception-slash-bar doesn't wear a shirt, and in the common-area there was a blow-up pool with balloons floating in it. I was only there because I had met a nice German girl (German girls are always nice!) on the bus down from Krabi and she was booked there and it was probably about as cheap as you're going to get in Penang (20 Ringgitt per bed). I didn't remember anything from my last visit to Penang in 2006, so I just went there with her. The good thing with a party hostel is that the noise doesn't interrupt my sleep (remember I'm deaf in one ear, so I just sleep on my good ear and I can't hear anything
) but in the morning when I get up the place is like a morgue because nobody else is in a fit state to get up before midday.The first morning I went to the Penang Bird Park which was much more interesting than I expected, with a very diverse collection of mainly southeast Asian birds. I will definitely be back there again whenever I am next in the area.
http://www.zoochat.com/249/penang-bird-park-13-april-2014-a-360901/
I was also going to go to the Aquarium that day but at the Bird Park they told me that it was currently closed for renovations.
I ran foul of the Party Hostel on the second morning when I planned to leave early to get to the Penang National Park. The previous morning had been fine because the Bird Park didn't open until 9am so I left quite late in the morning. This morning I found that that the front doors of the hostel were padlocked shut, the back door was padlocked shut, and the windows are barred so couldn't even climb out one of those. Too bad if there's a fire I guess! Myself and an English guy who wanted to leave early as well had to hang around twiddling our thumbs until someone randomly stumbled into the reception at about 7.30am to unlock the doors.
The National Park is easy to get to. Just catch bus number 101 from by the ferry terminal and an hour later it stops almost literally at the gate of the park. It was of course quite late in the morning and very hot by the time I got there, so birds were not exactly in abundance. Funny thing, when I was leaving the park around 1pm was when most other tourists were arriving. Granted they aren't there for birds but surely common sense would say not to start off “trekking” (as they call it) in the middle of the day? Anyway, I saw a plantain squirrel which was new for the year, the second flying dragon of the trip, a small clouded monitor, a few many-lined sun skinks, and about three birds!
I took the bus back as far as Gurney Drive because I had read it was a good spot for wading birds. I wasn't sure if it was a good time of year or not, but worth a look. I only found a small area of mud-flat, perhaps the tide was wrong, but there were quite a lot of great and little egrets, a couple of green herons, a common sandpiper or two, and three whimbrels. Also a Chinese pond heron in breeding plumage. I have mostly been putting pond herons down as just “Ardeola sp.” because in non-breeding plumage they're impossible to ID, but they are colouring up now so I'm happy giving them titles. There were also a lot of water monitors amongst the shoreline rocks further along.
When I got back to the bus terminal I bought a ticket for tomorrow morning for the Cameron Highlands. I want to get somewhere cooler again! I've never been to the Cameron Highlands because it is a regular backpacker hangout thanks to Lonely Planet, and I prefer Bukit Fraser. However it is cheap and I thought I would give it a go. There should be lots of year birds there at least, and hopefully even a mammal or two as well.
Jackwow
Well-Known Member
Overstaying your visa is not a problem unless you really waaay overstay it. They just charge a fee per day (Baht 500) for each day of the overstay, although no fee if only one day overstay. The only problem is if you are caught overstaying by the police, in which case you get arrested and deported.
various wildlife photos from Kaeng Krachan now in the gallery here: Thailand - Wildlife Gallery
Leaving Penang, at the ferry terminal there were some scales which cost 20 sen (just like a dollar, one Ringgitt is divided into 100 sen). I put in the coin and the machine told me I weighed 4kg. I may be looking more and more like the Machinist every day but somehow I don't think it was correct. That was 20 sen down the drain. I could have used that coin to throw at a pigeon, or try to skip it across a pond. Sigh.
The bus to the Cameron Highlands cost 35 Ringgitt (about NZ$12.50) and took five hours. When I bought the ticket I had been told the bus left at 9.30am, and to be at the station at 9 or 9.15. In fact the bus left dead on 9am, so too bad if anyone was turning up later. I had never been to the Cameron Highlands before due to it being a backpacker den and Bukit Fraser being much better, but because there is cheap accommodation there I thought I would give it a go and see what it was like. I don't think I'll be going back. Accommodation at Bukit Fraser may be more expensive by quite a way but it is so much more pleasant being up there. All the way through the Cameron Highlands to the backpacker town of Tanah Rata the winding road is lined with nothing but strings of hotels, tea farms, and fields covered in tunnel-houses for growing strawberries and chrysanthemums. Anywhere without fields or hotels has great ugly scars where the remaining forest has been bulldozed and the land is awaiting more hotels and farms. Up at Tanah Rata the surrounding hills are still covered in forest and there are some nice trails through them, but there are also lots of those same bulldozed areas. Soon there will be nothing left up there at all.
Once off the bus I found a place called Daniel's Travellers Lodge which had dorm beds for 12 Ringgitts (c. NZ$4.30). The rain had started as soon as the bus arrived in town, and it kept going on and off for the rest of my stay. One day it rained solid for the entire day (that was the day I uploaded all the photos from the Chiang Mai Zoo and the Penang Bird Park!); other days it mostly rained morning or night and the rest of the time just drizzled. After checking into Daniel's I went off to find some food, and then wandered round the town in the rain to see if I could find somewhere even cheaper, which I did. The next morning I moved to the nearby Twin Pines where I got a single room for 15 Ringgitts (c. NZ$5.40). It was an attic room, roughly the size of a clown's shoe-box, but I only needed it to leave my bags in and sleep without disturbing or being disturbed by other people so it suited me fine.
I wasn't really expecting to see any “new” birds (lifers) while at Tanah Rata, not even any birds new for the trip because most of what is there is the same as at Bukit Fraser which I had already been to back in December, but I was expecting to up my year list significantly. That didn't really happen because I couldn't find any birds! I mean seriously, where were all the birds?! At Bukit Fraser there are bird-waves constantly – you just about need a tennis racket to beat your way through them all – but here I saw no more than a handful of bird-waves in like five days! (Well, three days really because of rain). And the individual birds were just as absent. Mostly I was just seeing the same few species over and over again. I tried various trails (I liked number four the best) but all were much the same. I also tried Titiwangsa Road which runs off the main road from beside the police station but while there is still good forest on the uphill side, on the downhill side it is all being cleared for more building. I did see a green magpie along here though which was brilliant; the Malaysian subspecies wears a bright yellow hat! And there were a couple of fire-tufted barbets that morning as well. For the whole time I was at the Cameron Highlands I only saw 39 species of birds. Pretty lousy. My year list did tick over to 400 though, so that's something.
Most of the bird-waves were composed of mountain fulvettas, black-eared shrike-babblers, golden babblers, yellow-breasted warblers, blue-winged minlas and black-throated sunbirds, with occasional chestnut-capped laughing thrushes, little pied flycatchers and greater yellow-naped woodpeckers. The silver-eared mesias mostly kept to themselves (the Malaysian subspecies is particularly colourful I might add), as did the long-tailed sibias. Large niltavas seem to be very common – I kept seeing them everywhere I went. On the ground I saw a few streaked wren-babblers and once a male Siberian blue robin. I futilely looked out for mountain peacock-pheasants, especially in a known area on trail 4 near the watch-tower (which no longer exists, it having fallen down!).
White-thighed langurs are pretty common up there – I saw several troops along the trails – and there were quite a few squirrels although most were too nippy to see well enough for ID. One was a slender squirrel though, and better was a three-striped ground squirrel running across a trail carrying a baby in its mouth! I tried some spot-lighting on one of the nights (the one without any rain!) and found some black-spined toads and some very cool as-yet-unidentified green frogs – almost as cool as a slow loris but not quite.
After several days of much rain and no birds I got sick of the place and caught a bus to Kuala Lumpur. There are buses leaving about every half an hour so no problems. The end destination is the Pudu Raya bus terminal in the middle of KL. Last time I was in KL (in December) I had stayed at a very good hostel called Sunshine Bedz but I wasn't staying in KL long this time – only overnight before continuing on to Singapore – so I was just going to stay next to Pudu Raya, it being where the bus to Singapore leaves from and also fairly close to the KL Bird Park. Usually if near Pudu Raya I stay at a cheap dump called the Anuja Hotel but as the bus pulled in I saw there were now a few new cleaner-looking budget hotels present as well, and so I ended up in a pretty good place called Hotel E.V. World. Because I had recently been to the Penang Bird Park and would soon be going to the Jurong Bird Park it made sense to fit the KL Bird Park in in the middle. It is easy to get to from where I was – I just got the LRT train-line to the Pasar Seni station and then walked: across the overbridge, through the KL Railway Station, round the KTM Building, past the National Mosque and then follow Jalan Perdana until you reach the bird park (and there are direction signs along Jalan Perdana so you can't get lost). It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes walk. Once there I stopped at their shop to buy a bottle of water. Four Ringgitts!! I wasn't paying four Ringgitts for a one Ringgitt bottle of water, so I just went to the ticket counter. Forty-eight Ringgitts entry!! That's seventeen NZ Dollars! I was going to be spending enough money in Singapore – because the Singapore bit is mostly a zoo bit – so I passed on the KL Bird Park. I understand Aquariums being expensive because it is expensive to run an Aquarium and they have a much more limited customer base than zoos, but a bird park should not be that expensive. For comparison, the Penang Bird Park was thirty Ringgitts and the Zoo Negara in KL (with vastly greater overhead costs) is fifty Ringgitts. I had a wander round the next-door Botanic Gardens and saw a few common birds, and then walked back to Pasar Seni. Just as I got to the station the sky burst open and it absolutely thundered down. When I got back to the hotel the streets were literally flooded. Perhaps it's just as well I didn't go into the bird park after all!
Tomorrow Singapore.
The bus to the Cameron Highlands cost 35 Ringgitt (about NZ$12.50) and took five hours. When I bought the ticket I had been told the bus left at 9.30am, and to be at the station at 9 or 9.15. In fact the bus left dead on 9am, so too bad if anyone was turning up later. I had never been to the Cameron Highlands before due to it being a backpacker den and Bukit Fraser being much better, but because there is cheap accommodation there I thought I would give it a go and see what it was like. I don't think I'll be going back. Accommodation at Bukit Fraser may be more expensive by quite a way but it is so much more pleasant being up there. All the way through the Cameron Highlands to the backpacker town of Tanah Rata the winding road is lined with nothing but strings of hotels, tea farms, and fields covered in tunnel-houses for growing strawberries and chrysanthemums. Anywhere without fields or hotels has great ugly scars where the remaining forest has been bulldozed and the land is awaiting more hotels and farms. Up at Tanah Rata the surrounding hills are still covered in forest and there are some nice trails through them, but there are also lots of those same bulldozed areas. Soon there will be nothing left up there at all.
Once off the bus I found a place called Daniel's Travellers Lodge which had dorm beds for 12 Ringgitts (c. NZ$4.30). The rain had started as soon as the bus arrived in town, and it kept going on and off for the rest of my stay. One day it rained solid for the entire day (that was the day I uploaded all the photos from the Chiang Mai Zoo and the Penang Bird Park!); other days it mostly rained morning or night and the rest of the time just drizzled. After checking into Daniel's I went off to find some food, and then wandered round the town in the rain to see if I could find somewhere even cheaper, which I did. The next morning I moved to the nearby Twin Pines where I got a single room for 15 Ringgitts (c. NZ$5.40). It was an attic room, roughly the size of a clown's shoe-box, but I only needed it to leave my bags in and sleep without disturbing or being disturbed by other people so it suited me fine.
I wasn't really expecting to see any “new” birds (lifers) while at Tanah Rata, not even any birds new for the trip because most of what is there is the same as at Bukit Fraser which I had already been to back in December, but I was expecting to up my year list significantly. That didn't really happen because I couldn't find any birds! I mean seriously, where were all the birds?! At Bukit Fraser there are bird-waves constantly – you just about need a tennis racket to beat your way through them all – but here I saw no more than a handful of bird-waves in like five days! (Well, three days really because of rain). And the individual birds were just as absent. Mostly I was just seeing the same few species over and over again. I tried various trails (I liked number four the best) but all were much the same. I also tried Titiwangsa Road which runs off the main road from beside the police station but while there is still good forest on the uphill side, on the downhill side it is all being cleared for more building. I did see a green magpie along here though which was brilliant; the Malaysian subspecies wears a bright yellow hat! And there were a couple of fire-tufted barbets that morning as well. For the whole time I was at the Cameron Highlands I only saw 39 species of birds. Pretty lousy. My year list did tick over to 400 though, so that's something.
Most of the bird-waves were composed of mountain fulvettas, black-eared shrike-babblers, golden babblers, yellow-breasted warblers, blue-winged minlas and black-throated sunbirds, with occasional chestnut-capped laughing thrushes, little pied flycatchers and greater yellow-naped woodpeckers. The silver-eared mesias mostly kept to themselves (the Malaysian subspecies is particularly colourful I might add), as did the long-tailed sibias. Large niltavas seem to be very common – I kept seeing them everywhere I went. On the ground I saw a few streaked wren-babblers and once a male Siberian blue robin. I futilely looked out for mountain peacock-pheasants, especially in a known area on trail 4 near the watch-tower (which no longer exists, it having fallen down!).
White-thighed langurs are pretty common up there – I saw several troops along the trails – and there were quite a few squirrels although most were too nippy to see well enough for ID. One was a slender squirrel though, and better was a three-striped ground squirrel running across a trail carrying a baby in its mouth! I tried some spot-lighting on one of the nights (the one without any rain!) and found some black-spined toads and some very cool as-yet-unidentified green frogs – almost as cool as a slow loris but not quite.
After several days of much rain and no birds I got sick of the place and caught a bus to Kuala Lumpur. There are buses leaving about every half an hour so no problems. The end destination is the Pudu Raya bus terminal in the middle of KL. Last time I was in KL (in December) I had stayed at a very good hostel called Sunshine Bedz but I wasn't staying in KL long this time – only overnight before continuing on to Singapore – so I was just going to stay next to Pudu Raya, it being where the bus to Singapore leaves from and also fairly close to the KL Bird Park. Usually if near Pudu Raya I stay at a cheap dump called the Anuja Hotel but as the bus pulled in I saw there were now a few new cleaner-looking budget hotels present as well, and so I ended up in a pretty good place called Hotel E.V. World. Because I had recently been to the Penang Bird Park and would soon be going to the Jurong Bird Park it made sense to fit the KL Bird Park in in the middle. It is easy to get to from where I was – I just got the LRT train-line to the Pasar Seni station and then walked: across the overbridge, through the KL Railway Station, round the KTM Building, past the National Mosque and then follow Jalan Perdana until you reach the bird park (and there are direction signs along Jalan Perdana so you can't get lost). It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes walk. Once there I stopped at their shop to buy a bottle of water. Four Ringgitts!! I wasn't paying four Ringgitts for a one Ringgitt bottle of water, so I just went to the ticket counter. Forty-eight Ringgitts entry!! That's seventeen NZ Dollars! I was going to be spending enough money in Singapore – because the Singapore bit is mostly a zoo bit – so I passed on the KL Bird Park. I understand Aquariums being expensive because it is expensive to run an Aquarium and they have a much more limited customer base than zoos, but a bird park should not be that expensive. For comparison, the Penang Bird Park was thirty Ringgitts and the Zoo Negara in KL (with vastly greater overhead costs) is fifty Ringgitts. I had a wander round the next-door Botanic Gardens and saw a few common birds, and then walked back to Pasar Seni. Just as I got to the station the sky burst open and it absolutely thundered down. When I got back to the hotel the streets were literally flooded. Perhaps it's just as well I didn't go into the bird park after all!
Tomorrow Singapore.
(shh, secret time): I actually got home a month ago and I'm making all the rest up as I go! Don't tell anyone!For a trip that was pretty much over a month ago you seem to be stretching it out...
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
I thought you ran out of money? Singapore aint cheap! Did the Forum take up a collection and Western Union it?
Reminds me of a story: some extended family from the UK came over and he was pleased to find a Jehovah Witness church a couple streets away, him being a JW and all. He spent many hours of his trip at the church. Anyway, the congregation took a collection to pay to change his flight to stay a couple extra weeks.
You working or you find JW churches wherever you go? 
yep, and I noticed your name wasn't on the collection list!!I thought you ran out of money? Singapore aint cheap! Did the Forum take up a collection and Western Union it?
I also sold one of my kidneys. Suckers -- I sold them the diseased one!
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
What the right hand gives, the left hand should never know about. My donation was listed as "anonymous".
