I TOLD YOU I'D BE BACK! And this time with reinforcements....
I loved Malaysia, it had completely stolen my heart. A home away from home. A mesmerising landscape, full to the brim with endless excitement and adventure! Under every rock there was something, just waiting to be explored.
2016 came around worryingly fast, the holiday blues were in full swing. Holiday conversations between myself and some friends had already begun, and we were all somewhat jealous of everyone heading off already this year. But where should we go? Perhaps a nice quiet weekend away... BORING! Luckily a few friends of mine all shared that same view. So, with a little saving and our snake hooks at the ready, we decided to book another round of flights!
What could be better than 2 people looking for wildlife?... How about 5?! This time we really did put our all into planning, looking for the best wildlife spots to visit and researching each and every animal in the hopes that we just might be lucky enough to find them. The Power Rangers were go.... (So wonderfully named due to the individual colours of our snake hooks). For the second time, we flew into Kuala Lumpur, this time skipping the tourist-filled national parks. We decided to hire a car and head straight to a Hill station in the west. From day 1 we hit the ground running. We spent hours upon hours, walking, driving, and crawling by the end of it. Come rain or shine, there were animals out there, and we hoped we would be able to find them. The biggest surprise early on in this trip was finding two very rare, and very venomous snakes, the Blue Coral (Calliophis bivirgata) and Red-headed Krait (Bungarus flaviceps). Head over to wikipedia for the image of the Red-Headed Krait we manged to find on our trip!
We were staying with an ex-wildlife photographer, who had worked alongside the BBC and National Geographic. He was very supportive of our day trips heading out to find the amazing wildlife on his doorstep, giving us some good hints and tips of where to look. He also took particular interest in the two snakes above, mostly for a friend of his, a doctor from Kuala Lumpur. At the time, he was one of the only doctors in Malaysia studying the effects of different types of snake venom. In fact the red-headed krait was such an uncommon find that it was contained for a few days, so that the doctor and his team could travel across the country to milk the snake and study the toxins in its venom. There is currently no anti-venom for this species, so with the samples collected from this individual, they would potentially be able to alter existing anti-venoms, aiding with medical treatment of people that are bitten by this species.
We had unfortunately headed on to our next stop of the trip by the time the doctor and his team arrived, but they were kind enough to send us a few photo's that were taken from the milking.
After 5 nights in the highlands we made our way to Belum Temengor or Royal Belum as it's also known. Here we managed to spend our days looking for (more) snakes, reptiles, amphibians and of course mammals. This area is famed for its abundance of wild elephants and occasional sightings of Tigers. We spent hours road cruising, hoping to find either. We did find an elephant grazing at the side of the main road and I was shocked by how well they blend in to their surroundings. They really do sneak up on you. Slightly terrifying for such a large and potentially dangerous animal. Sadly we fell short when it came to being able to track down any tigers. But we did have some other amazing mammal sightings such as the nocturnal "Flying Lemur"/Cologu (Galeopterus variegatus).
After many hours of searching across Belum and heading north to the Thai/Malay border and finding a plethora of snakes and other awesome species, we headed to our last stop Pulau Langkawi. Here we attempted to relax slightly, but of course this was another area that we had yet to explore and intended to do so.
If you do wish to know more about any of the locations we visited, you can find out by following me on Instagram.... feel free to ask me anything!
And for more images from each trip, head on over to the photography showcase.