The Fireflies of Kampung Kuantan

Promised to tell you about the fireflies, didn't I!

 You can't take photos 

because the flash frightens them 

and they switch off,

but here's what it looks like,

only vastly more spectacular.

If you read the previous post, you'll know I was blase about fireflies since Baby Jane has a whole colony of them in the jungle around her house and whenever you switch off the veranda lights there's dozens of them everywhere; flashing green lights all over the place.

But this was nothing like that.  In fact, it's nothing like I could ever have imagined.

These aren't the same creatures as those other fireflies we're so familiar with, but I won't bother to explain how they're different.  Double-click on this photo below if you're interested, or visit the website I've linked to and that will tell you all about it:

And what happens at Kampung Kuantan is that you stroll through a small park out to a jetty over the river where the local villagers give you life jackets ...

 These two were such little cuties.

 ... and you line up to wait your turn for one of the small local boats ...

 

It was raining, as you can see, 

which apparently meant the fireflies 

weren't as bright as they usually are,

but it was spectacular anyway.

... and a nice old villager quietly punts you up the river along the line of mangroves.

There aren't any more photos beyond this point but I did attempt to video it because that doesn't have a flash, but nothing appears to have come out, so you just have to trust me when I say it was a truly amazing and spectacular experience.

 

Visualise it: You're quietly punting upstream and the moment you're out of the circle of light from the jetty, you're plunged into total darkness, except that on every mangrove bush there are millions upon millions of fireflies, all flashing green lights in unison, three times a second, and the sight going up the river like forever.

Oh, and here's something really funny.  Bob told us beforehand "Whenever an American sees them, he will always say 'Humph, they're just Christmas tree lights in the trees.'" and we shared our boat with a lovely American guy called Tony, and the second we came out of the light and saw all this, he said "Humph, they're just Christmas tree lights!"  and the nice old villager rolled his eyes and punted us straight into the mangroves.

And right up close, we could see them clearly, all sheltering from the rain beneath the leaves. These fireflies are winsy small beetles, about the size of a pinhead, and the males flash three times a second while the females only flash once.  Apparently it's a mating-call thing.

And that's when one of the fireflies landed on me and I kinda freaked because I'd seen this sign:

I imagined the firefly police waiting for me back at the jetty to arrest and charge me, but our nice old man said "Don't worry. He can fly. He'll go when he's ready." but then the tiny little beetle crawled up my sleeve to escape the rain and you could see it flashing under the fabric, and I felt so proud that I'd refused to put on mosquito repellent because I thought it may kill them and it turned out that was exactly the right thing to do and that's why it had landed on me and not on one of the others.

So I allowed myself to feel All-Avatar and The Chosen One and I wanted a heap more to land on me, but they didn't.

So that's what happens.  Just that. You are punted upstream for about ten minutes and then down again. However, simple though it sounds, you cannot imagine how nice it is, even in the rain. You come away feeling like you've just had a glass of especially nice red wine, and you're all mellow and quietly happy, and know deep within yourself that you've just seen and done something very, very special.

But if you need another reason to do this trip, how about the knowledge that this venture is part of the Malaysian government's effort to find ways to let local Malay villages make a living while maintaining their way of life and without chopping down forests or selling out their natural resources and things like that, so it's a program well worth supporting.

However, all that aside, the trip itself is amazing; just a beautiful experience and I highly recommend you take this trip for yourself.


Later:  Oooh, just remembered something else that was really cute.  When we were waiting for our boat, one of the villagers asked Keith where he was from and when he said "New Zealand", the old man looked like he was trying to mask his excitement as he asked "Have you been to their firefly tour?" When Keith said yes, the old man forgot to mask the excitement and began to ask many questions about how they did it there - and Keith was saying how they weren't fireflies, they were glow worms, and they were in underground caves and you were put into a wetsuit and the inner tube of a rubber tyre and simply drifted downstream - and that's when I noticed all the other old villagers had slunk up and were secretly listening hard in the background, exactly like they thought Keith was spilling state secrets or revealing insider trading information.  Fuunnnny!