Monkeys, monitors, mudskippers, mangroves, mosquitos and more!

First, the Fireflies:
My good friend Katharine and I (she traveled with me for a week) spent a couple days outside of Kuala Lumpur called Kuala Selangor. We stayed up there so we could see the fireflies that live near the brackish rivers there. I don't have any photos because it was nighttime/no photos were allowed, but it was absolutely AMAZING. One of the coolest things I've ever seen. They took us out in these really quite slow-moving boats to float near the bushes they sit on at night--like a million billion christmas lights! Sometimes they would also flash in unison like blinking christmas lights - absolutely crazy! Here are a couple images I found from the internet to give you a small feel for what it was like:
Also, if you're interested, follow this link to read about how they're being threatened.

The next day, we went to this awesome little nature reserve/walk area that had three distinct ecosystems. The first was apparently just mosquito-breeding habitat (just kidding - jungley). There were monkeys there to greet us!
There were a TON of these monkeys all in the big tree above our heads - they were all moving around and shaking the branches - a bit unnerving to stand underneath.
There was a nice pathway to walk down and we saw many HUGE monitor lizards - here's a good one - this guy is about 4 feet long with tail. Incidentally, we saw an even LARGER one when we were in a city wandering out of a sewer - that guy was like 6 feet long and was too quick to get a photo of.
There were also a couple lookout towers --these were very large bushy trees that had lots and lots of gigantic herons. These were by far some of the biggest birds i've ever seen - probably 7-8 foot wingspan and stood 5-6 feet tall. So cool to watch them fly around all morning! The first shot is far away and the herons are the small white spots in the trees.
Here's one a little more zoomed in to see the birds better. they were EVERYWHERE.
There were also lots of butterflies, interesting birds like green parrots. Then there was a great raised wooden walkway through some mangrove forests. There are some very interesting creatures that live here - BIG mudskippers that just wriggle around in the mud and shallow pools of the tidal wetlands. They're pretty cool and seeing them makes it easy to imagine how fish began to transition to land-living animals.....
And really brightly-colored crabs --this photo is of some blue ones (they're small, but very bright) and there were also some really bright red ones, too.
And also some very interesting fungus growing on the wooden walkway:
This was a great walk because we could get right inside the mangrove forests which are notoriously difficult to travel amongst because of the mud/wet/sticks/brush/etc. We could get really close to all the flora and fauna without disturbing it (aside from the walkway being built, I guess....)
And finally on our walk out, MORE MONKEYS! Everybody loves monkeys! This is a silverleaf monkey enjoying a snack in the morning sun:
and i don't remember the name of this monkey, but it's the same kind as the first picture from this series....
Overall, a GREAT place to visit - we didn't see any other people while we were there, saw some great wildlife, it only cost 65 cents to enter, stored our bags for us while w walked around AND they had a bathroom!