Malaysia — Nature Walk — The Andaman Hotel, Langkawi, Malaysia
Taking a closer local look
August 2015
One thing the Andaman Hotel, Langkawi, offered every morning at 8 am was a nature walk. When I first read about it in the hotel newsletter, I assumed that the walk went offsite — I was wrong. The 60 – 90-minute walk was within the grounds of the hotel, and it was surprising how much wildlife we saw. Our guide for the nature walk was Fendi, the same person who had been the guide for the Tg Rhu Mangrove Tour.
Again, Fendi did an excellent job locating and pointing out wildlife I had walked past many times the day before.
One of the first things he showed us was possibly one of the oddest creatures I have ever seen — the Colugo or Flying Lemur — Cynocephalus variegatus (Note: it is not really a Flying Lemur as it is incorrectly named — plus, it glides, it doesn’t fly). These creatures spend the day clinging to tree trunks (if they are female, they may have one or two baby lemurs clinging to them). The Flying Lemurs come out and glide at night. They are very odd-looking creatures, and considering their size, 34 to 38 cm (13 to 15 in), you would think they would be easy to spot.
We also saw a Golden Orb Spider (Nephila pilipes) that was busy building a huge web.
I went around the circuit again later in the day, around 1 pm, and got a better look at the plants and animals.
One that interested me was Crape Ginger (Costus speciosus).
The plant’s flower bud is very susceptible to being attacked by flies that lay their eggs in the bud, and then the larvae eat the bud from the inside. To protect against this, the bud produces nectar on the surface that attracts ants, and then these ants defend the bud against the flies.
And now that I had ‘my eye in’, I could spot the Flying Lemurs. They are odd-looking creatures.
They are good at hiding.
And they do blend in with the trunks of the trees.
When I returned to the Golden Orb Spider’s (Nephila pilipes) web, some 5 hours later, the spider had finished the giant web and was sitting in the centre waiting for dinner.
It was surprising how much wildlife was hidden on the hotel grounds. Besides the above, I also saw two species of lizard, numerous butterflies, a Water Monitor Lizard, several species of bird, and some bats, all of which I failed to photograph.
