Malaysia - Part 1

This is an "aerial" view of downtown Kuala Lumpur. It was taken through a window at the top of the Menara KL Tower which is the fifth highest telecommunications tower in the world.

This is a view of the Petronas Towers which were the world's tallest building until 2004. The connecting skybridge connects the 41st and 42nd floors. As an aside, the definition of the world's tallest building is a bit strange. See the "comparison with other towers" section at Petronas Towers.

Here is a picture of a scarlet ibis taken at the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park.

This was also taken at the Bird Park. If anyone knows what it is, let me know.

Here is a plant (in the genus caladium) growing at the Bird Park.

This is a view taken from the boat taking me (and a number of others) into Taman Negara National Park. We were on the Sungai Tembeling (or the Tembeling River). You may notice the dark clouds. For about 90 minutes, it poured and I can assure you that the boat doesn't really have a roof!

This was an interesting plant inside the park. If you know what it is, let me know.

Many of the trees in the park have these large buttresses and fantastic above ground roots. And as the image shows, the jungle can be very dark and very bright at the same time.

I only saw a few of these plants. I didn't see any which were more "open" than this. The white spots on the trunk were very interesting. The contrast in the jungle made it difficult to get a good picture. If you know what it is, let me know.

This colorful composition was right along the trail in the park. The fernlike things are in the genus selaginella - commonly referred to as a spike moss. It was a very attractive plant since it usually had the blue color shown here. It grew as much as three meters high. In general you would consider that to be ground cover since some of the trees are 50m tall. Note that a plant in the same genus grows in the desert in Tucson although it never gets more than 10 cm tall.

Here is another composition with the selaginella and a small red fungus.

Here are some of the floating cafes where I ate for the four days I was at Taman Negara. A long boat (similar to the one I came in on) is visible next to the second cafe from the left.

This is wild ginger growing at Taman Negara

Here is a very intriguing seed pod.

This is an interesting vine growing up the side of a large tree.

Someone (or something) apparently got hungry!

And I managed to catch this one just at the beginning of its life. I am not sure I want to know how tall it is going to get.

On to Malaysia - Part 2,

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