The fireflies of Sungai Selangora

KUALA SELANGOR, Malaysia — We're leaving Penang for Kuala Lumpur, but first a detour to see the flashing fireflies perform their nightly light show along the Sungai Selangora River near Malaysia's old royal capital of Kuala Selangor.

These half-inch-long flies aren't ordinary lightning bugs. They're beetles called kelip kelip, and they're becoming extinct in most parts of the world. But more on this in a minute. Getting to Kuala Selangor has been part of the adventure.

We flew first to Kuala Lumpur (45 minutes on AirAsia) and then went by bus to Sentral station, a modern shopping complex and transit hub with links to the city's light-rail and overhead-monorail systems.

I stopped and asked a police officer for directions from here to the bus station.

"You could go upstairs and get a taxi or for one ringgit (30 cents), you could get on the train, go one stop and walk five minutes," she said.

Thirty cents and a walk in a new city sounded fine. We bought tickets for the overhead train, and caught our first glimpse of the city they call KL.

Parks and gardens surrounded domed mosques and modern high-rises, some with signs in Arabic script. The Petronas twin towers were off to the right, their tips hidden in the clouds.

The train let us off in Chinatown. We walked past clothing markets, banks, a Starbucks with a huge patio and found the Puduraya bus station.

Inside, there were dozens of bus-company ticket windows and men standing around shouting out destinations. Hot, crowded and chaotic, the scene helped me form my first impression of KL as futuristic, modern city with a third-world edge. I'm anxious to get back and explore.

We boarded the bus to Kuala Selangor with the locals and a Dutch couple and road along a main highway and then two-lanes back roads surrounded by palm trees.

Two hours later, we pulled into a parking lot in Kuala Selangor, and found a taxi willing to take us, the Dutch couple and our luggage to the Firefly Park Resort a few miles away.

Six two-bedroom cabins rest on stilts above a pond that leads to the river where the fireflies gather in the mangrove trees after sunset.

It's a peaceful setting, with monkeys scampering around in the coconut trees, but the chalets have seen better days, and the resort was oddly short on basic services. There was a karaoke room, but no place to buy water until the restaurant opened at 4 p.m. and no place for breakfast.

The reason to come? To see the fireflies. During the day, they rest on blades of grass behind the trees. After dark, they move to the mangroves to feast on the nectar and attract mates with their synchronized flashing. The males flash in unison; the females more randomly and not as brightly.

Rain and a full moon keep the insects away, but we were lucky. It was dry and dark.

Ten of us put on life jackets and climbed into a boat around 8 p.m. Almost immediately we began to see the trees glowing as if they were strung with flickering white Christmas lights.

The show goes on for several hours, slowing down after midnight when most will have found a mate.

Our boatman cut his motor and glided along the river in the darkness.

The fireflies whistled quietly.

No one talked or took pictures.

This was their home, after all. And the night was still young.

Carol Pucci: cpucci@seattletimes.com