KL Butterfly Park Part 1

I took Angela to the KL Butterfly Park when she was here. I have not been there before and thought it might be a fun outing, besides just eating (although that is the ultimate activity to do here), seeing buildings and so on in KL.



It wasn't too expensive - RM 15 per adult plus RM1 fee for cameras. The park was not big but of a decent size. Besides the park, there is a small but surprisingly interesting museum dedicated to butterflies and insects which you would enter after you exit the park.



Although there were people there, none of them were local, except for me of course. They were tourists from all over the world, probably visiting the Lake Gardens and decided to drop in for a visit.



Nearby the KL Butterfly Park (there is another in Penang) is the KL Bird Park which is supposedly good but the entry fee (around RM42) was a bit too high for our liking at that time. I might go visit the bird park one day though, just for fun.



I am not going to attempt to try and identify the butterfly species since I don't know anything about them. The only species I could identify is the magnificent Raja Brooke's birdwing which I will write about in the next post.



There were quite a lot of butterflies and dragonflies/damselflies fluttering about the park but since they are such shy creatures, it was difficult to take pictures of them. I tried and my hands and fingers ached afterward. As you can see from the pictures, I had only managed to decently capture a few species while the rest of my pictures were blurry and were consigned to the trash bin.



Most of the butterflies were in good conditions and some were a bit tattered at the edges, but that was to be expected. Most of them were flying high above or feeding on the nectar of flowers and only a few were resting on the leaves. Those were the ones I managed to capture on camera and unfortunately, I could not get a variety of butterflies. I was also on a time limit, so that made waiting patiently for a decent shot difficult.



More pictures in the next post.....

Thean Hou Temple

When my friend Angela visited me in KL for her holidays, my sister and her husband brought us to Thean Hou Temple - a rather famous Chinese temple in KL. It belongs to the Hainan Association of the Selangor & Federal Territory.



I have not been to this place before or even heard of it but it is famous and had appeared in a lot of tv shows featuring singers and actors, especially for the Chinese New Year celebrations. I must thank Angela for giving me the excuse to visit places I otherwise would not have gone to.



This temple is dedicated to the Goddess Tian Hou, which means The Heavenly Mother. It costs seven million ringgit to build this temple. Wow.



It was certainly an impressive sight. When we visited, it was during the Chinese New Year celebration, so the temple was decorated with strings of red lanterns across the courtyard. The sun was high in the sky, casting shadows unto the floor - a perfect setup for pictures.



There was a fortune corner, or rather, fortune bridge in the grounds of the temple, so we decided to go get blessed by the monks.



I would love to come back to this temple at night to see the lanterns. It must be quite a sight. Since this is such a popular temple, even among tourists, there are a lot of photographs of the temple online, in all situations. Just google it.



It was a hot, sunny day that day but although the light was a bit harsh at times, it highlighted the colours of the temple perfectly. The red lanterns glowed in the sun and the colourful traditional designs stood out for all to see.



It is a good place to bring guests although you might need a taxi or have your own means of transportation.



Hmmm...the pictures appear rather blur in this post. It must be because I resized it earlier and resized it again for this post. For better versions, please see my Flickr.

The "Ah Kong" and the grandson

The grandfather and his grandson, watching the fireworks.