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We finally finished a good part of the photo gallery to be put on our website and all the photos give a good idea of the nature of Langkawi and of our trips. The rainy season is heading towards an end and from November on we expect less rain than October. Fortunately the rain did not affect our trips that much. Most of the trips could go on and if a trip was cancelled because of the weather conditions, guests could do the trip one day later.

We did some great birdwatching trips on Langkawi the past weeks. During 4-5 hours birdwatching we spotted more than 40 different species and guests were very happy with the results. We are working with a list of birds and during the trip we tick off all the birds we are spotting and the guests get the lists after the trip. We also went to Perlis for our 1-day birdwatching trip and this was a great day. There were not that many birds at the moment (but still enough and different than what we see on Langkawi) but we were very happy to spot the stump-tailed macaque. This monkey is beautiful with his red colored face which makes it look like he has used red make-up. It was the first time for me to see these monkeys in the wild and that made the trip very exciting. We also saw some otters in the paddyfields and even a mongoose. Perlis is a beautiful, green and clean state and only 1-hour boat ride away from Langkawi.

From now on we are also able to offer you another 1-day trip on the mainland. Langkawi is part of the state of Kedah and this full day trip gives you a good view of the mainland which is really worthwhile to visit. During the trip you will visit the well maintained remains of the fort of Kuala Kedah, the very informative and extensive rice museum and in the afternoon you will visit Gunung Jerai, a mountain of over 1200 meters where you can enjoy the jungle and spot some wildlife and/or birds. For more information about this new trip please check on our page with the trips.

In preparation for the coming peak season we have expanded our staffing. Besides some freelance guides we are now working with 1 full-timer. He has great experience guiding in the mangroves and we are now training him to do our other trips as well. Our company is slowly expanding and we have managed to get a job with another resort. The contract with Berjaya for the nature walks has also been extended for another year, so we are really happy and proud of all the positive developments after 1 year of hard but very satisfactory work.

We are always open to any constructive suggestions from your side and please feel free to contact us by mail if you would like to share your nature experience with us. Keep in touch by checking our website on a regular basis and hope to meet you on this site next month!

Long-tailed macaques in the mangroves

We have had an incredibly busy month in August and we did a lot of trips for all our guests. Guests staying on Langkawi for a week or even longer took the opportunity to join more than 1 of our eco trips. The mangrove kayak trip is still the most favorite and slowly, requests for birdwatching trips are coming in again. During the last week, more and more migratory birds are coming to Langkawi and we have seen the egrets back again as well as cinnamon bittern. I also finally managed (after 21 years of birdwatching!) to spot a trogon. During one of our mangrove kayak trips we could see this orange-breasted trogon. A couple of days later some friends confirmed that they spotted this bird in the mangroves. The next months more and more migratory birds can be expected to visit Langkawi and that will be very interesting for all bird lovers. Birdwatching on Langkawi is always very challenging and can be very surprising. During our birdwatching trips we are working with the book ‘Birds of South-East Asia’ by Craig Robson. We have been able to buy a couple of these books at a good price and if you need this book during your stay on Langkawi you can buy this book at 100RM each.

Tourists from all over the world have visited our island in the last months and we were deeply saddened by the rubbish some people just throw away into nature. It is not possible to put dustbins everywhere because this will give the long-tailed macaques the possibility to go through it. This means that everybody has to keep his empty bottles or packages or other garbage with him until he returns to his resort but unfortunately many people still have other opinions about this.

We are very happy and proud to inform you that we finally started the photo gallery on the website. This gives us the opportunity to share with you the beauty of Langkawi through our website. We started with photos of animals and the next step will be more focused on the nature itself (mangroves and jungle). Also, photos of the Belum Forest will be coming soon on the website. To the Belum Forest we are organizing a 4days/3nights jungle trek. This is still an undiscovered area in the north of peninsular Malaysia where much wildlife is found. During this trip we will do jungletreks, birdwatching, visit waterfall or cave and we are staying 1 night in a camp with the orang asli, the aboriginal people. For more information about this trip please check the page about more days trips on this website.

Our guests are coming from all over the world, but the majority is still from Europe (UK and the Netherlands). More and more Australians are visiting our country and of course the Chinese (Hong Kong) and Japanese market is still a growing market. We have had guests from Yemen, Palestine, Kazachstan, Tanzania, Egypt, Texas and many other countries. We are really interested in the culture, nature and wildlife of their country and this makes our trips even more interesting. One of our guests spotted the otters that were finally back after an absence of a few months and these animals were a sight for sore eyes.

Most of the photos that we are using on our website have been sent to us by guests and friends and we would like to thank everybody for sending us the photos and allowing us to use them on our website. We are sure that the visitors will enjoy the photos as much as we have done and still do and please check our site regularly as we will add more and more photos in the coming months.

We are very happy with the fact that Unesco has chosen the Kilim area as a Geopark. This means that the area will be protected in a better way and which hopefully will lead to a reduction of the speed of the boats, to a stop of the eagle feeding and to a reduction of using the Kilim area as a haven for sailing boats. A lot of work has to be done, but we are very proud that Unesco has chosen Langkawi as the first Geopark location in South East Asia.

At this moment a lot of orchid species are flowering, especially the slipper orchid (paphiopadilum) is really beautiful to see. This orchid can be spotted during one the mangrove trips. Also many butterflies are flying around, in the most beautiful and amazing colors. It is also season for the mango tree at this moment and that means that we have a lot of mango fruit, which is for me still one of the most delicious fruits I know.

Our company has attended the International Bird Race at Frasers’ Hill. What an amazing number of bird species we saw there and there are complete different species than we are used to on Langkawi. As Frasers’ Hill is located in a mountain area (up to 1,500 meters) it is very different

(and difficult) for us to identify certain species. Totally 100 participants were joining this race and within 24 hours every team had to make his own list of birds. We finally finished with 46 different species (of which 16 species were new for me) and that was enough to win a price in the beginners category. We were the 4th best in this category and our price were some nice books with a lot of photos of Frasers’ Hill birds. Most of the teams were from Asia, but there were also teams from overseas and finally an British team won with 92 (!) species.

The walks at the Berjaya resort are a great success. A lot of guests of Berjaya take the opportunity to join this walk and guests of other resorts have asked off this walk and for them we prefer to choose for an extra evening. The chance of spotting the flying lemur is 100% and spotting the flying squirrels (red giant or the pygmy) is almost 90%. The evening walks are more based on spotting the nocturnal flying animals and the morning walks are based on trees and birds.

At this moment we are working on some interesting and long term projects. This is taking a lot of our time as it needs preparation, but it is a good investment for the future extension of our company. We are also busy preparing the photo gallery for this website and this gallery will be activated soon, so keep in touch with our website!

The last month we have been busy with various teambuilding activities for different groups. Through our website and through different resorts and agents we are working with we are getting more and more request for teambuilding activities. Last month we organized a jungle treasure hunt with some tasks during partially climbing the Mat Chinchang. We also organized a mangrove treasure hunt and beach games ending with a BBQ. Both days have been very successfully and at this moment we are preparing some new requests. We are actually able to organize everything the groups wish to experience, so feel free to contact us for any further information.

The Easter holidays gave us a short peak in the day trips but that weekend was on the same dates of the opening of Waterfestival on Langkawi which made the island full of locals that were only here for the Waterfestival, which was a great and well organized event on this island. The season has fully changed by now which means a regular (sometimes very heavy) rain shower, mostly during the evenings and nights and sometimes on the day, which will never last that long. The island is becoming greener and greener and more beautiful by that.

We started the nature walks for the guest of Berjaya Resort. Twice a week we organize a morning walk and twice a week an evening walk which is free for the guests of Berjaya and which will give them a good view on the nature and animal life on that resort.

In the meantime we have visited ourselves Perlis state and we found out that this smallest province of Malaysia is a wonderful state full of nature and a perfect birdwatching place. That made us decide to add a new day trip on our list and from now on it is possible to book a full day birdwatching trip to Perlis. Comprared to Langkawi a lot of different species can be spotted and we spotted over 60 different species on 1 day, like the lineated and blue-eared barbet, stork-billed kingfisher, black-and-yellow broadbill, black-thighed falconet and many others. As Perlis is only a 45 minutes boat ride from Langkawi it is a perfect day trip for birdwatching lovers.

During one of our kayak trips in the mangroves we were very lucky to meet some dolphins a few meters away from the kayaks. Our guests were very excited about this and some Scandinavian guests jumped directly into the water to swim with them and to make a video shot of these beautiful animals and this made this trip a very memorable one for all of the guests and of course for us as well. Being in the nature is never boring and will always give you many surprises, especially when you do not expect this and that is exactly the reason why we like to do our trips. Not one single trip is the same and it is always a surprise what we can be spotted. For any further information about our trips please have a look a the page about our trips and please feel free to contact us for any further needed information. Hope to meet you on this page next month.

We are proud and happy with our newest trip: nature cycling trip. This trip leads you in 3/3.5 hours through the paddy fields, kampongs and forest without using one of the main roads. We tested the trip ourselves thoroughly and it is a complete different experience of Langkawi while riding a bicycle and we trust that our guests will enjoy this trip as much as we enjoyed it ourselves! For any further information about this trip please check the page with our trips.

During the last week of February it started raining in the nights and this was more than welcome after a few dry months which made the nature less green than it used to be. The temperature is quite high with a reasonable level of humidity which made us decide to provide the guests with more water during the trips. Especially during mangrove kayaking and jungletrekkings it is very important to keep on drinking enough. The month of February was a steady month for our company and we have had a lot of variation in our trips. During the celebrations of Chinese New Year we had a peak in our bookings and a lot of Asians coming from China and Hong Kong joined one of our trips.

We did several birdwatching trips with guests without any birdwatching experience and we were really happy to hear that after the trip of 4 hours they seemed to be totally in for birdwatching and were asking which binoculars they had to buy for themselves as they expect to develop their birdwatching skills more and more in the future. But with or without experience everybody is able to spot the most beautiful and even rare birds. So was the black shouldered kite spotted (that seems to control the airport area now) as well as the banded kingfisher. Even the woodpeckers gave us the possibility to spot them. The Great Slaty Woodpecker, the Greater Flameback and the Laced Woodpecker have been spotted and this was almost 4 months ago that we spotted them, although we could always hear them.

The Dipterocarp (medium hard wood tree) is beginning to flower and some even to fruit. And also the Eulophia Andamanensis (orchid) is flowering, which is normal for this time. Usually the flowers are totally green, but strangely the flowers are now not totally green but have a purple lip which makes it very special. During different trips we spotted also a lot of Ratufa Bicolors (giant squirrel of 90 cm with black and tan colors) and this might have to do with the fact that different plants have started to fruit.

We have a lot of other ideas for new trips, but this will take a lot of time to investigate all the possibilities before we can sell it to our guests. In case of any ideas or remarks about our website or about eventual new trips you are more than welcome to give a reaction. We are open for any suggestion as long as it will fit in our company policy and nature thought. Feel free to send us an e-mail and hope to meet you again next month on this column page.

After a very busy beginning of the year with almost two trips every day the rest of the month January was quieter. Despite this, January turned out to be a good month for our company and we are slowly growing and getting more volume. The comments that we get through the feedback forms are also very positive. We have also guests coming on subsequent trips which we think as a great compliment. Through the response on the feedback forms we found out that the food served during the mangrove boat and mangrove kayak trip did not get the results that we had expected and therefore we decided to add a Thai soup to the existing package. We are now awaiting the results of this addition.

We have done a lot of interesting birdwatching trips last month and every trip resulted in an average of 30 spotted species of birds. We run the birdwatching trip in the morning but also at the end of the afternoon/beginning of the evening and both trips are giving different, but interesting results and it is hard for us to make a choice for the departure time. During the birdwatching trip we are working with a bird list with the names of all the existing birds on Langkawi and after the trip the list is for the guest. The highest number of spotted birds during one trip was 36 till now. We even spotted the white breasted waterhen with 3 chicks on one of the trips.

Our guests are mainly coming from Europe and we noticed that the guests on our trips are very nature minded and that means that we have exactly reached the right group of people. Last month we had some Russians on our trips and also guests of other east european countries (Poland, Latvia, former East Germany and Czech Republic) visited Langkawi. At this moment we see a number of butterflies on the island and we even spotted a flowering slipper orchid which is strange in this period of the year. Near the bat cave we discovered herbenaria and nervillia; these are terrestrial orchids, quite rare. Both species have not been recorded on Langkawi till now.

During one of the latest mangrove boat trips we were very lucky to see some dolphins, jumping in front of the boat and this was a really exiting view and the guests really enjoyed this. I am still doubting if I have spotted a dugong as it was not clear enough for me to make sure. During the mangrove kayak trip we are now regularly spotting otters. These small sea dogs are very afraid and can make a lot of noise, but on the other hand these animals are very curious.

During the next weeks we expect to be very busy as Chinese New Year will be celebrated and a lot of Asians will come for a holiday to Langkawi. In the meantime we are working on some new trips and I hope that I can inform you about at least one of the new trips in my next column that will be on our website in the beginning of March.