HEART OF IPOH
In my travels, I’ve encountered some strange insects, but none of them have been as peculiar as the flatidae nymph I spotted one Sunday afternoon in Perak. I was at The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat, about 11 kilometres northeast of Ipoh’s Old Town, taking a walk through the resort’s compact jungle walk when I noticed a small mass, like a fluff of cotton wool, on the underside of a branch. It jumped three metres, as if spring-loaded, landing on a nearby leaf, where the creature unfolded its spindly, thread-like legs before it hopped off again into the wilderness.
A WALK INTO BANJARAN
The nymph, as I found during my four-day trip to Ipoh earlier this year, was one of the many things to admire in Malaysia’s third-most populous city, not least the tranquil, refined Banjaran. With a natural geothermal pool as its steaming heart, the resort is an ambrosial sanctuary filled with fluttering butterflies and set among towering 260-million-year-old limestone karsts, serenaded by the constant song of birds
