Just back from our Christmas break. Very enjoyable.

Train to Klang on Christmas Eve. Breakfasted at Seng Huat Bak Kut Teh. This is a busy, friendly, traditional place just down from the station, specializing -- not surprisingly -- in a dish called bak kut teh. This was invented in Klang, apparently, by Chinese miners. It's pork cooked in a flavoursome broth whose dominant note is five spice. I absolutely love this dish, and Seng Huat is a really good exponent. You accompany it with rice, fried bread sticks, and some sort of tea, because the bitter flavour balances the rich pork. We had chrysanthemum tea, which was excellent, although -- despite much careful tutoring from a number of helpful bystanders -- we totally didn't get the hang of what you were supposed to do with all the little cups...

Klang is a good place for a post-pork walk. The old shophouses are very picturesque, the mosques likewise, and the Little India area on Jalan Tengku Kelana is awesomely Indian. It's all here -- gold, saris, garlands, incense, curries, sweets, flashing Ganeshes, and humongous speakers pumping out Indian classics at high volume.

We spent a little while touring the Galeri Diraja, which is housed in a beautiful white building, and focuses on the Selangor sultanate. The history of these sultans is downright bewildering, but it was interesting to see the robes, the paraphernalia, replicas of the jewels, and photos of all the dignitaries who visited. There was also the skull of an enormous crocodile pulled out of the Klang in our lifetime...

By the time we emerged, the drizzle had turned to full-scale rain. So we headed across the Klang river, with views of another fine mosque, and caught the bus to Kuala Selangor.

This is a place full of history. The erstwhile state capital, it has seen the entry and exit of Selangor sultans, Dutch invaders, foreign mercenaries, British tin traders, and sundry pirates. Now it's fairly sleepy, and the only invaders are local tourists, who ascend historic Bukit Malawati in a brightly coloured petit train touristique.

We ascended on foot (after some reviving tea and kaya toast at Auntie Kopitiam). At the top can be found a British-built lighthouse, a slightly confusing museum, and thousands of monkeys... A couple of little stalls-on-the-back-of-motorcycles sell (most regrettably, in my view) food to give to the monkeys, and -- predictably -- the little fiends know no fear, no manners, and no morals. As well as the usual ghastly macaques, there are lots of silvered leaf monkeys, which have jaunty hairstyles and ginger babies. They are undeniably cute, and you can't help being drawn to their antics as they swarm up and down wires, poles, communications towers -- whatever happens to be handy. But they have also undeniably been denatured, and it's a pity.

The rain again became a bit of an obstacle once we emerged from the museum. We sheltered in various places, venturing out when we thought it was easing off, and scuttling back under cover when it became clear it wasn't. We ended up under a shelter in a big field, surrounded by grand old trees and now redundant cannons, listening to the twitter of the birds and the patter of the rain and the ticking of history. Actually quite pleasant.

Finally, it really did ease off, and we made our way down the hill, past the spot where the sultans used to like to watch the cock-fighting, past the burial places of the first three monarchs, past the mosque, past the substantial crowds still queueing for the petit train, to the little Malay place on the corner, where we filled our plates with rice and a selection of unnamed but tasty stuff.

The final destination for the day was Kampung Kuantan, famous for its fireflies. It has to be said that this is an expensive trip (40 ringgit for the round trip in a taxi, and 40 ringgit for a boat that will seat four people) and what you get is industrial-scale firefly-watching. The throughput is huge (you queue up, wait to be provided with lifejackets, and wait for the next available boat), and the time is limited (you get maybe 15 minutes in the boat, whereas I would have happily spent all evening on this dark, beautiful, atmospheric river).

So much for the downsides. The upside is that the little guys are really worth seeing. They don't just glow -- they wink. They inhabit the bushes by the river, and they turn them into Christmas trees, full of tiny, delicately twinkling lights. Exquisite. Sometimes whole bushesful get into synch, and flash on and off like they're on a timer. Extraordinarily effective.

Christmas Day breakfast was little packages of nasi lemak back at Auntie Kopitiam. Cost less than eight ringgit. Then we spent the next few hours in the Taman Alam, or nature park. You can walk round the lake, clamber up a couple of observation towers, and go out on a lengthy boardwalk over the mangroves. The milky storks and the otters didn't show up, but we saw herons, brahminy kites, lots of different butterflies, vast quantities of huge mudskippers, and lots of crabs, including fiddler crabs (the males have one massive pincer, used for courting and fighting and not much else, so all the rest of the time they have this massive digit to lug round -- there has to be a moral here...). We also saw more silvered leaf monkeys -- and instantly spotted the difference in behaviour. These guys were timid -- even up in their trees, they didn't want to be seen by us, and dodged our gaze. So different from their debauched cousins on the bukit, who would mug you for a couple of peanuts. You can imagine the phone calls: "Why are you guys still stuck in that boring old forest, where you have to look for your own food? Come on over -- here we have a very modern and varied diet, all freely provided by hundreds of people. And we're movie stars -- you wouldn't believe how many thousands of pictures we get in. Plus we get to hang out with the macaques." "Wow, really? The macaques? They're so cool..."

Our late lunch was a banana leaf curry at the Old Town Curry House. This is not a curry made of banana leaves, but a curry (or rather several) served on a banana leaf, with rice, rasam, and pappadums. They were playing some great Tamil music which we must one day identify.

The next thing on the Christmas Day agenda, I'm embarrassed to say, was a siesta...

But duly refreshed, we headed back up Bukit Malawati to take in the early evening views. Still thronged with people (and monkeys). But we saw a lot further than the rain allowed us yesterday.

We finished the day in the Ice Cafe with snow-shakes and ABCs.

Back to the ever-useful Auntie Kopitiam for Boxing Day breakfast. I raided their glass cabinets for a banana-leaf pyramid of rice topped with coconut and sugar, and a little green popiah filled with the same kind of mixture. Yummy. Those, Nigel's nasi lemak, and two cups of tea came to 5.50 ringgit -- less than $2. I love these kopitiams. The big, old-fashioned marble tables, the unpretentious, homely atmosphere, the tasty food, and the oh-so-reasonable prices make them star performers in my book.

We had a bit of a wait for the bus back to Klang -- must have just missed one. But, good backpackers that we are, we had books handy, and whiled away the time reasonably pleasantly.

Not raining in Klang today, so after hoovering up some really nice dosas at Asoka, we set off for the pretty park that overlooks the Sultan's palace. There's an old church out there, too, and a convent school, both dating from 1928. Back to the station via one of the many Indian sweet sellers, where we picked up some Boxing Day treats... Well, you have to have sweets at Christmas, right?

It's been a great weekend -- very simple, very nice.