Wooden boardwalks weave among the protruding, twisted tree roots of the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve. The reserve is best known for its fireflies, which glow like fairy lights after sundown, but it's also spellbinding by day. Considered a standout example of environmental preservation in Malaysia, the forest brims with life, from otters, mud lobsters and fiddler crabs down below to macaques swinging between the branches.
Travelling from Taiping, the entrance to the reserve is about 500m before Kuala Sepetang village.
If you want to stay overnight in the mangrove forest, there are basic A-frame huts, which sleep between four and eight people, perched on stilts near the river's edge. Enquire at the entrance kiosk.