Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Penang Butterfly Farm @ Teluk Bahang Penang

After lunch, we continued our Penang trip to the next destination - Penang Butterfly Farm at Teluk Bahang. We gone through a series of head spinning and curving mountain roads along Batu Ferringhi before reaching the destination. Our driver cum tour guide was kind enough to inform us that Malaysian will have discount for its admission fee.


Once reached the place, our tour guide lead us to the entrance where the ticket counter was located. He then quickly told the staff on duty "3 people" and he helped the on-duty staff to place some kinda sticker on our sleeve as a prove of payment I believe. He then told us "one person RM20". Without much thought and hesitation, we paid the amount, took the tickets and leaflets given to us and went into the butterfly farm.


For your acknowledgment, this butterfly farm is the world 1st tropical live butterfly and insect sanctuary! Can you believe this? Maybe it's not the world first but it is the world first in tropical region! It was opened to the public in March 1986, which is about 14 years of history by now!


Once entered to the farm compound, awaiting in front of your eyes was the beauty of tropical floras. The more impressive thing is that plenty of butterflies were flying around! These butterflies were so used to the human, so they will fly so close to you touching your skin as well as hair. If you are lucky enough, they may just stop on your arm or on your camera!


I never felt so easy to take photos of an insect before until I was here! It was the first time I took some close up on butterflies. However, it was not as easy as I thought. Bringing camera too close to the butterflies will scare them and they may just fly away! So, preferably bring a higher performance camera and I believe getting quality photos of a butterfly is something you could achieve in this farm!



If you think that it is all about butterflies only in a butterfly farm then perhaps you are wrong! Besides this beautiful insect, there are a lot more to see! At one corner inside the farm, the disgusting giant millipedes are shown to the public. Yes! We are talking about GIANT millipedes and not the normal one! The size is about maybe 20x of the normal millipedes which sometimes you could found at your house compound? Can you imagine that?


At another tunnel is where the live black scorpions were placed. These scorpions tend to stay in a group and didn't move around! Perhaps they were having an afternoon nap at the time of our visit? I am not sure though... but don't try to put your finger in to disturb them unless you really wanna find yourself some big trouble!



We also saw 2 green iguanas lazying around at a corner and what caught our attention more were a series of insects which were camouflage experts and blend so well with the surroundings. Moving Leaf insect, stick insects and so on are the only some I could name of. We spent quite some time spotting them and that was really fun!

[2 green Iguana]

[Can you spot where the Moving Leaf insect is??]

[A type of stick insects]

Insectarium or the mini zoo which located inside the butterfly farm compound is where all the unique creatures (not just insects actually) which we hardly see in our daily life were showcased. Among them were horned frogs/dried-leaf frogs (Megophrys nasuta) which look exactly like the dried leaves on the floor, some weird lizards which make me stood 3-feet away, flourecent scorpions, human-face bugs, tarantula, whipe scorpions and so on. There were so much of surprises in this section!

[One type of lizard]

[The lizards which have camouflage appearance]

[Dried leaves or horned frogs?]

[Whip scorpion]

That's not all! There were also theater room, A/V room and insect museum inside the farm to give education or organize some educational programs for the students and public to build up awareness towards the beauty of the insect world as well as the mother nature.


[Part of the insect museum]

[The landscape inside the farm is very pretty too!]

We wish to stay longer at the farm yet the time was chasing on us. I believe that there were more thing to explore if we could spend more time there. Before leaving the farm compound, we walked through a series of gift and souvenir shop where the only exit was located. We truly enjoy the visiting!

 [Spotted a giant rhino beetle sculpture near the exit]

=====================================================================p/s: Still remember I mentioned earlier about the special rate for the admission fee for MyKad holders? Suppose it is 50% off for MyKad holders which means it should be RM10 per entry for each of us. However, we somehow didn't get any discount from that and we paid full like any other Japanese/Korean/China fellas! I had a long thought about it after this Penang trip yet until now I still cannot find an exact answer. I considered 2 situations:
1) Our driver cum tour guide was the one rushing to the counter and told the staff on-duty there were 3 visitors. He's the one placed a sticker on us as a prove of payment. Was there some tricks to confuse us in between?
2) Our driver cum tour guide was a very nice person and he served his customers very carefully. He just tried to be helpful by order the entry tickets ahead of us so that we could save more time for visiting. In hurry, he somehow forgot to tell the staff we are Malaysian who entitled for the special discount as he has plenty of customers come all the way from Japan (Yes! He can even speak Japanese!!).

I always tried to think positively, so I tried to convince myself that it is the 2nd case as I couldn't deny that throughout the trip, he really served us very well and he presented to me as a friendly, polite and professional person. No matter how, the RM20 we paid still worth the money!

5 comments:

  1. I paid RM10 after showing my IC at the payment counter. If you look carefully, there is a signboard at the payment counter that mentioned about Malaysian only paid half of what foreigners have to pay

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's the problem, we were rushing for time at that time. Although been told there is special discount for Malaysian, but we somehow totally forgot about that matter and just followed what our tour guide said...

    ReplyDelete
  3. so the schedule of trip cannot be rush, it will miss something if too rush.

    ReplyDelete
  4. PENANG BUTTERFLY FARM 2012 ENTRANCE TICKET PRICE

    ADULT : RM 27.00 per person
    CHILD : RM 15.00 per person
    CHILD (3 years & below): FREE ADMISSION
    SENIOR CITIZEN : RM13.50 per person (proof of age required)
    MYKAD/MYKID HOLDER: 33.3% discount on adult/child entrance price (upon presentation of MyKad/MyKid)

    Note:-
    Adult : Aged 13 years old & above
    Child : Aged 4 to 12 years old
    Senior Citizen : Aged 58 years & above

    DIGITAL VIDEO CAMCORDER/DIGITAL CAMERA USAGE CHARGES

    Digital Video Camcorder : FREE OF CHARGE
    Digital Camera : FREE OF CHARGE

    OPERATING HOURS

    Daily : 9.00am – 6.00pm (Last Entry at 5.00pm)


    **Penang Butterfly Farm is open 365 days all year round except half day on the eve of Chinese New Year Day

    Thank you

    Best Regards

    Penang Butterfly Farm | 830, Jalan Teluk Bahang, 11050 Penang, Malaysia
    t: +604-8851253 | f: +604-8851741
    w: www.butterfly-insect.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. I want This Year(2014) Entrance Fee in Butterfly Farm PEnang, Teluk Bahang

    ReplyDelete

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