I was on holidays with my family in Penang this week. This island state of Malaysia is blessed with large areas of tropical rainforests located in mountainous and hilly terrain. Of course, I did make time to visit a few of these locations such as Penang National Park and Penang Hill. Nevertheless, the weather was not too kind and it was raining most of the week.

The most interesting insect seen was this Trilobite Beetle (Duliticola hoiseni) that looked like a prehistoric creature. From the look of this insect, it is hard to link it to a beetle. The lone beetle was found moving on the cemented ground by the side of a Hindu temple at the top of Penang Hill. This rare insect is also available in Singapore in the forested areas as reported by Lok in 2008. However, I had yet to locate one.

The other interesting minibeast seen, that is also available in Singapore, is a snail (Cyclophorus perdix). The unique feature of this snail is the location its eyes. A typical snail normally has its eyes located at the tip of the tentacles. For Cyclophorus perdix, the eyes are located beside the base of the tentacles. Again, this snail is confined to forested areas here. It was the dominant snail species at the Spice Garden, a tourist spot located by the side of a hill forest. Probably due to the rain, this snail can be easily spotted in this particular garden.

There were plenty of plants unknown to me as I would expect in these forests. As time and weather were both not on my side, I just snapped whatever limited pictures on the plants that I managed to find along the way. Below are the selected few that caught my attention. I will gradually load them in my website. The two most common trees (not shown below) around the edge of the forests are Greenea corymbosa and Microcos tomentosa. So far, I had not seen any of these plants in the forests here.