Malaysia's first reptile cafe opens to animal lovers

STORY: Location: Subang Jaya, Malaysia

Step aside cat cafes, this spot in Malaysia has scaly friends instead

"Fangs" serves up desserts and drinks

and lets you meet lizards, snakes, tarantulas and even gerbils

[Yap Ming Yang, Café owner]

"I'm a very active member in the reptile community, in the reptile hobby. For us reptile people, when we want to lepak (hang out) right, we want to talk about all these snakes, 'Oh, I have this snake, I have that snake'. We will go to the pet store and stand in between the aisles, so it's not so nice. And the original idea was that I could make a place for all the reptile hobbyists to sit and can gather, talk about our interests. But, eventually, it turned out that even normal people, everyone actually really appreciates all these animals."

Staff are on hand to answer questions

and ensure the safety of animals and customers

[Alethea Lim / Reptile enthusiast]

"I've always been interested in snakes, and kind of like iguanas, those types of reptiles. But because I moved around a lot I didn't have the chance to keep them. And usually if you go to a pet store, you're not really allowed to touch it, right? And I saw from the photos on Instagram that you can interact with them. So, it's quite a cool experience I think."

[Yap Ming Yang, Café owner]

"I really hope that people can see reptiles as also another type of pet that you can keep and love."