Appreciating Bugs in Gopeng

Last weekend, I organized a retreat for the youth leaders of my church. We went to Adeline's Rest House in Gopeng (which we've been before and her food is just as excellent... yumsss) where the young ones enjoyed white water rafting, wet abseiling down a waterfall as well as a jungle walk which included feeding leeches along the way and a crossing of a river.

As I was still coughing and KS was starting to get ill, we didn't join in the activities but stayed back and enjoyed a quiet evening with a book and a nap. There was a little girl who joined us for the trip and she decided bugs and the mention of leeches were too disgusting and scary to go for the jungle trek. So she stayed back and I found myself trying to make her appreciate bugs more. Yes, me, the very person who would prefer examining a lizard than a bug any time.

So I went around with her for a while and used my camera to create life in each creature. You know those micro shots of insects that everyone seems to have? Well, they're really not easy to take with a point and shoot.

Here was a flying wasp-like insect which posed for me on this leaf for a good 15-20 mins while I took shot after shot. Only this one turned out okay. Of course in the original photo, the subject was but a small dot. My story to the little girl was something like this, "Hey look at this wasp! So cute! It's posing for me!"

More bug photos. This green beauty has a little C design on the shell. It's body, beneath the green shell, is red. So pretty!

Another random wasp which we both spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what it was doing.

Then there were clovers. I never knew they were furry!

Dragonflies also elicited screams from the girl so I made her observe their beautiful colours. "Look at it's colour! Doesn't it look like a light saber?"

In the end, did I succeed in making her less afraid of insects? For that few hours, she did scream when insects flew near her but I'd like to believe she was less afraid. But it will take a lot more effort to chip away that fear, if it ever does.

The curl of a vine. Just a random shot but I like the bokeh.

There was a stray cat there but he was rather shy. Kept us at a distance.

The little stream that runs along the Villa. Cool waters.

Anyway, along the way home, I thought I'd take a picture of yet another mysterious advertisement along the highway and share this with you.

Okaaaaay...