wild thailand

we weren't sure how to feel about the monkey at our guesthouse in koh chang. she bit my hand the first time i said hi. jay still tried to make friends with her on several more occasions only to be bitten...once on his eyebrow. she seemed happy to be carried around on the shoulders of the maintenance guy or to be held as she fell asleep in the arms of one of the restaurant staff. but often we would see her tied up in the dining room or near the fire pits. did she miss her monkey friends in the wild? i never once saw her swinging from the trees surrounding the bamboo huts where we stayed. sometimes she would climb the railings of the diningroom hut and shake them...perhaps in frustration...

these little guys shimmered in the sun, their bronze skin reflecting red and green in the light.

the sand crabs were very hard to see. in fact, you wouldn't know they were there until you stepped too closely and they would quickly glide away from your foot.

we haven't seen any wild elephants in thailand. the elephants on koh chang once worked the farms and plantations on the island. the word chang means elephant in thai. now they provide entertainment to the tourists. you can ride them, wash them, and feed them for a fee but we decided not to.

this beauty fluttered around us as we enjoyed a waterfall on koh chang.

this is the small spider we saw on our way back from the waterfall. this guy was tucked near the ground in his web and was about the size of pringles potato chip. we saw two huge spiders, one as we crossed a bridge and one above our heads hanging in its web between two branches. this is the picture that turned out the best. still scary, right? i believe all three of them were batik spiders...only mildly poisonous...it's bite like a wasp's sting.

i like geckos. they're cute. they eat bugs.

more crabs in the sand. the whole beach was covered with little balls of sand like an abstract painting. the balls are a result of the crabs digging hiding places in the sand. see if you can spot the crabs...there are at least two in this picture.

i saw movement out of the corner of my eye as i was relaxing on my lounger. i could barely see this bug that looks like a blade of grass.

on the rare occasion that my hair is not in a ponytail or braids...since i haven't had my hair cut in six months...it's a bit wild.

don't ask

sawatee-ka,

corina