.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

So tonight I'm flying off to UK for 3 weeks! Finally a well deserved quiet time, some time to do nothing, take some pictures of flowers and insects and nature (ok maybe some hot white chicks too if I find any..).

Time to relax, read some books, walk in the countryside, eat some cream cakes, pork pies, scotch eggs, mushy peas, fish and chips, full english breakfast, sunday roast, bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, chicken cordon bleu, gammon steak, chicken tikka masala, crispy aromatic duck, strawberries and cream, apple and blackberry crumble, meringue...and the list goes on! I'm salivating already.

Bacon and Egg sarnies of course.

Fish and Chips and Mushy Peas with a nice cold BEER!

3 weeks with no parties, no events, no forced late nights, no meetings, no nonsense, no nothing except what I want to do!

I'm taking Emirates, my favourite long haul airline. The service is good, they've never been delayed so far, the planes are in good condition, the crew are very professional and polite and quite chatty, the food is decent, the movies on the plane are excellent, Dubai is a pretty nice airport to spend a few hours in and the prices are reasonable too!

Qatar Airways was slightly cheaper, but they only fly to Manchester, which is a few hundred miles further from my places than Birmingham airport.

The worst so far is still KLM, bad food, HORRIBLE staff and can be quite often delayed...the upside is you do get to transit in Amsterdam with all the PORN!

The last time I was back in UK was in 2006, I didn't manage to get back last year...so this trip is going to be awesome! The fact my photography has improved a little is a bonus.

I've persuaded my Mom to get a new computer too so no more Pentium II 333mhz for me! Hopefully will be able to upload some better stuff this time.

I'm hoping the weather is more like this.

And less like this.

Updates may be a little infrequent until I'm back on August 27th, but I'll do the best I can and I've drafted up a few things just in case.

I'll probably check back in when I'm in Dubai in the middle of the night and I'll reach UK around midday tomorrow (about 8pm tomorrow night).

So after a morning at Chamang Falls we headed off to our main destination, Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary!

It's about 20km or so from Chamang and we were to get there by 1pm to make sure we got the activity passes so we could play with the elephants..unfortunately as it was a public holiday the passes were finished - so we didn't get to play!

There was a huge ass elephant skull though.

There were nice murals and paintings around the place.

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And the last day came as quick as that, it really was fast.

We were up early again for a quick breakfast, then out to the Jungle with the owner of an outfit that does Elephant Jungle Trekking - beat that!

First up we fed the elephants with some small bananas, hmmm...nice!

Meet the Team

Each one of these buggers eats more than 200 tonnes of Pineapple leaves A DAY - amazing eh. Basically...they are either sleeping or eating, because eating so much makes them sleepy.

After that we climbed up a platform which put our feet level with the elephants backs, so we could get on easily. So we mounted up, 2-3 per elephant.

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On the third day it was up early again, a quick breakfast in the hotel and out for some kayaking in the Crocodile Canyon, sounds fun eh? It certainly was.

Although very hot, make sure you've packed a hat and some sun screen or sun block if you are liable to get burnt (as I am being a pale whitey).

The sea kayaks used are the surf-ski models, as opposed to the whitewater craft which are watertight/covered (making them more dangerous for beginners). This makes them more stable - although you are likely to get wet, so dress appropriately.

They do provide you with watertight bags to keep your valuables/camera so they won't get wet in case you do fall in or just get splashed.

The price per canoe was around 900baht including a guide, each kayak can sit two people comfortably, there are some 3-seater models but they aren't so common. The tour would generally last about an hour or 1.5 hours.

The weather was stunning as we set out.

Matthew Ong from the Breakfast Show

The scenery was quite breathtaking there, especially inside the Canyon almost gorge like reminsicent of Gulin, China - it was splendidly hot though...

After a reasonable paddling session we reached the Canyon (known as Crocodile Canyon if I heard correctly)

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After visting Thale Waek in the morning we hopped back on the boat for a short trip to Railay Beach for rock climbing. Krabi is a WORLD famous rock climbing destination with people coming from all over to climb there, with a lot of varied routes and breathtaking scenery when you get up there - I can see why they like it!

This beach is generally divided into two sections, east and west. West Railay provides visitors with peace and quiet as it is a broad sandy beach with fewer facilities than Ao Nang. East Railay which lies across the peninsula from West Railay is different from other beaches in the area as it could actually be classified as a mud flat, especially during low tide. In addition to remarkable views and mangrove forests to the north of the beach, the main attraction for visitors to Hat Railay is the adrenaline pumping activity of cliff climbing. The limestone cliffs on the huge headland between Hat Rai La East and Tham Phra Nang, as well as other nearby islands provide world-class rock climbing facilities against a stunning backdrop of the sea with approximately 700 sport routes of mid to high difficulty ratings.

There are supposed to be over 300 routes ranging from beginner 5a's to classic multipitch 6a's right up to the extremes of 8c (according to the French grading system).

There were people from all over the World climbing there, USA, UK, Italy, Germany and goodness knows where else!

We were supervised by the lovely guys and gals from Nomad Adventure - they are the folks behind Summit Climbing Gym led by Yuen Li (do read her bio).

Yuen Li is extremely passionate about what she does and very experienced, she's quite in demand as a public speaker for motivational seminars and other topics.

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Day two was up early in the morning at 8.30am, breakfast at the hotel and off out to the boat for some island hopping! We were going to go rock climbing first, but due to the tide we decided to go and see Thale Waek (Separated Sea) which is joined at low tide and see the rest of the islands after rock climbing.

The weather was pretty grey, but we still had fun on the way across.

It was pretty dramatic - you can see how clear the water is!

The weather got a little better as we reached Thale Waek, the beach was covered in driftwood though.

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As you've probably noticed, last week I went to Krabi in Thailand for 4 days. Lucky for me it was sponsored by Air Asia and arranged by Nuffnang.

Krabi is pretty close to Phuket if you are familiar with that place, the difference is it's a lot less commercialised - which in my opinion makes it a MUCH better place to go to. It's still pretty quiet, in Krabi center the shops close at 9.30pm and even in the 'tourist' area Ao Nang everything is pretty much closed by midnight.

It's a fairly small city with about 20,000 people and it's the provincial capital of Krabi Province, the province itself has a population of around 340,000 people.

We left from KLIA LCCT at 10am on Tuesday morning. Air Asia has a new facility at LCCT where if you are traveling light you can check in via the bright red Kiosk Check-In and avoid all the queues which is very useful. It's only for those with hand luggage though, but you can save some time if you don't have bags to check in. The Kiosk will scan the barcode from your online ticket print-out and check you in.

This was the inaugural flight for KL-Krabi! Flights to Krabi start from RM49.90.

It was full too, it looks like it's going to be a popular destination.

The plane landed about 6 minutes ahead of schedule! The weather was a bit grey when we arrived, was hoping for blue skies!

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I'm off to Krabi in the morning to massage some Lady boys, back on Friday...hopefully.

Blog might be a bit quiet for a few days, I have scheduled some random stuff to post tho.

Don't miss me too much!

A while ago I was in Singapore so I decided to head to the famous Bugis Street market, and on from that to Little India as it's nearby.

Again I was limited to a 50mm and a 90mm prime at this time as I had no other lenses!

Bugis Street is an explosion of colours, smells and tastes with all kinds of things on sale and all kinds of characters selling them.

I managed to capture a little bit of the hustle bustle and what was going on there, a little bit of street photography

This is the famous Bugis Street market, always busy..

Bugis Junction, just outside where you come off from the MRT.

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Ah back to work today, so sad.

Continued from Part II.

September - Archives

September was a fairly busy month and dominated again by posts about my trip to UK and straight after that another trip to Dubai.

UK was great as always!

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