GRD IV – Page 2 – MikeHawkey.com

Up to this point of the holiday I had not seen any ‘in the wild’ monkeys. I did see a number of pet/trick/show monkeys both in Bangkok and Chiang Mai – but I don’t overly like seeing them chained or roped up as they were in these areas.

Walking around the township I came across this statue:

A fairly good clue that there might be monkeys around. After talking to one of our hosts, they also recommended we visit ‘the end of the beach’ around lunch or sundown time – the monkeys get fed during those times, no doubt for tourism. We can look at that in two lights – one, its teaching them to eat bad food, and get poor behaviours (more about that in a moment). I guess on the other hand, the monkeys are being opportunistic – good on them…

Walking to the end of the beach, several families appeared.

Watching with amusement, I went and grabbed the other half so she could see them also. No sooner had we arrived back, and the monkeys came down to the beach. This is where the bad behaviour comes in. The opportunistic little monkeys, knowing people come to see them, and often feed them, will run and snatch bags looking for tasty treats. Suddenly one of the little ones ran up to us, grabbed our bag with locally made biscuits (I had wanted to see how they compare), threw away all the uninteresting food (including pineapple) and started snatching the cookies off each other (look closely at the first image for the cookie in mouth).

More tomorrow (but not awesome monkeys).

Saying farewell to Chiang Mai and the Northern region of Thailand, we boarded an early morning plane and flew to the west coast, southern side of Thailand – aimed for Krabi (the seaside part of it). Landing in Phuket, and hopping on a transfer coach for several hours, we arrived at out destination. After a short unpacking, it was time to take a bit of a walk around the beach for a look.

What a change in environment. It was busy, but much less busy. Far less taxis and tuk tuks offering rides. And sea! – something I always love being near and take for granted back here in Auckland New Zealand. Sitting down for a drink, we watched the longboats struggling to get out at low time, and zooming around as the tide came up.

The area we stayed at had two beach areas – one, were were told was not really ideal to go to at night (well, he actually said keep away from thee at night). The other good all night long. Walking around both in the day, one looked less touristy, more local. The beach on that side wasn’t as nice as the other side either. Todays shots are all from the ‘tourist’ side.

More of the Krabi area tomorrow!

A lot of the rest of my time whilst up in Chiang Mai was spent wandering the streets,looking at ‘things’ – the buildings, the people, the tourists, the history.

Here’s a bit of a random pick of shots to view.

Tomorrow, its down south.

Tuk tuk?

The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.
KJV

Mist over Omaha Beach
Ricoh GRD IV

The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they traveled through the computer. What did the look like? Ships, motorcycles. With the circuits like freeways.
Kevin Flynn

A beautiful hot and sunny day in Auckland, We dropped all chores and headed off to the beach (truth be told, we finished all chores…). The last few times I have been to the beach recently the tide has been low. We choose beaches where that does not matter too much, but I always enjoy full tide more – today was pretty close to it!. Also, the beach was blessed with west coast like surf waves (not that todays images show) on their own holiday on our east coast. A bit of body surfing and wave jumping is always fun.

Drying off I grabbed the Ricoh GRD IV and walked to one end of the beach and back. As shown in images below. That guy setting up his tent must have absolutely cooked inside once done! – wont get sun burnt at least!