BKinASIA: big, bigger, even bigger and HUMONGOUS ! ! !

Pretty butterflies from the Butterfly farm

And i thought i've seen big bugs before. Welcome to the jungle! Well, not exactly. I'm in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, a popular hill station frequented by many tourists trying to beat the heat found at lower elevations here in Malaysia. Yesterday, i went out on a tour that took me to a Chinese temple, rose garden, strawberry farm, bee farm, butterfly farm and tea plantation.

Another temple

Cacti!

More cacti! I dunno, i just like cacti! Probably b/c they're just silly looking plants

By far, my favorite sights were the butterfly farm and tea farm. The tea plantation tour included showing us how they make (not very exciting at all), harvest and grow tea. I'm not a tea plantation lover by any stretch, but the views from here were quite beautiful and well worth the trip.

But the highlight of the tour definitely revolved around the butterfly farm. I'm not big into butterflies. They're pretty insects but they don't do much. I was quite happy to photograph them though. In the wild they are always fluttering about so its so hard to capture them on film. But here, they're quite used to people and will sit around posing happily while eating their pineapple or sucking nectar from one of the many beautiful flowers in the garden.

Big millipides! About 12-15 inches long!

While the butterflies were fun, the true excitement of the butterfly farm came at the beginning. Like most butterfly farms around here, they also house certain local species. Beetles, praying manti, grasshoppers, spiders, scorpions, snakes, lizards, and tortoises were also on display.

Velvet beetle (actually feels like velvet!)

Rhino Beetle, ferocious looking but friendly

The reptiles were pretty ordinary to me so not much to say about them. On the other hand, the local bugs were by far, the LARGEST (and definitely prettiest) i have ever seen in my life. I've seen the insects at the aquarium back home. All i have to say is the deadliest thing back home would get torn to shreds by the insects over here.

Praying mantis copulating? The little guy must be a male, a brave one at that.

I wish i could actually give you a point of reference in the photos as to the size of these creepie crawlies, but lets just say i didn't want to touch some of the bigger ones.