This won’t be a long blog, but it will contain a few different pictures. This morning the three of us took the bus out West to the butterfly farm. It’s an easy journey as the 101 bus to Teluk Bahang leaves from almost across the road from our hotel. Plus, they run roughly every 10 mins. The journey was really interesting for several different reasons. I’ve not made it for over 20 years. Georgetown’s changed a helluva lot, but also because Charlotte got talking to a local man on the bus who gave a lot of valuable insights. My first impression was how much the skyline’s changed. When I first came to Georgetown in 1992 there was only one ‘skyscraper’ – the Komtar Tower. Now they’re springing up like mushrooms. Some of them are rather attractive. Others have all the aesthetics of a road accident! A number are there purely to provide residences for foreigners, European (especially English), Chinese – and Russian. But then Georgetown’s rather an attractive place to have a second or primary home as there’s no shortage of medical services and – generally – things are cheap here. That said, there’s a burgeoning Malaysian middle-class with money to spare and shops that will sell you all the expensive goods that you require to show off that income!

Whilst the bus journey was an interesting insight into the human condition the butterfly farm was a fascinating place to observe the insect world. Since I last visited the farm’s moved site and vastly expanded, it’s just as much an education centre as a refuge for butterflies. It’s not cheap to get in but it’s well worth it just to be with so many beautiful creatures and learn more about them. Here’s a few examples. I haven’t had time to research the names of all the critters we saw, so any help from you, dear reader – would be much appreciated!

You can find many more butterfly shots in my Malaysia gallery if you follow this link.

I could have stayed there all day with the camera but as we’d been up early and left without breakfast we decided a few hours was enough and headed back to Georgetown on the bus, passing through the popular beach resort of Batu Ferringhi once again. The town means Foreigners (Ferringhi) rock (Batu) and sci-fi fans will recognise the name as it was nicked to describe a race of jug-eared aliens in ‘Star Trek’.

The return bus was packed and took ages as it stopped everywhere. By the time we got home we were all famished so headed straight to a local Chinese-run eaterie to hoover up whatever food they had left, which was mostly rice with chicken or fish. Even so, it was delicious! Afterwards we all retreated to the hotel. I needed time to edit pictures and design a personalised Valentine’s card for Dawn so it would be in her inbox first thing (the beauty of an 8 hour time difference and Photoshop!).

The evening was very much in the same vein. Charlotte and Adi had the evening to themselves (who wants to play Gooseberry on Valentines day?) whilst I quickly nipped out to Little India for a vegetarian thali before resuming my editing.

It’s now 23:00 and I’m listening to a thunderstorm unleashing torrents of rain upon us – which it’s been doing for the past 20 minutes.

Tomorrow I move hotels to another old haunt. More about that when it happens. In the meantime, here’s a couple more pictures from today.

Oh, here’s a food stall on Lebuh Chulia that’s been going for many years, although the food may stick in the craw of the football fans of other teams!

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