Bugs, Bears, and Butterflies near Kuang Si Waterfalls

This is Brad the bug. We were eating lunch in a place called DyanSabai, and this little guy flew onto my hand. If you notice, Brad is a rather large beige colored bug and when something like this lands on your body it initiates some kind of sympathetic system protective response that causes you to flick it away. That happens in a blink of an eye without ever thinking about it. Automatic.  But Brad stayed the course and held on during the flick like his life depended on it.  I didn't know if this large insect was going to bite me or fly off with my thumb. He didn't move, just sat there very still.  So I poked him to see what he'd do and to my surprise he turned around and looked at me.  That began my affinity for the little bugger, (so to speak.)  A minute later Brad walked off my hand and flew off...landing on the back of a guy sitting at the next table. He started crawling up towards the guy's neck. I know it's a little cruel, but I wanted to test my hypothesis about that automatic flick response thing so I didn't alert this fellow. When Brad made it up and over the shirt collar and onto this guy's neck.....he started flailing like he was having a seizure...both arms and hands like a 60 mile an hour windmill trying desperately to break this thing loose from his neck.  His table mates looked at him like he was out of his mind....but then he pointed out the bug and we all had a good laugh.

Yesterday we rented a scooter and took off for the mountains and a place called Kuang Si. A  beautiful waterfall about 30 kilometers out of town.  We stopped first at a butterfly exhibit that a couple from Holland developed out of raw land, totally from scratch.  It took them an entire year.  They built small waterfalls, bathrooms, a tiny restaurant with a covered place to eat....and a huge netted area to keep the butterflies in...there ere hundreds of them.  It looked much like a botanical garden. The owner told us that she and her beau spent every last penny they had and "now we're flat broke."  I hope they make it, it's a nice stop.

The next stop was a bear rescue area.  There was a commotion ahead so we took a look.  The first thing we see were two bears mating...within 5 feet of the fence. The second?....eight Japanese guys pointing at the amorous bears, laughing so hard they're about to fall over...so giddy they can barely catch a breath to make a joke and start each other laughing all over again. We watched for a few then left....they were still howling. Too funny. The bears are rescued from from some sort of horrible captivity and suffer from some degree of abuse, starvation, or other inhuman treatment.  The pens they were in, were huge...so from my vantage point their conditions have greatly improved.


We arrived at the falls.  Apparently someone spilled the beans about this being THE place to go....there were people coming out of the woodwork from every direction. The walk up toward the fails with all of our friends was gorgeous with one pool spilling into another and another.....all the way down the hillside.  The falls were spectacular.....they had to be several hundred feet above us.....the foliage finally cut off our view but there was sunlight through the mist....like you might see in some exotic travel movie.  A good experience, albeit a little crowded.

I didn't major in english nor am I an author of any kind....but you could probably tell that by now.  This thing is pretty rough grammatically, so my apologies for that.  Hope you are enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it. More later.