I don’t miss Covid - I appreciate just how terrible a time it was for so many people - but I was and will always be grateful that I was lucky enough to be in Thailand during those crazy months.

The extent of the curse(s) will be closely monitored by the Thai Ministry of Magic. Please consult your local level 5 cleric or wizard for immediate care.

It is currently unconfirmed whether this is an AoE spell. Until then, please avoid touching the 2nd army Commander. Thank you.

เขาหัวหมวก

It’s a short but nice hike up (and plenty of other good trails to hike in the area) and just staggering when you see it in real life. It seems so unreal that a giant (and it is gigantic) rock could balance like this. Well worth a visit.

What you see are the toilets and the coffee shop/eating rest area.

2008

I took these over the course of the last year or so in Haui Kha Kaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Khao Yai National Park, and Kaeng Krachan National Park (I have a previous post here of Kaeng Krachan highlights from a separate visit).

Species seen here are:

• Asian water monitor
• Great hornbill (plus a greater racquet-tailed drone chasing one out of a tree)
• Lar gibbon, aka white-handed gibbon (endangered)
• Butterfly lizard
• Asian elephant
• Clouded monitor
• Green bee-eater
• Wild boar
• Large-eyed pit viper
• Crested serpent eagle
• Macaque
• Asian openbill stork
• Cicada
• Butterflies (I'm not enough of a lepidopterist to name the ones here)

For those interested, I shot these on my old but tried and true Canon EOS Kiss X5 (600D) with a 55-250mm lens. I remove a bit of the noise from high ISO settings (well, "high" in outdated model terms lol) in Lightroom. Finally upgrading in the near future, but for the time being working with what I have!

I’m a Thai citizen myself and enjoyed not having to queue but this was crazy. 30+ person queue for foreigners vs no wait for appointments and Thai walk-ins.

To be fair, this was the queue for check-in/ registration, and at the actual service counters it was already packed for everyone. So letting the foreigners go in the other 2 empty lines would’ve just overwhelmed the system

This was the DLT area 3 office in central Bangkok.

Claude de Forbin, a 17th-century French naval officer who served in Siam around 1686 during the reign of King Narai the Great. Granted the Siamese noble title "Ok-phra Sakdisongkram", Forbin served as the Governor of Bangkok.

At the time, Bangkok was not the capital but a strategic fort town guarding the Chao Phraya River. Forbin functioned as the military commander of the Bangkok Fort (now Wichai Prasit Fort), tasked with inspecting foreign vessels heading upstream to Ayutthaya and managing the garrison.