[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 ]
We were considering many places for our next macro trip, from various parks in Borneo to Thailand, and even Australia. Eventually, we settled on Thailand and even paid our friend Ruangyot a visit. 🙂 5D4N of macro madness… what will we find?

Behind the scenes shots from Melvyn’s Sony TX5, Nicky’s Galaxy SII, David’s LX5.

1. Not enough sleep.. got up early to catch the morning flight to Bangkok!


2. David and Melvyn on the plane. Where’s Ben?


3. Arrival at Suvarnabhumi Airport. Sawadee krup!


4. Waiting for our taxi outside the airport


5. Inside the taxi. The driver was Mr Cherm, skinny with a full head of white hair!


6. A simple Thai meal for lunch


7. Somehow this bag of potato chips looked like it was labelled “tuna”


8. Our target – Lantern Bugs! This was displayed at the national park’s canteen.


9. Wasted no time on arrival to shoot the lantern bugs


10. One of our biggest goals (as always) was to find the local lantern bugs. Lady luck was on our side. 🙂


11. This beautiful lantern bug (Pyrops candelarius?) has a red/orange snout and is extremely long!


12. Turned around to face me, first time shooting from the front!


13. Started to move away!


14. Ben started shooting this pretty pair standing beside each other


15. I just took record shots 😛


16. And then there were more!


17. On your mark, get set… chiong ah!!!!


18. A bigger groupie on another tree


19. Tried to take a shot from the bottom but it was a pain with a cropped 180mm (too far away)


20. Must be a delicious tree


21. Final shot before saying good bye to the beauties


22. Group photo with Ruangyot who checked out the lantern bugs for us before arrival


23. Having a drink before we proceed with our macro-marathon!


24. Arrived at our cabin, as Mr Cherm went back to his mini-bus


25. At the cabin, the bedsheets had the park’s insignia


26. Panoramic view of one of our rooms, taken by Melvyn


27. Canteen food stalls where we had our dinner and breakfast. No time for lunch!


28. At the canteen. Ben had to buy a leather hat for reasons unknown to us!


29. We requested for a kettle to boil water and got a nice electric kettle from the park ranger!


30. Asking for directions, and got warned of leeches, just to see a leech wiggle past us!

Spent some time at the balcony where it was buzzing with bugs and monkeys. We had some interesting visitors on this first night alone!


31. Our cabin had no indoor common room, just a balcony where we set up a flimsy light trap to attract some visitors


32. Found this ultra bizarre bug behind the light trap!!!


33. Moth with bright orange stripes


34. Close up headshot


35. Another view


36. Top view record shot


37. Odd looking bug on our table


38. A dung beetle that looked like a Mini Rhino Beetle, very cute horn!


39. We had our curtain set up, and had many moths and bugs landing on it. This odd-looking moth had an abdomen perched upright


40. More unidentified bugs


41. Mayfly?


42. Another pretty looking moth


43. Funny looking Mayfly with “cupcakes” on it’s head


44. Side view of the “cupcake” Mayfly on the table


45. Soldierfly?


46. Red-nosed planthopper, we called it the Rudolf!


47. Rudolf has a beautiful face


48. Full side profile of Rudolf


49. Beetle’s closeup. Had the Raynox on and lazy to remove again


50. Another view of the beetle


51. One of the many big moths


52. Would be interesting to see the antenna spread open

Finally got our butts moving, and did our first night walk from behind our cabin. Within a few meters, we spotted leeches crawling up David’s legs. After a brief moment of frenzy-flicking, we armed ourselves with DEET and marched on.


53. Yellow-green Huntsman Spider


54. Cockroach, freshly molted?


55. A very shy stick insect


56. A pair of mating assassin bugs


57. Lynx Spider. The thing about Thailand is.. we found so many variants of the Lynx spider! More in the days to come…


58. Full front view of the Lynx Spider


59. View from above reveals light brown with a hint of blue


60. It was a short walk, and we ended back at the balcony again. Here’s another Mayfly


61. Found this funky looking moth under the table


62. Front view


63. Assassin bug lighted from behind

We had spent most of the day travelling and decided to rest early in preparation for a full day of trekking ahead!

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 ]

The complete album can be viewed here.

• khao yai national park
• thailand