Day 2 - More butterfly hunting near Gopeng

The next morning, we were all set to go shooting near Gopeng as recommended by Steve.  Steve's dad was a renowned butterfly collector in Malaysia where he had a butterfly named after him, namely the Great Mormon female (f-tanahsahi).  Steve knows a lot of good places to search for the butterflies. 

On the way to Gopeng, we stopped at his dad's workshop to look at some his old collections.

 

   

It was quite amazing to learn that his dad had thousands and thousands of the butterflies collections, many of which had been given to the UK and Singapore museums.

After our brief stopped, we continued our journey to the forested area in Gopeng. This is an area where only the locals would know how to go.  It was a quiet forested place and we had the place all to ourselves except some locals who lived nearby.

Lucky for us too, we met some local villagers who had just brought out some durians from the jungle.  Steve managed a good bargain with them.  We had a couple of them and they were just simply delicious!

We found a stream and were happy to find a few species that came puddling.  They were quite cooperative and allowed us to take good shots.

 

This is me trying very hard to take the photo of the Red Helen (Papilio helenus helenus) I find it challenging taking photos of the larger butterflies as it is difficult to keep all the angles sharp.

It was a good day of shooting albeit the butterflies that we have seen were not uncommon.  We headed back to Ipoh again after 4pm.  It was a good evening of chatting and lazing around the hotel.  After that CJ and I enjoyed a good massage at the Thai Oasis.