I survived boot camp

The first two days of birding felt like training for what’s to come. Still no leeches but I did not freak out at all with all the skinks, lizards, and snakes scurrying about while we were camped out watching the kingfisher watering hole. Our guide that day, Lee, said sometimes there are up to 20 people around the site. There were only 2 on camping chairs when we were there and as we were leaving another photographer arrived who had driven four hours from Singapore.

Overall our bird guides have been great but we feel they use the recorded calls a little too much. It is a dense forest situation so perhaps you would see nothing if you didn’t call them in but to us it seemed over amplified and bordering on harassment to the birds.

We really enjoyed our room at Villa Samadi even though we did not use the pool as much as we expected to. Our room made us feel like we were still in the midst of nature even while we were truly in a large city surrounded by many embassies and high rises.

The food wasn’t that great so on the way back from the half day of birding, so Mike found a nice Mediterranean place and we relaxed with a cold beer and a good meal. We walked to a 7 eleven for snacks and took a Grab back to the hotel. Grab is like Uber. We almost got out of the car without paying 😂 because at home uber is all linked to a credit card but here we paid cash.

Everyone we have encountered has been extremely pleasant and helpful!