Those who know me well will know that I have a real keen interest in animals and nature . That’s really where my serious photography began. Our trip to Malaysia, therefore, treated us to so much more than just wedding photography.

To set the scene, the entrance to the Datai is rather impressive indeed – it’s hard to get a good understanding from this small image, but to give you a good idea, the horses are pretty much life sized:

Just beyond those three slim pillars at the end of the path is a lily pond, something like 20 foot square. By day, it’s a beautiful green and pink pond, with the occasional dragonfly buzzing by and a few small frogs (see the post for day 1). The beautiful flowers would open and close a various stages of the day:
During the night, however, the place would come alive with frogs! They were everywhere … up the walls, down the stairs … and the noise is amazing! Now, don’t get me wrong – it’s not like they run (hop?) around in packs terrorising the guests – but we were, to all intents and purposes, in a rainforest, and so you have to expect wierd and wonderful things when it comes to the animal life.

Given that I have such a fascination with the wildlife, and many of these amphibians seemed tame enough, and I always had my camera to hand, I figured it would be a great opportunity to get some shots that I would not normally have the chance to shoot.

Strangely enough, many of these little rubbery fellows seemed to have their own characters too …

The “Standing to Attention” Frog:

The “reminds me of Bagpuss” Frog:

The “free ride home” Frog:

The regular “Rebbit” Frog:

The “talk to the hand” Frog:

The “eyeing up your dinner” Frog:

The “thinks he’s Spiderman” Frog:

… and my favourite of all, just because of the gorgeous green-ness:

A truly amazing variety of sizes, colours and characters … to be able to get so close was just marvellous. A bottle of champagne to anyone who can tell me all the latin names for the different species here !