Hunting Butterflies in Thailand

Bangkok, 24th Sept 2012: I am on my way to Indonesia for some training workshop on human tiger conflict with a colleague of mine who looks after tiger conservation in Bhutan. We are forced to spend two days here in Bangkok before we get the Indonesian visa stamped onto our passport. While waiting for the visa, two of us were getting drowned in the river of people and cars (and ofcourse today's heavy rain for about an hour, which literally changed the black tarmac road into a black out-of-the-drain river).

Amidst the busy City of Life, I am reminded of the book on The Butterflies of Thailand by Yunosuke KIMURA a copy of which was presented to me by the other two authors of this book, Yamaguchi-san and Aoki-san last December during my trip to Japan. Thinking of this wonderful book, I just started wondering if Bangkok could still be a habitat to some city adapted butterflies. I looked around to some planted avenue trees and flowers and obviously could not find any butterflies. So I had to give up looking for butterflies in the City of Life and instead concentrate on walking and not bumping onto others while on the footpath or waiting for a tuk tuk by the roadside. But my friend, who back home coordinates tiger conservation works looked at this city from a different perspective of habitat. He looked from mammalian habitat point of view (being the program coordinator for tiger conservation and larger carnivores) and deduced Bangkok as a very good habitat for mammals and went looking for his species of interest.

For me I decided that it would be best for me to retire to my room as my deduction was that Bangkok was not a good habitat from wild butterfly point of view..................... (to be contd from Indonesia)