A busy 3rd last week

The countdown is on, and I'm packing it in!
Starting with last weekend:

I climbed Doi Luang Chiang Dao again, this time with a full pack, from a slightly different route, and with friends Marcus, Liz and Shirley. Nice and cosy in my own winter sleeping bag this time. We had a great time, but the haze is getting worse. And it's getting hot. Back to the gym in Oz.

The big work event for this week was convening an International Edible Insects conference in Chiang Mai. It was great to be involved in such an unusual event, and I was keen to learn from the experience as much as possible - including sampling all of the goods. And some weren't bad at all! Edible insects are generally highly nutritious and are a vital dietary component for many societies. Funny that we have no problems eating prawns etc. that are detrius feeders, eating all manner of unmentionables on the ocean/pond floors, yet we squirm when vegetarian insects are on the plate. It's an interesting comparison of cultural opinions. Eating insects is very environmentally friendly.....ask me more!

Very interestingly, I met another Schabel at the conference - a retired german-american University Professor named Hans. I've only met one other Schabel in my life, and that was Dad's cousin. We had a lot to talk about - there could be a distanct relation connection. 8 generations ago my forefather Hans Schabel moved to Denmark and started a locksmith business. Funny!

Following the conference Hans and a fellow american David (who started an edible insect educational business) were interested in seeing more of northern Thailand for 2 days, so we hired a car and headed north west, to a cave lodge 15km from the Burmese border. The karst scenery is spectacular (I headed here on my MHS motorbike adventure) and we visited Tham Lod. We saw thousands of cave features, thousands of bats, a couple of 2,000 year old teak log coffins and cave paintings. The absolute highlight though happened when we left the cave at dusk: 300,000 (odd) swifts flew back in the cave in large spirals to roost for the night. This nature spectacular lasted for almost an hour (black specks in the twilight photo below). We stayed in a bamboo bungalow and went for a valley walk the next morning, stopping frequently to seek out bugs and discuss other natural science phenomena. I learnt a lot!