I went to the Orchid De Villa Horticultural Show 2005 on Aug 27 – 29. I would say this is one of the best places to hang around with your family during weekend. The only problem is the road condition. After my 20-year-old car running on 1 KM of gravel road full of mud, holes, rocks and dust, I was almost faint when I reached another sign saying “Orchid De Villa 2 KM”. Fortunately, if you don’t have a 4 wheel, you can take a FREE mini bus in front of the Sin Hin Bookstore in Inanam so your car does not need to suffer the 3 KM gravel road. The bus will move whenever it is full or it waits long enough.
It was an interesting experience. Many activities such as Little Miss Orchid De Villa, Children Body Building and other shows were organised during the exhibition.
I also took a walk in their orchid garden. Actually I was a bit disappointed in the beginning because I didn’t see a lot of blooming orchids around. Luckily I saw Mr. Liew (the owner) and his wife before I left. He asked if I found anything interesting to shoot. Before I answered, he already pointed out 5 to 6 orchid flowers NEXT to me. “Did you see this?”, “Did you see that?”… I was a bit embarrassed to say No coz I didn’t pay close attention to my surrounding. The flowers were so near but I didn’t “see” them.
Many wild orchids are very small and low profile. They could be hiding in the grass, under the leaves, and other corners. You could not discover them without paying very close attention. He also mentioned that’s why many visitors were disappointed and said they saw “nothing”. For me, this is an important lesson. Not all beautiful thing is OBVIOUS. They might be very near to us, but all are ignored by busy, insensitive and impatient city people like us. Probably we can learn to pay more attention to the little thing around us, such as the new haircut of our wife, the good little thing others do for us silently… then we would appreciate the world better.
I also visited their zoo. The Sep 16 Malaysia Day is coming. There is a bird would like to say something to greet you. Click Here to hear what it said (48 KB).
Photos taken in Inanam, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo
hahaha… u seen mr liew, i was there way way way way back before he opened it up for visitors. yes i agree the road is quite bad. I do realise they do offer tours to the farm from tour agency.
btw.. how were the mosquitos?
Luckily there were not many mosquitos though. The only issue was that 30% of my photos on orchid were blur. Many orchids were too small for my camera.
dont think its with your camera, could be the camera setting, especially with digital cameras, they then to be set at auto focus. and when u try to take something that is micro, the lense auto zoom into the background, thus the foreground becomes blur, if ur camera has the still/micro option like the nikon, it will fix the problem. or u just need to go to plain manual. time to invest in a SLR?
I am not so sure. But my digicam does not have micro mode (surprise!). I always want to get a SLR, so the people would treat me more seriously coz SLR makes you look like a professional photographer or reporter. It happened very often that the officers allow people, even without media pass, but with a BIG camera to enter the stage area. You know what happenlah if those officers see me taking a small home-use camera (Siu… Siu…!). The experienced models also tend to look at the SLR more than “small” camera. 🙂
maybe u take those toilet roll and celotape it onto ur camera.. looks like SLR lo..