The Scorpion King

Today we were conned, and we didn't even see it coming. After our exhausting escapades into the rainforest, a trip to a relaxing and peaceful Butterfly Farm seemed the perfect antidote. We entered the farm, but before the butterflies the owner was particularly enthusiastic about showing us a few 'special creatures'.

Before we had the chance to object, Meg was handed a piece of sugar cane with a giant Three-Horned Rhinoceros Beetle on the end. Various other creepy-crawlies were then passed to us (and are likely to feature prominently in our dreams tonight) which included a Preying Mantis, a worryingly-well camouflaged Leaf Insect, a Cat-Eye Gecko and a giant frog.

But the 'best' was saved for last and Mark was delighted to have a live and poisonous scorpion dropped on him. We were later told that scorpions can only sting what is directly above their backs which seemed like the sort of information that would have been useful before it had started crawling up his arm towards his face!

Somewhere between our heartrates dropping from 180 bpm down to a more relaxed rate we saw a few less-memorable butterflies!

We decided that the only way to fully overcome that sort of stress was to have a nice leafy brew, and we headed for the local tea plantations. Checking that our cups didn't contain any nasty surprises we enjoyed our tea and cake in peace.

Our last destination for the day was a Strawberry Farm. The strawberries are grown hydroponically all over the highlands and Meg can verify that they taste great freshly picked! Claiming not to have seen the 'Please don't pick our strawberries' sign, Meg decided to sample just one. As she placed the strawberry into her mouth, a car alarm coincidentally went off - she almost choked in fright thinking she'd set off the Strawberry Alarm! To make amends for this most terrible crime we headed straight for the shop to spend our money on a punnet and two strawberry milkshakes.