Perfect Circle

During the morning walk one day last week, a little voice said, "Look right!".

Our human immediately stopped, looked to the right of the path and saw this vine of perfect circle.

After having walked this path daily on weekdays for more than 10 years, our human never really notice it.

Now, the big question is, whose voice is this?

Lumbering Walk!

Facing El Niño for weeks plus the haze, a long heavy downpour one day last week was a welcome sight! Though improved slightly, the haze stayed.

Taking this opportunity, our human decided to go for the morning walk...

...and got caught in this ridiculously laughable situation.

The path changed after the downpour. Could not turn back with mud getting stuck to the shoes, our human lumbered uphill ungracefully.

And collected even more mud going downhill.

The shoes felt like it weighed a ton.

When showed these photos to our human's brother, he teasingly commented that if our human train like this daily, soon our human could walk on water like those in Chinese Kungfu movies.

When it rained a few days later though not heavy, our human chose to walk a different route.

PS: Our human will not wear those shoes to walk as the soles have started to detach.

Stray Escort

There are many stray dogs on the roadside near the path entrance to the hill top.
Neutered, most of them are fearful of humans but some are friendly to regular hikers.
Lately some strays followed and acted as escorts to our human like this one.
He, a neutered male, escorted our human from the roadside up three-quarter way to a resting point.
When our human went down, he followed closely behind.
Our human purposely walked slow so that the stray could trot in front.

At this fork lower down, our 4-legged friend decided to wait for our slow human to catch up while enjoying the view. (We are experiencing a slight haze from open burning from a neighbouring country.)
On seeing the stray totally engrossed in his thoughts, our human quietly turned and quickly went uphill again.
Soon our human heard quiet shuffling behind, turned and saw our little escort behind.
Well, what can our human do except reward it with some kibbles that were kept in an air-tight sealed bag in the haversack.
This stray never left our human's side and followed all the way down to the road.

Millipede

Midway uphill a few mornings ago, our human chanced to see this little friendly creature.

Using the shoe for comparison, the phone was quickly taken out to record it.

As there were no hikers in sight, our human waited until it moved out of sight.

This is not the biggest our human has seen; there were bigger millipedes and centipedes while walking deep in our country's jungle.

Airborne Leg First!

Few weeks later another interesting incident happened.
At the very same hiking rest stop, our human walked to the other side of the stream turned man-made pool where a small flat area had been cemented with a few benches. 
To go there, one has to walk on a narrow man-made concrete mini-bridge above the small waterfall that separates the upper and lower level of the stream.
On the return walk, our human slipped on a small patch of green moss/algae and went airborne leg first.

The next instant, our human felt something cold and soft.
Our human quickly stood up and realised that the murky water filled with mud and decaying leaves was almost waist high.
Water in the upper level 'pool' dropped due to the previous few days of dry weather.
To be honest, our human could not recollect how the climb up out of that murky water was.
Soaked and very dirty with decaying leaves in the hair, a fellow hiker helped our human pick it out; another hiker gave our human a clean dry T-shirt to change.
Our human then went to the lower stream to clean up before heading downhill.
Now our human is extra careful at that area, moving slower and sure-footed.
Without even a scratch, one hiker commented that the 'mountain spirits' must have protected our human. They said it could have been dangerous if landed on any part of the cemented area or rocks.
PS: Cell phone, keys and money in the waist pouch were wet and had to be cleaned and dried.