Places

Bali Land Trip

2011-02-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

6-10 January 2011
Ubud - Telaga Waja - Batur - Uluwatu - Tanah Lot - Kuta

6 Jan 2011

This is the first trip of the year. Most of us made use of the in-lieu (replacement holiday) for Christmas and New Year that fell on Saturday, and it’s not a bad time to travel because we just got out from peak season, however, it’s so called monsoon in Bali.
I got feedback from two friends who just went there that it’s raining season in Bali . I have only encountered rain in Bali few times, it rarely counts and it lasts only a while, the rest was hot, hot, hot (To be fair, I have never been to Bali in January though). Anyway, I guess this time is a bit different, I read a piece of news sometime before our trip that waves in Kuta had reached unusual height that the beach was closed, and also right after we came back. So, I was a bit worried that the weather might affect our plan.

Anyway, beside diving trips where we didn’t have enough time to explore Bali land except once, it was me and hubby first oversea trip together (not counting Singapore ), coincidentally Bali was also the first trip together for our travel companions, our couple buddy.
So it brought back memory, respectively, 9 years ago for me and hubby, and 19 year for them. Whew! It’s about time!

We had planned this trip right since August, right after Menado, but we slacked on other arrangements like things to do and hotels because each of us were busy with works, other trips and other things until December, we started to panic because it was difficult to book hotel. Nah lho!

I always wanted to do water rafting, and yet didn’t have the luck to do so. With my university’s outdoor adventure organization,
I often had to choose between other outdoor activities, study, going home so I only signed up once for rafting, two three days before the event, the river dried up because of earlier summer. So I was determined to make this one. Anyway, the rafting here is a commercialized tourist activity, so it should be easy to arrange.

Beside water rafting, I was interested in seeing Bali high up there from the mountain. I thought the ideas would not be popular among my these traveling kakis, so I would be happy to do just either of rafting or hiking. Since no one has any suggestions for the activities yet, I proposed to hubby for these two activities, and dolphin watching. While rafting and hiking requires physical fitness, dolphin watching involves just waking up early, board the boat and float with the dolphins, so I thought they might choose dolphin. Instead, to my pleasant surprise, hubby chose both rafting and hiking, for dolphin “nothing special, let’s just try to find them underwater”. When we proposed the plan, our companions also chose both. Wohooo!!

We bought night flight and went to airport directly from work. Got Texas Chicken for dinner, and somehow we didn’t have much time left, but there was still about half an hour. We walked leisurely among duty free shop and suddenly saw in info monitor that it was last call for our flight, and, we were still far far away for the boarding gate.
So we had to start to run. It was quite crazy and tedious and we had backpack with cameras and other stuff. Anyway, our gate was no where in sight, according to number sequence; we really needed to do some serious sprinting.

It was like never ending sprint, basically we had to pass every single gate because, of course, our gate is located at the latest. My worry was that since none of us had check-in luggage, they could leave us behind on ease. So the goal is to have at least one of us made it to the gate first to prevent them from closing it.

We were panting like mad, and went through the security machine when finally reached the gate, before even finished with the passport checking, we were told to proceed directly into the plane. Why the rush? Maybe it’s the new Air Asia method to prevent delay. Anyway, we still spent sometimes waiting inside the plane before it took of.

The flight took about two and half hours, we were going to touch down Bali near midnight, and from there we had big task on hand, self drive to Ubud, our first destination.
Reached Bali almost twelve, we got no problem finding the guy who rented us his car. Soon after some briefing and filling up petrol, he left us.

7 Jan 2011

My friend got used to manual car really fast, Indonesian cars mostly run by manual system. Hubby’s license had expired, so we only have him to count on. We dropped by 24 hour mart (there were lots of them) to find supply for water, tidbits, toiletries. I asked for direction, actually only to double confirm what the previous guy told us, and was given totally different direction. Eh..? Anyway, we decided to stick with previous guy but we were getting further from our destination, so we made a turn back.
It was midnight, but thankfully, all the roads we travelled were lit up well and smooth. Normally upon reaching Bali, we would travel 2-3 hours to our diving destination through dark and winding roads, so this time we should be alright.

We stopped two times to ask for direction, with hubby's outdated memory about Bali's road, very simplistic tourist map, bit and pieces of printed out maps from internet, and determination of four people, we reached Ubud safely, stumbled on Monkey Forest entrance, before finding the road to our hotel. The hotel area was nothing like I imagine, I though it would be very village type of environment, with villas and houses further. Instead, it looked like simplified Kuta. Our hotel was only slightly visible from outside so to make it easier, the hotel guy waited for us outside, luckily the hotel name was prominent enough.
We reached hotel around 1.30am. It was a simple hotel with quite cozy bedroom and bath, and uniquely Bali, as usual, the hotel rooms are always very dimly lit, a bit too dim for my liking but we only needed it to sleep. After registration etc, I went to bath first. The water was cold on the first try even though the heater was on, then it turned into boiling water,... then it stopped. Wah! I thought it was joking, so waited, water came back, a few drop, then stopped, then came back, the stopped for good. WHAT?!
I have to admit that it really pissed me off that time, well, it's not a great feeling stuck in the bathroom with soapy half-way bath and hair soaking with shampoo at 2 am in the morning for a hotel that consider costly in developed tourist area. But the management acted quickly, and we were upgraded to deluxe room, not much difference, but they have Jacuzzi in the much bigger toilet. My main concern was to finish my shower and got good night sleep.

We slept around 2.30 or 3 o’clock after both of us had shower and we had briefly prepared the things we needed for the water rafting tomorrow.
Woke up early, I think around 7+, we showered again and proceeded to have breakfast. The breakfast was very standard, and our friend’s room also being upgraded because of the same problem. The hotel kept reminding us that we had to move back to our original room, to which we said of course, if you get the water running, obviously. Anyway, it didn’t leave good impression with me, furthermore, they moved our belonging back to our room without permission when we were away, thankfully, everything was fine, water was fine. But set aside everything, I did appreciate their effort to remedy the situation, but stop walking around the room with the shoes on while we were bare footed! That is my pet peeve..!

Fortunately, like usual hotel Bali, they has nice rustic style landscapings and decorations, even though the hotel is very small (consisted of only 8 rooms).

We were picked up by Water Rafting operator on time at the lobby, inside there were already three ang moh, we had the car ride for I think almost one hour? Can’t really remember the details. The rafting was in Telaga Waja River. There were choices between Ayung River and Telaga Waja, while Telaga Waja being the more adventurous one, Ayung was more family friendly. And, Telaga Waja has the climax of 4 meter drop!

We stopped at a coffee plantation nearby the rafting site because we still got some time before the rafting. We walked down through short distanced narrow earth road between various plantation before we reached a very unique ‘natural café’. There was a civet cat in the cage along the way. I’d prefer them to just put some pictures instead of putting the real civet cat to promote Kopi Luwak, the most costly and unique coffee processed from undigested coffee bean by civet cat, yup, the cat ate it and the coffee bean went through the digestive system. The idea is not glorious, but I wouldn’t mind to give it a try. Of course the coffee beans had gone though some cleaning and processes, and might be much better in hygienic level than most of the food we eat daily.

The natural café was a narrow flatten earth overlooking the plantation valley. The area was just nice to occupy small table with four seat and small corridor to walk. It’s actually really nice sitting there and looked at the green surrounding while enjoying hot coffee. They gave us free samples of ginger tea, ginseng tea, lemon grass tea, bali coffee, and chocolate? For Kopi Luwak, we ordered three cups, this one had to pay.
The Kopi Luwak indeed tasted different (but it’s not shitty in case you wonder) it’s very thick and rich, however I’m not a coffee avid or coffee lover, imho, it tasted like Kapal Api with less sweet and thicker mixture. I only drink Kapal Api coffee anyway, so my comparison is not reliable.

There was a small shop above up, we had to walk up a little bit of earth terrain and it was there. Although they all made up like marketing scheme or tour (where you go somewhere then you buy their product) somehow this one was a little bit more unique and I didn’t mind. We like the ginger and lemongrass tea, our friends like them too, they also like the Kopi Luwak.

After shopping, we boarded the car again and proceeded to water rafting area.
On the parking lot, we already saw colorful rafts, helmets and people preparing themselves for the rafting. Excited, I did the registration and we were greeted by our guide who briefed us about the safety and operation procedures, we also ordered group pictures.
It was simple, forward means we paddle forward, backward (I hope I remember correctly) paddle backward, lean back is leaning back, so far is simple.
Another one is Boom boom, basically means you have to put you paddle aside, try not to let it collide with something outside, then lean back and grab the safety rope in the raft because boom boom means we were going through something rough like hitting onto the rock that can affect the balance and the contain of the raft.
There you have it.
All our slippers were tied together using long rope, valuables are kept in one dry bag. Each of us had a paddle, the guide told us to sit in formation where one guy in front, one guy behind and the middle were the ladies. I found the most tedious thing was to make sure that my paddle didn’t hit anyone or being drag outside.

Not long after starting, we needed to get out of the raft and walked down staircase because there were two tiers of high drop that was not safe to get through since it was very rocky. After that we reboarded the raft.

Fun? Of course it was fun! In the beginning we didn’t really get wet because basically the route was very safe, once in a while we need to boom-boom, lean back and maneuvering around the rocks. The raft would move by the rapids and the guide would control the boat, sometimes we moved sideways or backwards. Our guide seemed to be very experienced, he could maneuver the way effectively through the rocks and we always caugt up with the rest (we were the last raft). Many times we would then waited at one spot for other rafts to get going again, we suspected it was maybe because the other guides were not as experienced and he could render hope if needed. I would prefer that our raft kept going, because we lose the momentum everytime we stopped. It could be quite nice to see the beautiful surrounding but imho, rafting should be continuous so we would not lose the momentum, as least I wished we didn’t wait as many times as we did. Another thing, rafting should be wet and we were still fairly dry.

The two wishes were granted. We stopped at one point where we alighted from the raft to the waterfall. There was a nice natural waterfall, where we could ‘shower’ under the very strong pouring water. Being one of the last group proved to be a good way, we got to enjoy the waterfall without a lot of people waiting to take picture. We needed to climb over a bit of rocks before being able to sit or stand under the waterfall. By the time I approached it, it was way way way colder than I imagined, and it was weird to have gallon of water dropping on you while you shivered, but it was certainly fun experience. We posed and enjoyed the water for awhile, before negotiated our way back and put back the life jacket and helmet. Now we were soaking wet, there you have it.

Sometime after the waterfall, the guide decided not to wait too much for other group again (good!). The water flow was great that day, obviously because the day before the activities was cancelled since the weather was too rough. The river was in between hilly cliffs or rice plantation; sometimes we could see villagers doing their daily activities and cattle walked around. The weather was pleasant, we didn’t feel the sun and the sky looked cloudy but we actually got sunburnt. Once in a while the photographer would paddle pass us using one man canoe with all his equipment in the dry backpack, he would then station at good spot to take picture, boarded the canoes again and passed us again. I think he has a very fun job!
At one point our guide instructed all of us to stand up and posed for the picture. We stood up for a while, but it was kind of difficult to balance ourselves, soon we had to sit down again. We also raft through another waterfall, it only lasted a while but it was fun. After almost two hours, we reached the end of the river, when we had to go through the climax of 4 meter drop. Our guide collected the paddle, we had to sit two by two, with our backsides inside the lower parts of the raft. The off we went, reaching the edge of nowhere, eng ing, eng, and GUSRAK, GABRUK.

It’s hard to describe the feeling, especially the second when the raft hanging in the midair and you were looking down to the fall below, the raft freeze for a millisecond, then pointed down, and as fast as lighting, crashed into the drop below with all the contain and passengers going haywire. Me and hubby were sitting at the front, both of us filled the small space, so when the raft fell, we were literally catapulted up in the air, and went back because of gravity. The catch was, falling back down we couldn’t coordinate and share space properly, so when I landed first, he got not enough space to fill. Our hands clung on tightly for dear life, and our feet shot to every direction. I was very sure that we had two pair of feet in front of the lens because once we landed, the water pushed us hard forward to the direction of where the photgrapher stood.

We were all laughing like mad, it was WHOA – WTH – BRUAK – FINISH type of experience. But it was fun!

We came to the end of the river (if my muddy brain is right, I remember it as 12km river), and alighted from the raft. I was glad that everyone looked happy with the rafting, soon after we landed our feet, we had to climb up I think 200 steps to the dining area on the top. We stopped by for photo for awhile. When we reached the top, all of us went for shower. They provided towel, but apparently they only had public shower. The guys disappeared inside the male shower while we were hesitating for a while, then decided to shower fully clothes. Because it was not only public shower, people also just came and go as they please, all the while opening the door and the room would be exposed to outside.

After shower, we went to the dining area and had the buffet lunch. It was a simple buffet but some dishes were quite nice, we waited for our pictures being processes into a dvd, then climbed another steps up to the road where the van was waiting. This time the angmohs requested to sit in front, as one of them felt very nauseous because of the rafting.

I thought I had enough coffee fix this morning, since I’m not really used to drinking coffee I felt like having accelerated heart rate because of the caffeine, anyway, we thought we would have difficulty sleeping tonight. Turned out, we were wrong, we all slept well that afternoon, not night, in the car, on the way back to hotel, immediately after rafting. Try this, rafting cures insomnia. I think so. Same with diving.

When we reached hotel, after the room commotion, we had good shower, relax for a while before gathered again to drive out to nearby Monkey Forest. It was nice cooling afternoon, just upon the entrance we already saw bunch of monkeys roaming around and asking for food. Some locals were selling bananas if you want to feed the monkey, but I guess it’s not a good idea to bring banana into monkey territory. Once a angmoh/bule bought the banana, few steps in, the monkeys were already gathering around her and tried to snatch the fruit and even climbed up on their heads.

I like the monkey forest for the glory of the site, it has huge gigantic tree with hanging curtain, spreading root and mystical feeling of the jungle ruins. The temple is also decorated with my favorite green moss that show the wisdom of the time. Monkeys roam around freely, the local feed them occasionally, they stock cages of sweet potatoes in certain area, they also let the monkey meddling with their daily offering. Balinese diligently put offering few times a day; contain some rice, flower, fruits etc.
We saw the monkeys ransacked those offering, some even put its head inside the basket (damn autofocus not fast enough), we saw them feasting on sweet potatoes or begging for banana. They were literally everywhere, family, children, granpa, grandma, babies. We also witnessed one monkey demonstrate to us that it could open the water tap and drank from it. It got great applause, so the monkey decided to show off, by turning it off and on again. Too bad, the second time it turned the tap on, it was too fast that the monkey jumped because of water sprayed on its face. So it ran a distance away, but bravely faced the audience for some credit of our amused laugh. You see why I love this animal? They are sneaky, smart, naughtly, compassionate and very energetic.

We could freely take their pictures because they were not afraid of human, of course we didn’t use flash to avoid disturbing them. Since I only had wide angle lens with me, sometimes I had to get very close to capture their expression and distorted face. Apparently they were also curious with us sometimes, one put its paw onto my lens flat and square.

The problem with monkey forest, it’s also a place to feast for mosquito. You can fell blood being sucked out from exposed skin immediately. We put in mosquito repellent, but somehow it’s a bit too late for me.

We walked around, I remember the weather was quite pleasant as it was already the beginning of the evening. We didn’t really explore much I think because it was closing. I can imagine it could be quite a scary experience to spend a night there.
We walked out and had a ice cream break at a shop nearby. There were also some monkeys outside, hanging on the tree, sitting with the balls (literally) on electric wire. I can’t imagine the agony if there was an escape of electric current. But hey, not everything can be learned through soft way.

We started to move to look for food, drove out a bit. I must say Ubud is different with what I imagine it would be. I thought there would be padi field everywhere, with villas far and between, a lot of greenery and open sky. I don’t know whether we were at the wrong side of Ubud, but around the place we stayed it looked like smaller and simpler version of Kuta. There were shops and angmohs everywhere, and where are my padi fields?

We found a small roadside stall selling usual tent food that can be found in Jakarta, friend chicken, catfish, duck etc. I settled with my favorite catfish. We were accompanied by two muscular dogs working on their puppy eyes to beg for food, but they were well behaved and did not disturb us.
It’s funny that when you look at them, they would quickly catch your eyes and try to look as hungry as possible. If you stare at them long enough, they might come nearer, so you can stare at them but give them a bit of glare to stay on their spot while you are eating, but reward them with something afterwards.
If you don’t want to give them anything at all, try to avoid eye contact. He he..

There are few tricks that are mastered by stray cats and dogs when we dine in Indonesia’s roadside stall. Some cats like to live dangerously by jumping on top of the table, then quickly curl their body and close their eyes with the most pitiful expression, so whoever who has their hands up in the air would have their heart melted and just tried to chase them by fanning the air.
These cat’s attack are hardly fruitful, because no one would like their food to have strands of wandering cat furs or sharing their meal with cats. But these cats are street smart and they are betting on something, that you would be freaked out enough to throw some food from your plate far far away so they would leave you.

For dogs, dogs are normally less sneaky, the most they would put their front legs at the edge of the table but street smart dogs observe people and less aggressive.
They can just sit patiently next to you or under your table and try to catch your eyes with that killer pitiful puppy dog eyes. Some go as far as putting their front legs on the lap. So, it’s either you freaked out again and throw your food or your heart melt and they ended up having part of your meal.

Of course the stories are not always happy ending, sometimes they are being abused or being chased with broom. However, somehow I think these animals can recognize which human are ‘safe’ and approachable, they are good in reading whether their fellow hairless mammal are kind hearted enough not to hit them.

The catfish was good, slurp.. we moved a few step away to another stall that sell Madura mutton satay, with fat and liver satay too. We were full but we were greedy, and it was very delicious satay, I still think of it although I’m actually not a fan of mutton. we also ordered I can’t remember what soup. Hubby is more expert at local food because I basically grow up with Chinese food.

We dragged ourselves to the car passing by a chicken satay cart that looked very tempting but we were very full. If I’m not wrong we then drove back to the hotel, hung around for awhile to decide places to go tomorrow then went to sleep so that we could fulfill our sleep deprived first day.

8 January 2011

We woke up around 7+ to go to the nearby market to look for some local food. It’s wet market in the morning, and would turn into tourist souvenir market in the afternoon, I hope my info is right. We roamed around but the only food that they sold is unrecognizable some vegetable mixed with something. We tried to walk around a bit, but couldn’t find anything else, so we walked out from the market to other streets nearby, found a shop with babi guling (roasted pig? Bolster pig? ;p) signage, but to our disappointment, it was not yet open. We ended up having breakfast in the hotel, today we all chose banana pancake and it was quite good.

After packing and shower, we checked out for our next destination. We had to choose between Uluwatu and Tanah Lot’s sunset and we chose Tanah Lot because we were not sure whether we could find the right spot for Uluwatu. Anyway, we decided to stop by Sukawati market along the way, this time we didn’t go inside the building, we walked around the perimeter and road side. Trip to Sukawati was quite fruitful, from all of us, we bought wooden animals, coconut shell piggybanks, wooden food covers, Balinese unique Barong T-shirts in various colors, Salak pondoh, boiled peanut (I never left Sukawati without this) and boiled sweet corns.
We dropped by a food stall and ordered Balinese mixed rice. It was quite expensive and not fantastic, but we were hungry.

Along the way to Uluwatu, we had to fight the urge to fall asleep by attacking our food supply randomly. We finally found the Uluwatu temple, went in but couldn’t really enter the temple because there was a wedding ceremony, we could go another spot but we were kind of rushing since the half of the afternoon was gone. We found the temple on the cliff and took some pictures. Nice scenery, I can imagine how the sunset would like.

Me and hubby wondered about the secret passage to the sandy beach we found nine years ago and almost gave up when we stumbled to it. It’s no longer secret passage. A few small wooden house and simple stone staircase leading to the beach had been developed into some sort of surfing village, it was hardly recognizable until we worked down and found the semi covered beach. While it was almost like private quiet beach in the past, this time there were many people around. Back then we actually ride motorbike in, now they had this gigantic loooong concrete staircase leading to the village. We had to walk up and down and I was a bit worry that we would sore our feet too much because we had a mountain to climb tomorrow.

In Uluwatu area we saw a lot of babi guling calling us, but we had to rush to catch our sunset in Tanah Lot, we thought it would be easy to get it later.

After taking few pictures, we went back to the car and headed to Tanah Lot.
Tanah Lot was further than we thought, and along the way we finally faced what we had been dreading about, the rain.
The sky looked dark, and we were sure that we couldn’t catch the sunset on time, with the addition of the rain there might not be sunset at all. The prediction was correct, it was raining when we reached there, the sky looked gloomy. We had to put in our raincoats to protect ourselves and our backpacks. We went directly to the stretch of restaurant on top, so at least to get away from the crowd and protected from the rain.
We took some fruit juice and tried to get few shots of changing daylights left.

I can’t remember if we checked in first, but I guess we went directly to find dinner. To our surprise, along the way to Kuta and surrounding there was no babi guling, we hardly see any, and the ones that we found were closed. We finally got to one with babi guling and delightfully put in some order. They said it was available, but when the dish came out, they said they ran out of the particular one that we wanted and only gave us three small tiny puny pieces after we confronted them. Hmpppph!!!!

Anyway, we felt quite beat and sometime there was a traffic jam in Kuta area, it was also a challenge to locate the hotel. We stayed at this hotel sometime ago, and remember that it was almost hidden from the main road, except from a narrow passageway, and this was the other challenge. How to bring the car in from such a narrow alley?

Hubby took over the car, it was really a crazy effort to bring the car in, there were barely 10 cm on each side of the car, mirror had to be folded and four of us literally held our breath. One mistake, one, could stretch the car beyond what we could afford. Finally, everything went fine.

We checked in and called the Putu, who arranged for our Mount Batur trekking to confirm everything. He would pick us up at 12.30 midnight, it was already around 9 when we reached the hotel. Imagine the face of the receptionist when we order ‘morning call’ for 12 midnight.
After cleaned up, we decided than we could make use of two hours sleep. It’s weird to sleep at ten and woke up at twelve, because normally our sleeping time was beyond twelve, but we were tired and gave it a try. We knocked off, and at twelve, the alarm rang. We dragged ourselves up and prepared to go.

Putu was ready and we started the 21/2 hours (I think!) drive to Pura Jati at Toya Bungkah, Kintamani as the starting point to climb Mount Batur. The high is around 1450 meter, from there there was a short climb to summit 1717 meter (5633 feet). Eventhough it's a short climb and probably considered as one of the easy mountain, all mountain has to be respected. Just end of March at the same year, a Swedish national fell to his death at the crater of Mount Batur. Mount Batur is also an active volcano and just recently been upgraded to status 'Waspada' on November 2010, second highest dangerous level for its tectonic activity.

9 January 2011

We waited there for awhile, made payment and off we went with the local guide. I think the time was around 3 something.
The morning was quite cold at the beginning, but as we walked, we started to perspire.
For the first half an hour, we were walking through flat terrain; it was pitch dark in the night so we had to make use of our torch to shine the step.

In the beginning, we were joined by a guy who made a living by selling drinks in the summit. So this guy normally would go up with a group of people, then tried to sell us some drinks on top of the mountain. Mount Batur is actually quite commercialized, touristy type of trekking. It has a hut near the summit that sells instant noodle, hot ginger tea and coffee, although still much less commercialized and accessible as Bromo. Maybe you wouldn’t find the peace, the obstacles and the feelings of scaling like mountain tops, but in Batur we can get this very local kampong feel when everyone gather around the hut, eating food cooked by charcoal clay stove, it sort of reminds me of university time, when we could go out to remote area doing research and exploration, while we always count on the nature of the hospitality of villagers to help us. It is wonderful what those villagers would do to welcome you, they let you stay, sometime insisting on us taking up their master bedroom, they don’t mind strangers in dirty clothes etc. Okay, maybe it’s a bit different comparison because Mount Batur has been introduced to commercialism, but the kampong touch is still around.

After the flats, we started to walk up. The terrain is the best combination that we could hope for a mountain. It’s rocky earth, there are rocks everywhere to help you get a grip and hold your step, makes it not slippery and most of the rocks are mostly solid on their places when we put our foot. The path was not too steep so we didn’t need a lot of rest. Sometimes we stopped along the slope, and it was always my favorite moments when I did night trekking. To see the dark sky, the flickering lights from far far away and terrain surround you as your eyes got customized to the darkness. Everything is quiet, everything is dark, cool wind and the chill will hold your body, and you can only hear your own and your companion’s breath. There was one more thing that could make it more perfect, a sip of hot water from the flask that we didn’t have. Anyway, the ambience was kind of spoilt a bit by the talkative drink seller guy talking to the guide, our guide himself is a very quiet guy. But still, It was still great to have the peaceful of the night.
We were the first group to go up,

While trekking, it’s better not to rest too long because we would start to shiver and the momentum would be lost, so we started walk again.

The wind was quite chilling that morning, it's just comfortable to cover the head with buff. We reached the resting area, near the summit around 4.50 am. I am very proud with my kakis, although hiking is not their cup of tea, they didn't complain, kept very high spirit and even enjoying the experience as the journey goes by and we started to see the gorgeous scenery upon the daylight. It can be said that we covered the journey up in decent time.

By the time we reach the top, we could sit next to the railing and look at the valley, village and lake below. We could also see Mount Abang prominently, Mount Agung behind Mount Abang, and so called Rinjani, should the weather had been very very clear. It would be a very precious experience if I could take Rinjani picture from here, since I had taken Mount Agung picture from Rinjani.

The surrounding was still very dark, we had coca cola.. there were few things that go very well on the mountain; coca cola, hot soup, roasted cashew nut, indomie, ginger tea. The coca cola tasted a bit rusty and maybe this time, it didn't feel that great. However, the indomie and ginger tea, whoaaaaa.... slurppppp slurppppppppppp...somehow, when it's cooked with charcoal, it really tasted better. We happily order indomie and ginger tea while waiting for the sunrise. There were times when the fog totally cover the whole surrounding and there were rain rushing down. It seemed like we wouldn't have clear sunrise. When the orange blush started peeping, we took the position, in front of the railing, there was a 1.5 meter width earth ledge that we could stand and take picture. At least there were no plethora of human like Bromo, in fact this is what I thought how Bromo going to be. There were around 30-40 people, but there were plenty of places for everyone.We could either scattered near the railing or just sitting somewhere along the crater. Mount Batur is shaped like Batman, so from below we could see there was a small flat area in the middle and then two ear protruding out. This base where the hut and main sunrise point is located at the flat area. From that area we could walk up again further to the real summit. Why not nearer to the summit, soon we would find out.

Eventhough the sunrise was not clear as the sky was cloudy, the sunrise was still mystically beautiful. It’s dark, it’s misty, it’s not orange, and in matters of minutes the sun was already in intense silvery suit.

We took our time taking picture and then hubby asked me a question. He asked whether I wanted to go up the summit. It's a miracle! Not only he asked, he actually really wanted to go. I asked the guide how the terrain was, he said some part is the rocky-sandy terrain.

Rocky-sandy terrain, imho, it's one of the scariest terrain, and commonly found near the summit of volcanic mountain, terrible combination.
It's very tiring and dangerous terrain because it's damn tiring to climb on that terrain. As nearing summit is normally steep/very steep, this terrain only provide around 30% grip, as you walk three steps, you might slide down two step. If climbing up is killing, imagine going down, where you can see the valley down there.
So I explained to him and he was okay with it. Anyway, the guide told us it would only be around half an hour trekking.

We left our bag behind, bringing only my camera. Before started, we went for toilet break.
There was no toilet around, but there was part of some broken wall behind the hut. From there we could see (and be seen) but it’s quite secluded.
We needed to descend down a bit before starting to climb up. The beginning of the terrain was mild, just like the previous, then we entered the rocky sand part. It was quite tiring, but quite short. Along the way we could see nice scenery and surrounding, and it was nice as there was nobody around.

Upon reaching the top, we could feel the strong wind. There was another tiny hut and few climbers. The summit itself is maybe only around 3 X 6 meter irregular shape, which was already quite a luxury for a summit. There was two benches there. We could see the other Batman ear from far.
The wind was flapping very strongly that we couldn’t stand up straight. I wanted to go to the edge to take picture, but it was quite scary as the wind was a bit too strong for me, so I just went to the edge where we were coming from, at least if I fall, I’m still there.

We sat there for a while to enjoy the surrounding. The breathtaking scenery with the broken sky, when the silvery sun peeping out. How I love the 360 degree view like this. We started to go down. Going down is not my cup of tea in anything, but after Rinjani, I kind of conquer my fear, at least I could slide down a bit faster and not afraid of falling like I used to. I fell two times in the rocky sand, but managed to lift my camera up my head. We took it slow, enjoying the view. There was a guide ran down passing us very very fast, after hesitating for a while, two angmohs followed him. Note, running down is very fun, I tried that in rainforest terrain, where there are trees and land on your right and left. But here, it could be just a thin line between an accident and a thrill. It doesn’t worth the risk, unless you are very very experience and know the mountain like the back of your palm, it’s not courage, it’s stupidity. Even break an ankle doesn’t worth the fun, imagine what you can’t do with a broken ankle. If it’s worse enough, you can even forget climbing another mountain.

So we steady steady and three quarter near the hut, the guide asked me whether I wanted to try to go to the hot spring and cave. It was only nearby but need to climb down some steep steps. Hubby didn’t want to go, he got stomach ache, so he waited for us where the guide brought me down. There was some misty fog coming from the crack of the mountain wall, and quite gigantic cave below, although it smelled a bit like piss. Anyway, I didn’t explore much because there was a group of people there near the edge and I didn’t really want to go further into the slippery cave.

When we reached the hut, our companions were inside the hut, looking very cosy. Most of the climbers had either left or just gone up to the summit. We bought another bottle of water and started to go down. The wind was cooling but soon we would sweat again.

What was not visible during our climb up, now was displayed nicely to pamper our eyes. We walk through beautiful fields, overlooking the calm Batur lake below, Mount Abang, Trunyan village, gorgeous plantation, pine forest, small padi plantation, volcanic walkway. It was a very pleasant visual track, and I was very happy to see all my kakis enjoyed themselves as well. We took pictures, posed, while slowing went down the track. Some climbers caught with us very fast by running, we caught other group resting enjoying their time too. What’s the rush.. it’s not everyday destination!

Three quarter of the journey, we stumble upon temple in the middle of open field. The temple overlooks the surrounding, local would come here to pray during certain occasion. Only vehicle catered for the ceremonial purposes are allowed to go up.

We walked by groups of what looked like broken ruins or half-built concrete structures, I asked the guide what are those after we reached the car, he said it’s structure built for ceremony preparation. During certain day when the local wanted to go up to pray, they would start the preparation there.

In the parking area, according to Putu, is in area named Toya Bungkah. (I forgot to ask what was the name of the place, so I actually sent a sms to him few days ago).
We went to attack the breakfast we left on the car like coyotes; breads, boiled eggs, bananas. Putu, who was waiting for us since 3 am, said it was very cold there that he had to jog around the carpark. Mahaha.. After fulfilling our unusual morning hunger, we happened to see a gorgeous Golden Retriever. Putu told me that I could pet the dog, he helped to ask permission from the owner, who was friendly and let four of us pet and took picture with the dog. My favorite dog, named Miki, was quite an old dog, she was very patient, friendly, calm and cool.

After playing with the dog, Putu sent us to a so-called well known restaurant on the cliff overlooking gorgeous surrounding scenery. He brought us around for ride first, we saw a lot of wild dogs. According to him, villagers there let their dogs run wild, even mate in the wild, only keep certain dog at home. We saw the nice lake, the silvery water and row of boats, and saw Trunyan village from far. Putu told us a bit of story about the interesting Trunyan village, where the local put pass-away families and friend under the tree. There are special species of trees that only grow in Trunyan, that gives it special and unique character, so even though there are bodies, there are no smell. The place is sacred, and one of the prove of how unique and special Bali is.

I was not very hungry when we reached the restaurant, the food was fine, it was buffet style, we got to eat by sitting on the high bale-bale (pavilion) barefooted while looking at gorgeous scenery. We spent sometimes there before Putu brought us back to Kuta.

I am very grateful with the weather, we had the whole clear morning so we didn’t need to track in the rain, It’s a bless considering how unpredictable the weather nowadays and the recent rainy season in Bali. So yes, I am sooooo grateful.

When we were back to the hotel, cleaned up, and three of them went for massage. I took my own sweet time to relax in the hotel, not wanting to sleep but I think I dozed off for a while. We had connecting room here so it was easy for us to communicate to each other.

We liked Oasis back then because it was strategic, the rooms are big, there are private terrace, and they have long swimming pool, it is also considered one of the newer hotel, back then. But this time, it was kind of run down. For our room, it was fine, but it was not the case for the other room, their aircon was not working well, and there was a leak from their basin.

We went out to look for dinner, and here, I actually forgot what did we eat. We went to bakery, brough some dried stuff to bring home, we ate Yogya’s unique some rice, sorry I forgot what the name was, we bought pisang goreng, onde-onde and putu, also martabak back to the hotel, but I can’t remember what the main dinner was. Maybe I mixed up something, I don’t know..

Anyway, after roaming for a while, we parked somewhere, then walked along the food street. We decided to go back hotel, relax while eating all the food, then called it a night.
For this trip, our pattern was,
1st night : sleep deprived; midnight drive and lost.
2nd night: sleep a lot
3rd night: sleep deprived, hiking.
4th night: sleep a lot

Hahaha.. at least it’s still a balance, unlike my other type of trip; diving (sleep a lot), free n easy ulu place trip with my office kaki (sleep deprived because of reunion of scrabble maniacs).

10th January 2011

We had breakfast at the hotel, it was quite disappointing because there was not many choices of food. Our diving contact who helped us to arrange for the hotel came down to collect payment, and we gathered as many info about other diving destination and experience. I have to say I kind of envy her work, diving around remote places of Indonesia and being paid for it, although she is more like administrative organizer and doesn’t really enjoy diving that much.

Around midday, we had packed and drove out of hotel. Each of us had additional box from the thing we bought from Sukawati and also dumped in our dirty clothes. It’s not everyday that I have the luxury of baggage, it’s either we have too much baggage for diving equipment, or travel without check-in luggage. So this time I have space for shopping and I actually had the mood for shopping, can you imagine???

We had lunch at Kebon Kacang nasi uduk (branch from Jakarta) and headed to Hero supermarket that happen to be along the way.

If you want to see four people gone wild, buying every stuff they fancy, it’s us. After we made sure that the supermarket would provide boxes for us for check-in, we went crazy, brought Indomie, coffee, our favorite peanuts, dried beverages etc etc. Our friends happen to like Indonesian product also so it was a match made in Singapore. We only stop because we almost ran out of cash. What was left from four of us was just enough to cover our airport tax and around 70,000 rupiah? (around 10 dollar) for food in airport.

Each of us ended up with another big box and the staff was kind to help of pack and sealed for us. Well, not enough, we bought our own duct tape and repack ourselves in the back of the car for better organization. The weather was crazily hot like what Bali always have that day.

We reached airport around 3+, our flight is 5 or 6 in the afternoon, we needed to return the car and grabbed something to it.

With that limited money, we chose very carefully, had some drink, and finally decided to bought a bit of snack from McDonald. Upon paying time, hubby found out he has 100,000 rupiah in the wallet. Aiyoh… we beat him up (figure of speech only lahhh) then bought two set of proper meal and some addition to be eaten in the plane, since we were still quite full.

After check-in (it was 29++ kilos for all! Fully using our 30kg allowance), went through immigration, walked around the airport and again, surprisingly, it was early call to board the plane again. We boarded the bus to bring us to the plane, since they didn’t use air bridge, upon approaching the place, we had to detour back to the terminal because there was a technical problem with the plane. We were then stranded on the floor for more than half an hour, if I remember correctly, before we finally boarded the plane.

It was a full flight, we saw nice sunset on the airport and up in the air. There, the holiday is finished. It’s new year..!
Adios Bali. Until next time.

Ho Chi Minh and The Plethora of Motorcycles

2011-01-26T17:24:00.000-08:00

Ho Chi Minh (17-20 December 2010)

Disclaimer: This trip probably my ‘step’ trip not only because I wrote the journal together with other trip journal after this, it’s also a trip deprived of pictures because I only brought my old blur blur pocket camera and didn’t bother to take a lot of pictures, it’s also a trip where we didn’t visit any of natural, special or distinctive attractions. Maybe because it’s a in-between trip, before Christmas and New Year and basically we were busy with other plannings. However, this trip still had the highlight, my crazy traveling kakis from work, and that is enough to make a trip fun.

17 December 2010

It’s half day today. I’ll be going to Ho Chi Minh with my office travelling kakis minus one, so It would be three of us.
We couldn’t really concentrate with work as we prepared last minute maps and information that we could get. Since we were all busy or not around previously, there were hardly any preparations.

As the clock struck twelve, we were on the way to airport. High spirited to be away from work, this was also our first trip together this year since a year ago to Central Vietnam. This time is South Vietnam. Why Vietnam again? I actually can’t really explain it well. Haha.. for these few kakis, we chose the location based on mini mini mani moo..

It’s either based on budget airline ticket promotion for our first trip, based on the exotic but easy destination like our second trip, and this time we based on the hotel, the lamest reason of all. :) We were aiming to go somewhere nearby so the choice were between Laos, Myanmar, Brunei, Philippine and Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was the last choice since we all actually had very good fix of Vietnam already. However, the air ticket for the rest of destinations were very high for this holiday time, and HCM has the apartment hotel that we like, it’s very good for friends travelling together, HCM it is.

Our plan is to explore Mekong Delta by boat and cycling, but things didn’t really go according to plan.

We went to Airport Terminal 2 for Burger King lunch. This has become one of our traditions to have BK meal in the airport. Easy choice and we love the breakfast, although this one was lunch. We had plenty of time to spare, so after lunch then we got in the shuttle bus to Budget terminal for Tiger Airways.

The plane was delayed, argh.. for how long..? Maybe half an hour to one hour, I can’t remember the detail anymore (!).. We played card and walked around while waiting, played card on the plane. The flight took around two hours.

The airport taxi system was clear, it cost us US$8 to reach the hotel. It kind of took forever to reach because we were stuck in HCM peak hour traffic jam. There were motorcycle everywhere, more than Jakarta, more than the other parts that I had been in the world. It probably took one hour plus before we reached.

It’s Christmas time! The hotel was decorated nicely with simple skeleton tree with Christmas ball theme, and aluminum foil crumpled paper for the entrance. The lobby was small but very cosy. Our unit has nice two bedrooms, two bathroom, living, dining, kitchen and laundry room, very spacious for three of us. Upon throwing the bags, we roamed around happily for a while, took shower and ready for our first destination.

It was dark already, we went to Ben Thanh market by cab. There were two trusted cab operator, Malinh and something Vista. (not vista only mind you, that’s another cab :) I know I’d be horrible travel writer. In my defence, if I’m paid, I write down everything! Anyway, imho, details shouldn’t be important. You want to travel, do your own research! >:))
We stop at a roundabout with a statue, and this was the first time we saw the real havoc of HCM motorcycle traffic. There were literally an ocean of motorcycles coming from and to every direction. Din din din twet twet twet pi po pi po in every colors and shapes. They have a lot of fancy and unique design helmets, together with colorful facemask, jacket and fancy color of motorcycle, it added the whole new dimension to the street. The taxi dropped us on street side, where we could see many hawker selling fruits, balloons and other random things. Vietnam has right side traffic as opposed to Singapore and Indonesia.

We started to walk to rows and rows of stall like normally seen in night market. And we were lucky, because first row we were in, it was full of food. It’s about time!!

We walked by the stall, selling miscellaneous food, seafood, Vietnamese food, the famous Pho’, certain type of local noodle. We chose the one that looked good, patronized by many customers but still has empty table for us. Sitting in the open, next to the tent is apparently the right way to get extra meat for your meal. We order noodle, springroll, what else… hmmm… I remember mine is shrimp noodle and I loved it! Food arrived first for my friend and he had to eat fast competing to those tiny suicidal insects that were also interested in dipping in hot soup. But I guess he probably ate at least five of them. At certain point, you just let the insect had their way. Lucky for mine, I had quite safe meal, at least if I ate anything, it’s not to my knowledge.
It was a nice meal and upon setting down, we started to walk around the market.

They were selling clothing, slippers, bags, shorts, souvenirs, fabrics, fruits, from anything to everything. We just went around randomly, and at one point of time made it our goal to find convenient store for some snacks and drinks.

We didn’t shop much, but at least made use of first night according to itinerary, to feel the hustle and bustle of Vietnamese night life and saw the crazy traffic. Little did we know, the traffic was not as crazy as what we would encounter the next day.

We walked quite a distance before hailing a cab to go back hotel, passing by short distance of riverside where we could see those floating restaurants glimmering in the light, although I think none of us was too interesting in dining there.

Nevermind, we went back to our hotel, cleaned up and started to do our routine, relaxed and played game. Anyway, it was quite late. Each of us brought a game, not usual Scrabble because 3 person might not be as fun as four, and we decided to rest our brain this trip. So we played number game called Rummy, which was quite fun because it was not so difficult but yet quite strategic to keep us interested. We watched an captivating but crappy show concurrently until pass midnight and called it a day.

18 December 2010

Today was the birthday of my really good friend since childhood. I remember, but too bad I couldn’t call her, worse, I also lost her number because my old handphone spoilt and half my contacts burned with it. But I’m not too worried because eventually we found our way to get in touch again. (Update: I found her!)

Our plan was to go Dai Nam Tourism Park, it’s very commercialized tourism area but was chosen because our original plan might not work. We wanted to cycle whole day along side Mekong delta and around the city, but since the traffic was really heavy, difficult to find bicycle rental and the condition of the river side was also looked industrial and not so natural.

We had simple breakfast at the hotel next to pool, then booked a cab to Dai Nam, it would take probably one hour plus to reach destination.
The traffic was not as bad as the day before but there were also some hiccup along the way.

Upon reaching the gate of Dai Nam, we went in (still with the cab) and saw massive row and row of high wall resemble Forbidden City. It took sometime to find the entrance, and from there we proceeded to the ticketing area (which was merely a table, probably that is the way for car ticketing) and still, proceed to the inside until one hut where the taxi parked. He persuaded us to book him for the way back and we agreed.

The weather was very hot that day, we walked to one of attraction where there were gigantic gargantua gaban sariban megaloman (meaning: freakiiing huuuge!) golden dragon. I think it’s a theatre, and there were shows about hell and others, the speaker outside the building was broadcasting a story in Vietnamese that we couldn’t understand. We walked around there for a short break to the loo, walked back to the main road to go to the nearest temple before decided to rent bicycle.

First, we tried to rent single person bicycle, we saw someone riding it and there were a row of it in the bicycle rental shop. But somehow they said it’s not for rent. The only type available is double rider plus one pillion bicycle. We tried to rent one for each, and somehow lost in translation because the shopkeeper kept insisting we took two bicycles or even put three of us into one bicycle.

Finally, with a lot of hand gestures, drawings, sketches and even animated actions, we managed to get her to understand that we wanted one bicycle each. How did it feel to ride 2+1 bicycle? Well, it’s basically the same except now you know how dragonflies feel, or praying mantis, or truk gandeng, or someone very very bohay. (translation: gaban sariban megaloman gargantuan long ass) Stop me. Please.

Bicycle is way to go! I have to admit that the infrastructure for the gigantic park is impressive. They have road bigger than what Pontianak has before I moved to Jakarta. They have road signages more elaborate than many parts of the world. The whole park consists of zoo, temple, theatre, artificial beach (!), huge rock formation, theme park etc. I think I am a very poor representative for Dai Nam, if you want to find out more, look at this link (http://travel.vietnamwebsite.net/post/118/), they actually have much more kind of everything including world in small scale, warm water stream, even have biggest artificial mountain range.

If you really want to go there and enjoy everything, it’s better to plan ahead, unlike us who did it without proper planning because of last minute destination, and end up scrambling around left-right-up-down as we wish. For our defense, the park looked quite bare, there were landmarks and attractions far and between, and not so much connecting recommendation or information from one place to another, perhaps because the park is still new and everything is under development. Visitors could go around by walking, cycling, park’s vehicle or blue trams. There were very few cars and trams, and few motorcycles.

We cycled around, it was nice to have big road with bicycle as the highest order. We could go wild! Basically I can conclude what we did was cycling around, passing by temple, river, mountain, and we went to the zoo.

Going to the zoo might be a mistake because everything reminded us about work. Actually, the zoo has quite impressive animal collections including a lot of white peacocks, Bengal Tigers, lions, sun bears, hippo and they also have gigantic white tigers. What I didn’t like and see was the animal show that use monkey in dress (like topeng monyet). Anyway we didn’t spend a lot of time there because we were kind of rushing (afraid to get caught in Vietnam peak hour!) and we also went around the zoo with our bicycles. Indeed, we could bring or rent bicycle to go around, it’s good because the zoo has very low visitor traffic so it’s not obstructing one another and basically we were quite lazy to walk around when it was so hot and we had spent sometime cycling up and down outside.

After lunch in the zoo, we had not much time left and decided to head back to the city. The one hour long trip left me and one of my friend collapsed in deep sleep in the cab, while my other friend had to sit in front and try to be awake. Poor her.

Although touristy artificial attraction like this is not really my cup of tea, it’s quite recommended for those who want some all-in-one instant destination. It does have quite nice ‘artificial-natural-landscaping’ and also has a lot of cultural theme attractions that represents Vietnam.

Went back hotel to shower and relaxed abit before going out to embrace the crazy crowd and ocean of motorcycle.

I don’t remember how we got there, but we were at Orchard Road of Vietnam. It was impressive, the crowd was crazy. There were buildings, malls, three sections x three lanes road, and lots and lots of Christmas decorations, on the shop front, side walk, all over the roads. Everyone was posing, taking pictures, walking, din din din motorbikes, it was super duper busy.

The challenge is to cross the road, I read that to survive the HCM traffic; or crossing the road, basically what we could do is just go and the traffic would work around you. If you hesitate, you’d spend eternity. My friend also read the same thing, so we convinced our other friend that it was the best thing to do and both of us dragged her across the road.

It was quite scary indeed, to put you neck and leg in front of ocean of moving vehicles, but it worked! The traffic really worked around you, they get used to it. From almost dislocating my shoulder on the first day, my friend had become one of the experts of crossing the HCM street. We wonder of the craziness is everyday things or was it because of Christmas. It seemed like Vietnamese, especially youngsters, embrace Christmas. They had fun and every decoration was a hit. I had headache listening to the rich musical theme, din din din, dong dong dong, poet poet, street sellers, people talking, and everywhere, you were brushing shoulders with one another. Some (mostly older ladies) didn’t hesitate to grab your hand or shoulder to get by.

I was stressed with the waffle seller, they have this 2 low basket connected with a long stick where they carried through the shoulder (very common mode of street seller in most of South East Asian country). We couldn’t really see on eye point that they actually had these two baskets below so anytime I could hit my legs to the basket while we tried to moved around in between the crowd. Why particular waffle sellers? The catch was, they put the waffle makers (those two metal round identical shape pressed together) on the very very edge or sticking out from the basket and we sometimes can see smoke coming, they were hot!
In another word, it would be like pressing you leg to motorcycle exhaust pipe if you didn’t avoid it on time.

We shopped a bit for supper, instant noodle, luncheon meat, some tidbits, water, snack and bread (whew that sound like a lot!) and it was almost closing time for the malls although the crowd never subsided, in fact, getting more. We walked around trying to find way back before settled down for dinner at the famous Pho’ (Vietnamese noodle) that was recommended by other colleague. It was okay, not as fantastic as the first day noodle with insect ingredient.

We went back to the hotel, meddling with the washer and dryer to get our clothes clean while playing Rummy and making instant noodle, usual ritual. We decided that tomorrow we could go for whole day free itinerary of shopping, going through Ben Thanh market in the day time (the main portion of the market only open in day time) and would go to another market located quite a distance away, I kind of don’t remember the name and location, and also visited Saigon Plaza, local products but air-conditioned shopping mall (sounds good!), so there goes all other itineraries about Vietnamese landmark. I kind of forget why we didn’t remember Chu Chi Tunnel. Chu Chi tunnel was used during Vietnamese war back then for local fighters to hide, it’s basically human living in tunnel system which is fascinating. We did discuss it before and decided not to go, but it was in the option if we want to visit HCM unique places. But somehow me or all of us forgot about it.

We watched TV until quite late at night, one of my friends slept first while we had to wait for our laundry to dry, so we played games, chit chat and watched TV until around 3?

Sunday, 19 December 2010

I had quite a bit of spooky dream that night, that the room that we stayed used to be someone’s cemetery, so apparently we were intruding. In the dream I responded by asking do we need to move? The answer came and I was told that it was okay. Weird dream, I remember I woke up a bit feeling a bit uneasy but I could go back to sleep and then it was fine.

We had breakfast again at the pool side. Nothing much but some noodle, sausages, bread and omelete, I skipped the omelete this time.
I like omelete but somehow always find that hotel’s omelete always lame. It’s either they only have chopped onion (I hate raw onion), some tomatoes or tiny tiny invisible ham, the omelete also always very bare and tasteless, we can add in our own pepper and sauce but basically we are tasting the sauce, not the omelete. My favorite was the one I ate in Johor long time ago, it was thick super omelete with very tasty and generous filling, yet everything compliment and didn’t take over the eggs. Wah..slurp..slurp.. anyway, good omelet are not difficult to find, which makes me dislike hotel’s omelete even more. I always try hoping it would be different but it never was.

We take cab to Saigon Plaza, did a bit of shopping but not really shopping people, we ended up in a café and tried out Vietnamese coffee, cappuccino and common green tea ice cream to relax from the weather. Did we eat? Yes, I think so, but couldn’t remember what and when. Anyway, we moved to Ben Thanh market and it was the first time we saw it on day time.

The have clothes, wet market, dry produces and miscellaneous stuff. One unique Vietnamese dry produce was fried lotus seed. It was nice, crispy and fragrant. Last time my friends brought them back so this time they want more. One of them who is very experience in dealing with shopping, chose a stall and sit down, instructed two of us the younger ones who are blur sotongs to sit down too. So begun our shopping.
I found two gems, first is pure tamarin that really kicks. Hmm.. how to say, normally tamarin was either sweeten or mixed so that it’s not too sour, or comes with sugar sprinkle. This one is not, it’s top notch so I like it a lot.
The other one is ginger. Okay, they put some sugar sprinkle but it was great, it ends up not bitter, yet the ginger was still super hot. It would be great for diving trips.. love it!

We ended up with more than few kgs buy in three plastic bags, we still walked to the wet market area and thinking of buying some fresh seafood for our supper. My friend suggested lobster, It was on sale everywhere. Hm… instant noodle lobster would be very nice but personally, I really didn’t want to think of killing it. Anyway, we decided not to buy anything because that means we needed to go back to hotel first. So we continued to another market (forget the name) located quite a distance away. It looked much more messy, really local (Ben Thanh on the other hand is already a bit touristy) but interesting. They has rows and rows of traditional toy shops where you can find various childhood and simple toys. The price were very cheap too, I got a bunch of transforming toy (those robots to cars to heli etc) for a mere two dollars, while my friend bought boxes of assemble-it-yourself transforming toys.

We were quite exhausted and hot, so stopped by an KFC after failed to find street food that we wanted. All of us are sick of Singapore KFC because that is what we eat here for every tea break since there is nothing else in convenient office proximity, but we wanted to try Vietnamese KFC, and enjoyed the air conditioning room after all the hassle and bustle of crowded market. The chicken was quite dry but tasty, my friend started to assemble her toy while the curiosity kept the rest of us looking out at the window, where motorcycle and motorcycle passed by with gigantic load on their back. One motorcycle drop its stuff in the middle of busy road, the magical traffic worked around it. He parked his bike, went down to take the stuff, put them up and there life went on.

We were a bit zombie-like and decided to go back hotel to freshen up.
Played a bit with the toys we got before going to see Water Puppet show, unique Vietnamese show. We had asked hotel to book ticket the day before and they told us the show is 5.30 pm. Originally we wanted to watch it on Saturday but the performance was fully booked. Three of us had gone to Danang and Hoi An together, and each of us had gone Hanoi separately. My two companions had watched the puppet show in Hanoi, while I hadn’t. They said they sacrificed their time and money to accompany me to watch, how nice! Haha...

Happily, we boarded the cab slightly before five, and reached the theatre around 5. The theatre had closed door, it looked a bit deserted at the entrance we figured out that they would not allow anyone to go in yet.
Next to the theatre there was a toy sale, so we went around trying to kill the excess half an hour before proceeded to the entrance again. Much to our surprise, it still looked the same, so we approached the guy who looked like staff. We saw the door being opened before and see row of seats full of audience. The guys quickly escorted us from the side, to the back. We thought, wah, this must be good-seating VIP front tickets with special entrance, maybe front row! But of course, it’s not. We had to enter from behind because we were late, half an hour late. The hotel gave us the wrong timing, the show started at 5 pm, to think that we actually reached on time but didn’t know!

So, quite pissed, three of us sat down and watched the remaining of the show. They had this small water stage in the middle, while there were three people on each sides of the stage, total 6 person. These six sang and played various musical instruments while there were also six people hiding behind the stage while controlling the puppet through stick underwater. The puppets are wooden-painted or plastic dolls that dress up in various clothes and represent various characters. There were some fighting, fishing, playing and dancing scene. I’m very impressed with the singing and musical playing because of the harmony of the rhythm and momentum, so mostly I paid a lot of attention to see the interactions and chemistry among the players, who fill in the gaps between the scene. Those traditional music instruments compliment each other to create glorious sound effect, I would think it was pre-recorded if I didn’t see it in person, the harmony was that great. According to my friends, the water puppet itself was not as good as the original one they saw in Hanoi, where they have more synchronization and challenging scenes. We were also bitten by mosquitoes and being late was not good factors, but overall we were quite happy and upon going out, we went to our next destination, the crazy ‘Orchard Road’ again, since we didn’t have any other destinations to go. It was even crazier than the night before, and wafer seller attacked everywhere.

Tonite we went back to the night market where we had our first dinner, we tried other stall and ordered some food I can’t remember.. I think it’s Pho~ again, it’s Vietnam! Anyway, that is why you shouldn’t delay in writing journal. You will end up like me, unless you have pictures of the food you ate and the places you visited, which I don’t. My point is, I’m lazy but I’m diligent to admit that I’m lazy. Got it?

We strolled around the market and decided to go back to enjoy the hotel, played games and did massive laundry. It’s either there was something not right with the washing machine, we couldn’t use same method to get same result, dry clothes. All the games and plays couldn’t get us through the waiting period and we desperately needed to sleep at 4 am.
As usual, this group is the group where I had the most sleep deprive holiday, because we enjoy same game and I’m grateful for it.
It’s hard to find same insane people like us. Yay for traditional board game!

Monday, 20th December 2010

Last day holiday… Uwaaaaaaakkkkkk… holiday always has to end, that is the part I’m trying to negotiate.
Although we didn’t really have real agenda today, all of us still woke up early. Today we had breakfast at the local place near hotel, ordering with language we don’t understand for the last touch of Pho~. Our leftover laundry was successfully dried, which led us to make some questionable decision. More on that later.

After breakfast (not bad!) we walked further away from the hotel to found a small shopping center, selling mostly stationery. After a while, we decided to split because one of my friend still wanted to buy something while two of us couldn’t find anything much. We walked to other directions and finally walked back and passed our hotel to find another shopping center which sold everything touristy. For Vietnam touristy stuff, one area is basically represents enough because it would be the same. So I guess, what you could find in South Vietnam, it would be the name in Central and North. We didn’t buy anything and went back to hotel so we could do laundry for our current clothes with the goal or bringing zero dirty laundry back.

One and half hour before check out time, we already packed everything, showered and played game, but the plentiful time was apparently still not enough to wash because the machine cocked up again and we ended up with wet laundry, although the hotel actually helped us to dry it for us and our goal was achieved. We put our stuff with the concierge, and headed to Diamond shopping center. It’s high end shopping center, chosen because we didn’t have enough time to go further and didn’t want to really walk under the hot weather because we already checked out from the hotel, no chance to freshen up. We played some game in Time Zone and entertained the idea to play bowling but we were running out of time, so we just headed back to hotel, grabbed a few bites and off we went to the airport.

We did some walk around, see-see-look-look, bought something for our missing forth-kaki and saw some crappy movie from airport TV.
I think this might be the only or one of the very few trips where I went to zero natural attraction, fortunately, the getaway and companionships were good.
We still played card in the plane, with one companion being slightly claustrophobic and the other being aisleseatlover (read slowly to understand) I always sat in the middle, I don’t mind sitting in the middle of two person I’m comfortable with. We played card but the turbulence was quite bad (if the pilot ordered the stewardess to sit down, it should be quite serious à I read this from an article written by a pilot) so we called it quit.

We reached Singapore quite late, around nine plus. Our friend had someone to pick her up, so two of us proceeded to Terminal One to grab some dinner before taking cab home. The trip itself was so-so-okay, but the companions were great! I hope that I have other chances to drive them crazy in future trips.

Until next time. Until next time.

Mount Bromo

2011-01-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Mount Bromo (4-7 November 2010)

Took me so long to write this journal. It’s all about mood, haven’t had writing mood in quite sometimes but here we go.

When I noticed that we have Deepavali as public holiday here, which was a Friday, I thought it would be a great idea to go for short trip with my parents, when I asked my brother, surprisingly he was able to make it too with sis-in-law and my nephew. This would be our holiday trip together since..eh…since…eh..

The options were between Yogyakarta and Bromo. I always like Yogyakarta, at least I have fond memories about it, and I have been wanting to have picture of sunrise in Borobudur for quite sometimes. Even though I had gone twice, there were no pictures in my album without a single human being or pure scenery, so I have to go back one day.

For Bromo, it seems like every Indonesian that I know had been to Bromo except my immediate family. Heck, even my Singaporean travel buddy said he had been there twice, in my face! Anyway, it supposes to be one of the easiest mountain destinations, suitable even for my parents, on the other hand, also offers great scenery.
I want to bring my parent to places where it is difficult for them to go by themselves. My mom likes tour, but I hate it. I prefer to go on my own time and schedule to explore funny or remote places. But then, if I travel with them, I can’t really do that, so it’s either I bring them to those places I had visited or I’ll go some place new that I think it’s easier and less tedious. So, Bromo it is.

4 Nov 2010

Took half day leave and departed for Jakarta to spend a night. There are many things happen from the time we confirmed our destination to the day itself. Mount Merapi, located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, had just erupted. It was a sad news as the eruptions were more than few times and there were many casualties. Thoughts and prayers for the victims and families left behind.

Originally we also wanted to experience night train, from Jakarta to Malang town, East Java. I had experienced taking 12 hours train to Yogyakarta and 18 hours bus to Malang. I still remember the crowd, the restlessness to sleep because we had to keep eye on our belonging, the constant bugging of miscellaneous salesmen, the rigid wooden train seat that has some kind of table that separated us to other passengers. The only way to sleep was either leaning to left or right and spooked my friends or faceplant on the table while sitting on the floor, my choice. And also, the ‘no toilet’ factor because every toilets were occupied for those who didn’t have proper tickets. It was not a bad memory though, because I remember fondly that I still enjoyed the overnight trips and had fun with my friends or family back then. So I am all for experiencing another night train, especially this one was suppose to be a great, premium and comfortable night train.

Not meant to be, just few days or maybe less than that before we were about to buy the ticket, there was a freak horrible accident that take many lives with the very train we planned to take. We would still go for it, but upon learning about the accident, mom didn’t want to, so we switch to flight on Friday morning, and I would spend Thursday night in Jakarta, at least to get some home cooked food, collected something very important that I asked my mom to buy, and on the very short last minute before closing to neighborhood mall, I managed to get 20 comics. Yes, 20! Yahoo!!

5th Nov 2010

Early morning we were already in the airport. Keegan my nephew, was in good mood. In fact, I had no worries travelling with him because I know he likes travelling a lot, to see cars, bus, train, plane, anything that involves vehicle. He can endure hours without any complains, in fact, he always wants more. Proven, this trip we spent a lot of time in the car or travelling from one point to another and I had never seen him in bad mood at all. He was livelier than anyone, cheerful and very well behaved.

The plane was delayed about one hour plus, I think it only took an hour to reach Surabaya. Because of one and other thing, we flew to Surabaya instead of Malang. At the airport, we saw many flights to Yogya being cancelled because of worsen Merapi eruptions.

We touched down at Surabaya about noon time.

We had to find the driver who picked us up. Normally, it’s easy task. But not to be fooled, it was never that simple in Indonesia, at least not for 50% of the time that I experienced. The driver was nowhere to be seen, he told us he wear orange shirt. So we searched high and low for everyone wearing orange. My brother was in contact with him the whole time, we told him where we were, just right outside the arrival gate, next to certain prominent fast food or taxi stand, but he couldn’t find us. There was only one arrival gate I guess, or in any way, there might be less than few and all the points and landmarks were quite clear cut.

But still, it took us almost half an hour to find him. And how we found out? Almost movie-like moment, we actually bumped into him, while still engaging with the phone, and we actually heard his actual voice talking to us instead of from the phone.
And to rub it in our face, his shirt was as grey as the color of the road, the mixture of black and white paint or the colour of rhinoceros. Apparently he meant ‘loreng’, in Indonesian, loreng mean motive. Shirt with motive, something like batik. Oh my!

We boarded the car and headed for our hotel near the foot of Mount Bromo. When we asked, the driver said it would take around 2 hours. We were all in high spirit of holiday, and thought perhaps we could go hotel first, or had our meal nearby hotel.

It was the first time for almost all of us in Surabaya, we saw the scandalous Lapindo incident site, what has now become one of tourist spots (WT…).

The thing about some Indonesian driver, as I had met in Menado also, they are so attentive that it’s scary. So when we talked or asked question to him, he would turn his head around almost 180 degree and give you answer or explanation as long as necessary. Looking back at you, hands still on the wheel, cars still moving without slowing down. So after few tries with same result, we tried not to ask him anything. Anyway, it seemed like he didn’t really know when we asked what are the places we could visit or attractions we could do.

But then! About two hours down the road, where everyone tummy began to make noise, we asked him whether it’s already near. He said no, maybe about one and half hour more or two hours more. Eh…? Had we been travelling in round for the last two hours? To make the matter worse, about almost two hours later, the driver finally almost reached.. the wrong hotel. Aiyoh!! Luckily we stopped by for meal nearby the wrong hotel, at least stomachs had been filled, however, it cost us some precious time.

I love Malang’s Rawon rice.

Around 21 years ago, gasp, alamak!! We had a trip to Malang and Batu town with parents, my brothers, my cousins and three other relatives. I was barely a teenager (another gasp) and my this brother was just a kid. However, it was a memorable trip because of the 18 hour bus ride, pleasant cooling weather, weird but homy motel we stayed, nice places and nice Rawon rice just located outside the motel. The blackish gravy with lump of meat and big-headed bean sprout. It’s awful looking but it’s yummy! For the record, I only really like Malang’s Rawon rice.

To cut long story short, we had our first fix of Rawon, and that was the first time I found out that it is also the place for the mysterious snack food that I liked when I was young. I didn’t even know the name, apparently it’s Brem. What it is again.? Err.. google yourself, I thing it has something to do with apple. (Give me a break, I have a lot of writing to do ;p)

Okay, we finally reached our hotel. It was almost dark. It was a decent apartment style with spacious living and kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathroom. It’s nice but it didn’t feel very homy, maybe because we barely spent anytime in there at all.
Upon dropping in our things, we went out wanting to visit places around hotel vicinity, somewhere not too far. Since the driver couldn’t suggest anything, the hotel suggested that we go Pantai Bentar (Bentar beach). So off we went, together with the determination to find some shop and dinner.

Maybe about 15 minutes in the car, it was dark and started to rain, and it turned into stormy pouring rain we couldn’t even see the road well. Anyway by the time when we felt that it took us too long for reaching Pantai Bentar, we asked the driver. He said we had passed the entrance. What?!? That was our initial response.

Then what, why, where are you keep driving?

He said the entrance was closed so he kept driving to find whether there was another entrance or whether we could see the beach from the road. Ah well. I gave him points for initiative although it was questionable because we were almost double the distance away and it was heavy pouring rain. Initial thought was to just drop by the beach even when it’s raining hoping that they have some restaurant for us to eat and waited whether the rain would stop.

So we U-turn and asked him to go to a small shopping mall we passed by nearby hotel, because it didn’t seem like a good idea to ask him to bring us somewhere else anymore.

The small shopping mall had some food stall and Giant supermarket. We bought water and tidbits, had meal, strolled around but not much things to see, then decided to call it a day. We wanted to have early night because we needed to start moving at 1 am tomorrow.

6 Nov 2011

One am, had quick brr brr shower and we were all ready to go. Hotel had packed some bread for us. As blur as he was, at least the driver was always on time. So we started the drive to a village where we would be transferred to 4W official Bromo Jeep. It was dark, the road was quite winding and we could see mountainous silhouette from far. It kind of reminds me of the night we drove up to Rinjani foot. I miss Rinjani!

Anyway, I had some perception and image in my mind about mount Bromo. I thought we would drive up to a point, then had to trek up to the summit where we could sit down, chose our place and even when there are others, there would always be spot for taking picture. Anyway, everything was wrong. Read below.

When we reached the base to change vehicle, there was no crowd or many activities. There are few villagers coming to us, there were the Jeep drivers or operators. Anyway, it was dark, quiet, a bit of drizzling. We thought we might be the only one going Bromo, since it was not holiday season and also because they actually put Mount Bromo in watch list after the Merapi eruption.

I was quite in alert mode because it seemed like good scenario for things to go wrong. The people kept trying to approach us and our Jeep was not there yet. Anyway, everything was fine, in about 20 minutes we were already inside the jeep with a handsome driver. Mahaha..

Bromo Jeeps are those classis style ‘soap-box’ jeep that I like, but somehow we think it was modified because it had a lot of power to take the terrain. We drove in the dark and started to see other jeep in front and behind us. So we were not alone. In fact, yeah, far from that.

After maybe half an hour drive we had reach the destination. It was still dark. According to the driver, it was only five-ten minutes to the top. On that place, we saw many jeeps and many Indonesian stalls selling instant noodle, coffee, sweater, glove, jacket, scarf etc. It was quite cold but it was pleasant.

We sat down in the shop for one of the best instant noodle and ginger tea in my life. I would say it every time I had them in the right time. :)

From there we could see the valley far away, and I saw a glimpse of orange light and suggested that we started to go up so we wouldn’t miss anything. I was really really surprise that the summit was only a very short distance, few incline and some steps and there we were. And I saw..ocean of people, gazebo, wooden chair, so it’s nothing that I imagine. There were so many people that it’s almost impossible to get good spot. Leaving everyone behind, I tried to sneak in to the front and got a spot at the edge, but I sat down on a rock so I didn’t block the view of people.

The edge has rusty and broken railing, from the railing, there was a one over meter space before the drop to the valley. That was the spot I settled, at least I could get unblocked view of the infamous sight of Bromo. It was quite scary at the edge but at least I didn’t get the instant death feeling like when I was staring at Rinjani valley.

I had never think that it was like that at the summit, it was almost like a concert with swarm of people around you.

Anyway, the weather was a bit cloudy, but we were very grateful that it was very nice compared to rainy yesterday. The sunrise was kind of block by the clouds.. and people’s heads. Gosh… just when the sun started to show, people on my left started to take turn to pose for picture. I had to get lucky shot in between of them appearing right in front of my nose. Arggghhhh… Anyway, I tried my best to get few shots but I must say I’m not satisfied. I kind of miss my personal private time in the summit of Rinjani again, because of the blessing of waking up late and taking too much time reaching the summit I guess..he he..

So after finding out that people would never stop posing in the direction of sunrise, I gave up and found my family, took few pictures together and there we started to make a move.

There were people selling grilled corn, some snack food and flower. There were quite a lot of flower sellers we had to turn down along the way out, so when I saw one leaning on the gazebo pillar, hand stretched out with flower (that’s what it looked like!), I shook my head no. Apparently people behind me did the same, then I heard something that made me burst out laughing on the spot “Orang gak nawarin, kok pada godek-godek.”

The guy was mumbling with annoyance about why people shook their head everytime they saw him, while he didn’t say a word to offer flower to them. The way he said it was funny and it also reminded me of an incident back, coincidentally, when I took the overnight train to Yogya.

Me and my friends were sitting chatting in the train, while at the background was people selling stuff. This one salesman was quite vocal, selling plastic toys, he would shout ‘Toys! Toys! Love your kid, give them toys!’ and made various sound with the toys he was selling, some kretek2 windmill, some battery operated cars etc etc. Just before he passed by our seat, he was quiet for a while and the we heard mumbling, in heavy Javanese accent and very very low voice “Dari tadi jualan gak ada yang mau beli.” Complaining that nobody pay attention or buy anything from him.

You have to hear it for yourself in original accent to find how hilarious it was.

So, everyone has bad day at work.

We took some pictures on the way down, and on the road also. With the persuasion of the handsome and cool driver, mahaha..we all agreed to add the trips to Whispering sand and Savannah field. Originally we were worried if we could make it before hotel check-out time, so because it was still early, barely six o’clock, it’s possible to visit other places.

We drove to the big ‘desert’. When the wind blows, the sand would whisper. I could imagine it although the sands gave us silent treatment when we were there. Anyway, it was only us, so we ran around happily, even mom, who is more allergic to picture taking than me, asked to pose for pictures. I love the volcanic sandy field, the open space and the blue sky, I would love to just sit there and enjoying the morning sun for as long as I wish, but eventually we had to move on.

We proceeded to Savannah field, once again, mom went wild, she ran around upon seeing various wild flowers. Both mom and dad are quite plant person. My sister in law went happily for pictures, and my nephew had his own fun time running here and there that at certain time, I think everyone forgot about him for a while. It was nice cooling weather that add the icing to the cake. I love love love savannah field, and did I mention I love the wind, open space and blue sky and the sun? I think I haven’t.

Along the way to our next stop, crater of mount Bromo, we saw many similar jeeps with various of colors that made Keegan very happy. We also saw villagers here and there carrying stuff or tools to work in the field. I know it’s backbreaking hardwork and tough life, but sometimes I am jealous of their gorgeous work places.
Near the settlement, there were many many horses. We passed by previously, so now we were going there to take horse or walk. Only me and my sis-in-law intended to go up to see the crater, so we chose horse instead of walking up to save us some time.

When we approached the settlement, we could see many many many jeeps parked there in the gigantic open field, and the horses. There was one gorgeous big white horse galloping next to our jeep, upon confirmation that we wanted to ride the horse, guess who got that handsome horse?? Me! Me! Me!

I had never ever ride horse in my life. Never! And for those who know me better, you have good idea about how good I am in balancing. I fall on flat road and good at it. Nuff said.

Riding horse (although not qualified as riding, as we only sit there and the guide will bring the horse around) was actually quite a scary idea for me, but since I was there, I wanted to try. After making sure that I was not too fat for the horse (seriously, I think it’s no joke to climb on your own, let alone carrying someone like me on the back. I am quite meaty ;0)

As said, I got the gorgeous and apparently, quite a wild horse. Upon stepping up to the saddle, I almost regretted it. It was quite scary up there. The feeling was ‘Whoa’ ‘Whoa’ ‘Whoa’. Then things got worse.

We directly started walking across the field, to the direction of the crater, where there are inclines, up hill and finally stretch of 250 steps.

Few meters, my horse started to make noise and kick its front leg. Another WWW (stands for Whoa Whoa Whoa) it calmed down, then few meters it started again, the feeling is ‘WWW OMG I’m going to dieeeeeeeeee’. My sis-in-law shouted something, apparently her guide told her that my horse was anti social, it gets irritated everytime a horse is too near to it. And along the way, there are many many narrow spaces and a lot of horses! So.. is that mean it was going to act like this everytime??

It was certainly not a good feeling, funny but you know, those kind of dry nervous laugh and a flashback of horse riding accidents that I read before in the news. What can I say, newbie wild thoughts. So I did my best to help calm down the horse by sushee susheeee it’s okay and all those. I tried to convince it that I know how it felt, I also don’t like crowd and not social. Bla bla.. I do talk to animal thinking they understand me while they stare at me thinking how crazy I am.

The guide grab the rope tight by if the horse really decided to get wild, I don’t think anything can prevent me from having the adventure of my life galloping to don’t know where. It might be cool when you see my silhouette with the horse like those in lucky luke comic, but when you got clear light on my face, you’d see half of it contain an open screaming mouth and the other half would be two gigantic frightened eyes.

So it’s true, everytime we were near another horse, which was everytime, the horse would get anxious. I don’t know whether it calmed down eventually, or I got used to it, I relaxed and started to enjoy the scenery. It started to drizzling a bit, and I forgot my windbreaker, I got nothing to protect my camera, luckily it was only a few drops. The terrain up was steep sometimes and I pitied the horse. I tried to lean forward to ease the burden, it was a very strong horse and again, the most handsome as everyone was looking at it.

Reaching the foot of the staircase, both of us started to climb up. It looked near but also gave us good pants. (Panting=breath catching, not trousers ;p), we reached the top and saw the crater with white smoke coming out. It was nice up there, but could be quite scary going near the edge. We spent time enjoying the scenery and taking pictures for a while, then started to go down. Our horses were there waiting for us.

I must say, going down was way more scary, as always. At one point the horse acted up quite badly and kicked his front leg quite high on the air, some sort of Zorro thingy. It’s WWWWWW… but my sis-in-law got even worse experience. Her horse got so confident and took a leap down at some point, almost lost its balance, while she hung for dear life. I didn’t see it happening as we were in front.

Beside all those W moments, upon reaching the field, I was quite nice riding the horse. I can imagine running with it would be very fun. Maybe next time, let my blue-blacks from other experiments cured first.

We met the rest, bought delicious fried banana and Keegan already had perhaps almost one hundred collection of all the jeep’s photos in various colors. My crazy brother spent all time taking pictures of every one. Mom and Dad were sitting happily enjoying some light snack. For mom, it’s straight forward, give her beautiful natural scenery, cool weather and she is happy. Throw in wildflower field and she’d be overjoyed.

Time to go back to hotel after transferring back to our car.

We cleaned up, relax for a while, and checked up to continue our journey to Batu town, Malang. Going down 21 years memory lane.

We stopped by for lunch but all in all we went straight. Again, the driver’s time estimation was not accurate but not as bad as the first time.

It was quite a long journey, we slept a bit in the car, when we entered Batu, it was around 2 plus in the afternoon. We saw some places (from the banner though) that we recognized, Selecta, Sengkaling.

We dropped by some roadside mango stall and bought some mango. They have the best and cheapest Harum Manis mango, my favorite of all time.

Upon reaching hotel, we checked in a so called suite with 2 beds, living and kitchen in one big room. It was a nice minimalist new hotel. But it was so minimalist that they wanted to charge us for every additional things like pillows or towels. Not to get it wrong, we stated clearly how many parties we were and they chose us that room to fit everyone, but yet, the facilities was not enough.

Anyway, we went out straight away to the nearest attraction nearby. Argh, I don’t really remember., it’s bioculture thingy, where they have plantations, recreational activities, flower fields etc. So everyone should have something we like.
We went for guava and apple picking in the plantation. The guavas was impressive, those big red delicious guava and the plantation was huge, however, the apple plantation was disappointed, the fruits were small, and even so, the area was small. Then I saw that I probably took over my mom. She jumped over the barbed wire low fence, through the dirty soft earth to get to better fruit trees. Apparently we were not supposed to go there, he he..

It was four o clock. The youngsters (yes, me also) wanted to play flying fox but it was closed at four for an event. Hah? So we quickly changed direction and wanted to go Selecta, Sengkaling or somewhere my sis-in-law suggested, somewhere nice and natural..eh.. I can’t remember!

Anyway, when we checked, they said they were all closed at 4.. Whuaaaatttt?
So there goes the plan! We decided to go makan and visited the Factory outlet next to our hotel then, since there was nothing much we could do. And it was drizzling too.

We made our way back, cleaned up (our slippers are probably few inches thick with all the soil stuck on them), went to factory outlet (nothing) and went out again to have nice delicious dinner at a cosy Javanese restaurant.

After that we decided to call it the night and enjoy the comfortable hotel room and had mahjong battle with my brother and my mom. We played and had quality time chatting until I guess almost midnight.

7 Nov 2010

Going home time…!

We thought we could go somewhere in the morning but apparently the driver told us we need 4 hours to drive to Surabaya airport. So we just woke up later, had relaxing morning, enjoying the pool, had breakfast and drove to the airport. Anyway, we didn’t really have any destination in mind except to find some place for lunch.
Apparently, the driver got traumatized by himself he actually gave much more time that required to reach airport. We reached there in less than 3 hours I guess but anyway we also got traumatized that we didn’t really keen on stopping for restaurant, afraid he got the timing wrong and we’d be late. Aiyoh…. Haha…

There were not many things to see along the way.

Well, This one not for sight seeing, but it’s worth mentioning because it was weird!
So we were crossing a bridge where there was a traffic jam, so we were moving in turtle speed. Then on the side, next to the canal, there was a guy peeing. Instead of facing the greenery, he decided to face to the bridge with traffic jam.

People were stuck in the car. We got nowhere to look. We caught off guard.

Luckily, he was a distance away so no details were revealed. Gosh!

We just had our lunch at the airport. All the while we were worried. Since the day before, Mount Merapi and the ash got so bad that Yogyakarta airport had been shut down, the ashed spread widely and affected aviation industry in other area up to Jakarta. Malaysia, Singapore had stopped all the flights going to Jakarta.

I’d be going back to Singapore, while the rest of my family would go back Jakarta. So we were worried that we might not make it home that day. If I had to stay back myself, it should be alright, but it would be boring and I had to take another day off which I didn’t have.

The planes were delayed without announcement for one hour, but we finally boarded our planes and reached home safely.

Although we spent a lot of time travelling and didn’t really go anywhere but Bromo, we were very lucky to have good weather when we were there compared to the rest of drizzling or rainy days. It was also a great time to reunite with my families and finally, I had been to Bromo :).

Thanks for my brother who made all the arrangements. :)

Vietnam: Hoi An & Da Nang

2009-12-04T01:02:00.000-08:00

Vietnam: Hoi An and Da Nang
27-30 Nov 2009
My travel companion: ABC: Aikheng, Boon & Cham

From the past journal in our first trip together, Aikheng requested that I made the journal more personal. I hardly mention names in my journal, to protect the privacy of my traveling companions, but I would make exception. Anyway, I only share the journals to a bunch of friends whom I really know in real life.

I’m quite disappointed with some of my pictures but the trip had been challenging as my traveling companions had the determination to put me into their pictures so alert I must had and shaky hand I would have.

27 November 2009

Our original plan to stay overnight in the airport was scrapped, so I had to take cab at around 5 am. Doing overtime often, hubby has contact of midnight cabbies, who waive call charges and operate in Mercedes, the more comfortable taxi. They are good because all the driver are friendly, helpful and can read passenger chatting mood. Some cabby would give you the whole load of political views while you struggle not to vomit because of motion sickness, some would tell you they are professional chef but opt to drive a cab for fun, even though they have certain disease that could make them drop dead anytime while driving. As someone who always avoid taking cab whenever I can, I’m grateful. Furthermore, the cabbies are really punctual that they always come 5 minute before the agreed timing.

Reaching airport around 5.35, we shared a very light breakfast in Yakun, then walked to the bus stop where hubby took his way back home. I proceeded to upstairs where my colleagues were already waiting. So everyone was on time or early.

This is the second trip made with this group, my colleagues and boss. Our department only consists of four people, and amazingly we click like..uh..clicker. I looked forward to the trip.

Reaching Vietnam, we proceeded to the smooth immigration process before collecting Aikheng luggage. Outside, representative from our hotel had already waited for us. The journey from Da Nang road to Hoi An took around 35 minute. Along the way, there were many serious upcoming development; Villas, hotels, resorts along the coast line. There must be some huge plan to develop this area in the future; we suspected there will be casinos and all supporting amenities.
We saw memorial tower, Marble Mountain, stadium etc along the way, other than that, Da Nang looked a bit deserted. There were no shops and few houses far and between.

Yellow bus!

Electric pole

Our hotel looked like a nice resort type of accommodation. There was pretty and clear swimming pool in the middle.

Our deluxe room was spacious, on the contrary of what I thought it would be. We booked one room because it can accommodate four of us, and it looks good from the pictures. The two sides of room were separated by shelf partition. On one side we had two single beds, the other side we had one king sized bed. We have one shower+toilet area and another toilet and basin without shower. Both are spacious.

There comes the surprise.

When we looked at the picture on the website, we saw the bathroom picture looks like it had been taken from outside, we could see the bath tub, basin and toilet. There is no way the picture could be taken from inside regardless how wide the camera angle. We joked about the possibility of the wall-less toilet, or open toilet. Okay, it’ not as bad a open toilet, but not better, it has gigantic gigantic clear glass to the bedroom. Height starting from edge of the bathtub to much higher above the head. We stood there mesmerized, alamak, what an inconvenience. There were curtains from outside, but when we tested it out, we could still see the shadows, in detail.
Four of us scrambled around and dragged the bamboo partition and cover it with one of the boy’s external bedsheet, we looped it around here and there, to make sure that we could enjoy our time in the bathroom without feeling paranoid.

Imagine what the shadow would cast..

Clear glass...really clear!

We asked the hotel reception about where could we go. Since almost half day was gone, we wanted to just hang around the town, using the best of everything, our foot. We walked out to the hotel and started to realize that we were hungry. Well, at least I was. We stopped by a small restaurant called White Rose, recommended by hotel receptionist. Apparently white rose is the name of the delicacy there. It’s just wanton or mini dumpling, not really sure how to describe. Anyway, this restaurant didn’t have menu, they only showed us a travel guide book in Japanese language. Eh? I think they only served two dishes; white rose and another, let me call it Vietnamese Pizza because I don’t know the name. It’s crispy triangular shape with topping like sauce, onion, prawn. Both were delicious, we started to appreciate Vietnamese food. I always thought that Vietnamese food was good from my previous trip to Hanoi. But somehow, Da Nang and Hoi An food are different. I couldn’t find the famous Vietnamee beef noodle, instead they served something like instant noodle with beef. There was no delicacy that I recognized and the taste was not fantastic, we also tasted quite a horrible food few distance away from White Rose where we had to wait for one hour plus for the food to be served. The uncle who owned the place looked very tired and pitiful.

Walking along the town of Hoi An, there were shops were selling repeating things; lantern, silk, tailor made cloth, antiques, bags, mama shop (provision shop), tailor, tailor, tailor. The road itself was only around 3 meter wide cramped with buildings on both sides. Old buildings and architectures dominated the whole streets. There were interesting ‘pergola’ roof consisted of barely there structure with numerous plant growth that gave interesting, rustic but fresh look. We didn’t shop at all, because none of the things were suitable to us. We were even pondering what should we do with the free shirt from hotel. So, each of us would get free shirt from one of the shops called Southern Silk, made to measure. Of all monkeys on earth, we probably one of those few who are not suitable/would never/oddly out of character to wear silky shirts. (Apparently the free shirts are formal/office type shirts…fiu.. it’s more relatable to real life, ha… I asked Aikheng to use my share since I still have so many ‘formal’ shirts I wore on my previous jobs and it only collects dust now that I’m working in my current office.)

We strolled around the wet market. We always stumbled to wet market. I suppose if we were to stay longer, we would start to shop for cooking. People around us walked, rode bicycles or motorcycles or Vietnamese cyclone. I like their signature bamboo hats that we could see every so often. I guess it’s much much more comfortable and convenient for tropical weather, too bad it’s only widely used in Vietnam. I wouldn’t mind wearing those in photography outing or sailing or anything that expose me to long and hot sun. As I don’t like to wear a cap in hot weather, bamboo hat would be light and ‘airy’, however, I would look like alien if I wear it in Singapore.

Nice thing when we strolled on the street was the music. Along the street we could hear music with good quality audio system. Sometimes the music sounded very sad and depressing also, depended on how we looked at it. We patronized one and only DVD shop in Hoi An, with not many collections to chose from. We would watch the movies at night in the hotel, to accompany our Scrabble routine. The DVD shop also sells pirated book. Yah, pirated, like photocopied.

Painting shop with beautiful creeper..

Wooden whistle seller

Colorful corner shop

Fruit seller

Love how this lady came into the background with Vietnamese flag

This is where the music came from along ancient road of Hoi An

Wooden stamp seller

Lantern shop

Let's burn VCD in the kitchen.

Going back to chronological story, I felt a bit fooled by the hot weather. I thought end of the year is going to be cooling in Vietnam, at least wind wise. But we had this shiny strong sun on our fore head and only a little bit of wind.

Beside walking along the road, we went to the Thu Bon riverside, a boatman approached us and offered scenic ride with his boat privately for four of us. Costing 150K Dong, equivalent to $12.5, it was a reasonable price for one hour tour. So we boarded the boat and I could feel our excitement.
The river was murky yellow in color, we saw rows of houses, shops, boats along the riverside, and even a grandma peeing into the river.

I liked how the wind blew, finally, and I always like taking boat. The murky river and wooden boat reminded me of childhood, back back back then. Every half a year I would accompany my grandma to visit a temple in far far away island; we had to take this type of wooden boat and sailed through murky yellow river. I always like the journey, eventhough I would be the loner kid sitting at the edge of the boat front, squeezed a fingertip of tissue paper and watched it subsided in the water. I never gave my grandma any noise or trouble, as long as I was within their sight (which was hard to miss in that small boat) she would happily chatting with her friends, those aunties with loud voices.

So, I think, I always like taking boat, as long as it doesn’t give me seasick. If I’m moody, throw me into a sampan and let me row it away, I’d be fine, I think.

We saw a small fishing boat with an elderly couple doing fishing with nets. Upon seeing us, the old man happily threw his net to the river and picked it up, over and over again. I didn’t take much picture because I was worried that they might not like it as I myself a picture sensitive monkey. Unbeknownst to us, they asked for money. If only I knew…

The boatman bought us to smaller river where we saw a bunch of birds on the tree and bunch of ducks playing in the water, some villagers harvesting vegetables, lots and lots of lonely wooden boat. The boatman kept pressuring us to take a longer route by paying a bit more, but we declined.

After that nice little getaway, we alighted at the same place we boarded and walked into the wet market.

We stopped by a local ‘alfresco’ coffee shop and had our drinks. It was mostly patronized by locals and full of smoking customers. The place was a bit dirty and other patrons were staring at us. Most of the time, we always saw foreign/Western tourists, there were not many close to none Asian tourists around Hoi An.

We sat there for a while trying to figure out how to walk back to hotel, circling through the longer route in search for… instant noodle and luncheon meat! Our almost ‘must-have’ menu, after we got spoiled by Kuching trip. Apparently, we couldn’t really find decent-sized convenient shops around, let alone supermarket. The only mama shop that sold can foods had can-beef only, and from the look of it, it might have been expired since… ugh…since…since?

The afternoon walk was quite pleasant, the weather was not as hot, along the way we could actually saw riverside again and some villager’s life.

We had our dinner in hotel restaurant, while waiting for it to be served, we played pool together. Cham went to shower; it was still a new idea to us whether it would be inconvenient to shower in the perverted bathroom, although we managed to cover everything.
I had seafood fried rice, the safer choice, and it tasted alright. The rest had steak, noodle and spaghetti (if I remember correctly) and they said it’s ‘acceptable’.

We closed our day early that day and soon all of us were in part of room belong to the ladies as that was the place with TV. We started watching the movie Aikheng bought, Twilight, New Moon and 2012. I didn’t intent to watch the vampire sagas at all, but it didn’t matter because most of the time I spent thinking about our Scrabble moves or read Natgeo magazine brought by Boon.
Aikheng bought us Scrabble dictionary each as early Christmas present. I have to say that four of us are quite a rare found. Except cards and lack of opportunity, my only ‘board game’ kaki were my cousin and my best friend from Junior High School, but I have never ever play ‘live’ Scrabble with anyone although I want to. So to find these three kakis who happen to work together and enjoy traveling together is quite a miracle. : )

Sorry for fans, Twilight and New Moon proved to be as lousy as what I thought it would be. I know the demographic of the movies is aimed at teenager, but I also thought that adults can relate to the touching weepy romance like those so-called Taiwanese or Korean or Fly Me To Polaris style. It’s not. Maybe because I watched it half-heartedly, the romance felt like forced and the actings were crappy. Everyone also booed at 2012, we didn’t get the special effect from the tiny TV, with the cliché story plot, nothing is left.

I didn’t know what time we slept, it must be not so late but not so early.

28 December 2009

We booked transportation to My Son, one of the Unesco Heritage that we wanted to see. It cost USD5 for the coach to go there and USD7 for coach+boat back to the hotel.

My Son means Beautiful Mountain, not the term for affectionate offspring.

After early breakfast in the hotel, we were careful not to eat any bladder provoking food, especially after hearing Aikheng umbrella related toilet break in the middle of Angkor Wat ruins on her previous trip to Cambodia, we decided to under-eat than to over-eat.

The coach was huge, and we were the first passengers. At first, four of us scrambled inside the bus, but were told that we have to sit together because we would pick up more passengers. I thought it was a bluff, there wouldn’t be so many passengers, but I was wrong. The bus was packed, we had to go from hotel to hotels to pick up tourists, mostly Westerner before we proceeded to the journey to My Son. It was not so fun waiting in the warm coach for accumulative one hour plus especially when there were late passengers. We could have play in the hotel, woke up later or anything for the wasted one hour plus. Luckily Aikheng lent me her mini-mini Ipod so I could at least listen to music. She has collection of Oldies, the 70teenth music which I like.

Anyway, along the journey, I felt like straggling the driver or tied his hand firmly to the steering wheel to prevent him from pushing the horn button. He horned every minute, to almost every pedestrians and fellow road users. It was loud and unpleasant.

Reaching My Son, we walked a bit of distance before the first ruin. The ruin looked nice, but there were so many people around that it’s difficult to take nice pictures. I skipped the tour guide explanation as I wanted to get away from the crowd as soon as I could. I found a nice spot behind the ruin and nice area where I could take the beautiful green moss that grew on the ruin.

Architectures, ruins, sculptures are not my main interest in phototaking, because I don’t really know how to get good shots and appreciate them. Anyway after a while I felt a strange difficulty to breath started sinking in. I don’t know what happened but after I sat for awhile and it was gone.

Boon was also lurking around in quieter area as he doesn’t like the crowd also. Aikheng and Cham were listening intently to our tour guide explanation. Me and Boon tried to sneak to other guide with much less people to hear his stories.

In the trip I realized I’m a lonely bench mania. I took a lot of picture of lonely bench in the past, I even made a plan to purposely take a bus and alight somewhere where I saw a very lonely lonely bench. But all the time I didn’t really know that I have soft spot for them. Looking back at the pictures of this trip and others in the past, I think I’m really a sucker for lonely bench, lonely boat, and boat front. I also love human in candid (not tourist) doing daily activities.

We walked a bit to other ruins, and after the third one, we got separated from the rest, walking through a ‘forested’ area where there were only four of us. I felt much much better without so many people around. We saw insects and wild flower but mostly it was just a peaceful forest walk which remind me of my beautiful uni.

According to Cham and Aikheng, My Son ruin is nothing compared to Angkor Wat. For me, I’m happy to be there and saw the history of the past that consists of Vietnamese, Javanese and Hinduism historical story. I’m sure Angkor Wat is much much bigger but unless I know the story of each and each, after a while, ruins look the same to me.

We took a rest and ate ice cream before boarding the bus again.
I guessed both guys dozed of, me and Aikheng just enjoyed the scenery, trying desperately to conceal the noisy horn. We saw many things along the road, two butterflies bang into our bus, a chicken ran under the wheel (I like to think it survived) and a man chose to stand next to the road instead of bush while doing his pee-pee. Alamak..

We alighted in the middle of somewhere and moved to boat. The boat was not bigger than what we took yesterday, we sat in rows and soon the crew started to serve lunch. I didn’t realize until that point lunch was included. It was a small plate of plain rice with vegetable and meat pieces here and there. Although it’s far from luxurious meal, it was quite tasty.

The boat journey was boring, because it never traveled near the shore so we only saw the same scenery, yellow water with patches of sand. The only ‘exciting’ thing to see was a small boat with a couple, the man was busy scooping water from the river. We thought they were sinking; apparently he was washing the boat? I prepared my camera since a distance away but it took forever for our boat to reach them. I guessed Boon had fallen asleep, indeed, the wind and nothingness was kind of forcing us just to doze away.

We stopped at a village where they do boat and wood crafting. Except the unfinished boat, there were some small shops here and there. After one small round, four of us already gathered near the boat, not knowing what to do. Aikheng went inside the boat to escape from the sun, and there of us ended up playing throwing rocks. It started from harmless ‘who got the furthest’ and soon the boredom drove us to more violent mode ‘let’s hit that boat’.. there were rows and rows of boat tied up near the edge of the riverside. Boon and Cham had their throw, Cham missed, Boon threw too far. When it was my turn, Aikheng asked us to get back quickly before anyone caught us as everyone was approaching. We ran to the boat like children caught stealing candy.

Along the way back, again, there was a couple on fishing boat demonstrated fish netting and then asked for money.

We walked along the street again, and stopped by at an eatery when we shared various foods, including instant noodle with beef and chicken etc etc and each of us ordered fresh coconut.
Another shop we went regularly was the Southern Silk, for free shirt matter. First time we were there, we met a cute puppy. As cute as it was, it didn’t really interact like normal puppy. After cuddling it for a while, Cham also did the same, sometimes to prevent the puppy from running away, he pulled its tail. Ops..lucky it never lau-sai.. I suppose Aikheng is not interested with dog, she stayed far away and busy browsing for the tailor-made shirt.

It was quite a handful because if we let it down, it would run as if it wanted to cross the road. I’ve seen far too many dog accidents including my own; I sweated trying to prevent it from going out. Apparently the dog’s home was in the opposite road. He was ‘borrowed’. No wonder. We also met a very pretty girl who accompanied to chase after the dog when the rest were busy doing the fitting.

The puppy had fearful look and seemed to be scared with Boon. It went into serious resistant mode when I tried to pass the puppy to him. It leaned backward and backward and backward until there is no space, whahahahaha…I wonder why, earlier when Boon held it, it was actually fine. Perhaps the puppy realized the level of his monkeyness. Hi hi hi hi hi…

I felt relieved that I didn’t need to do measurement. It was actually alright, I just didn’t really like the touchiness.

Our subsequent trip to the shop, we didn’t see the puppy anymore. Hai..how I miss having a dog.
From the shop, we could take free shuttle bus back to the hotel although it’s quite nearby.
We hung around playing pool. Original plan was to go out again at night, but Aikheng didn’t want to. Three of us decided to just play pool and ate in the hotel again. I guess touristy tour is not a suitable mode for us, it’s tiring and I think kind of boring without the thrill of explore the place ourselves without whole load of bus. We were cracking our heads deciding what to do tomorrow, afraid that this would turn into boring ‘don’t know what to do’ holiday.

We explored a few option, Marble Mountain, as much as we long for the word ‘mountain’ we crossed it quickly from our option because it sounds like a commercial place like My Son, where you have to go with bunch of people, walking the designated path and herd to local shops. It was not everyone’s cup of tea. Hue city, transportation to go there would cost us USD$110 and it doesn’t look very appealing except few ancient architectures.

My Khe, Cham Island, Son Tra peninsula was in our possible list but again, those places look like commercial places. Hotel receptionists also couldn’t recommend anything to us but Hue City and Marble Mountain.

Finally we decided to take a one-way cab to Da Nang and just get lost.

So, that night, after shower, each of us took one corner of the king-sized bed with our legs expanded to various locations; side table, cabinets, chairs and floor. We watched Bruce Willis’s Surrogate, fondly referred as Surrogator as how Aikheng called it because that’s the best we got from watching the TV sideways.

I didn’t feel tired, but fifteen minutes into the movies, I drifted away to dream land. I dozed off probably half an hour before I got nose block. Nothing could relieve my nose, I looked around and realized that Boon and Cham were not moving, Ai Kheng was definitely asleep. I continued watching for a while because the nose block prevented me from drifting back to sleep. After a while, because of noise I made, Aikheng was awake. I dozed off again, and next thing I heard was Aikheng making noise…Euoooy!! Wake up! The show is over, everyone asleep, nobody watching!
We all scrambled to get up and ended up laughing, it’s either we were too tired or the show was too dull. We still laughing when we turned off most of the light to get back to sleep, it was barely midnight then suddenly there was a black-out. Luckily, the aircon and fridge was not affected (what a convenient) and again, after the laugh subsided, we drifted to dream land.

29 November 2009

Da Nang it is. First destination was Cham’s Museum. Probably Cham’s ancestor, probably not. However, it was quite so-so as all it has was big pieces of sculptures. Me and Boon are not fans of museum, especially sculpture, the one in Kuching was quite interesting with many local and traditional things to see. I guess Cham and Aikheng like museum as they were still go around taking pictures.

We went out and walked along Han river and my mood was picking up upon seeing the sky, water and feeling the wind. I felt a bit hungry, and not a moment too soon, we crossed the street attracted by a banner, recognized two words “Buffet” “50.000 dong”. He he..

Apparently, the buffet was for breakfast. After checking directions, we decided to have lunch there anyway.
It was our first restaurant kind of luxurious meal. We tried the asparagus and I think sweet and sour soup? Or what soup? I only remember it was good. Set aside the mispelling of crab.

The restaurant is classy and modern-beautiful inside. The meal was good too. From the window we could see the city of Da Nang, the bridge we intended to cross and Son-Tra Peninsula, too bad it looked like Son-Tra was too far for a day by foot.

We walked to look for ‘Supermarket’ directed by hotel receptionist. It’s not that we had anything particular to buy, but at least we had direction. So we started to walk through wet market, a miscellaneous market housed inside a building (Something like Pasar Kopro in Jakarta). Kids playing football on the open plaza, rows and rows and inner-tire shoe sellers. The slipper looked good, remind me of African Massai slipper style, by upon touching the slipper, the shop keeper would be too interested in you and patronizing, as we didn’t want all the trouble we just walked away.

The ambience around was modern compared to Hoi An. Electronic, bakery, toy, DVD shops were all over the place. After long walk, we saw big building with ‘Big C’. Aikheng recognized the Big C as a supermarket chain from Thailand, all of us were too eager to walk in the aircon building. We finally found ‘civilization’. Although we are not townies, I guess we desperately wanted to shop? Then I saw my favorite PetShop, it’s actually bag shop. Bags, wallet, apron, baby matrass in cute colorful design, yet the bags are hardy (my first criteria of bag). The designs are cute without being tacky, it’s also my mom’s favorite and my sis-in-law loves it also.

We made an appointment to meet each other again in KFC (there’s a KFC!) in two hours where I quickly browsed the shop. Apparently Cham and Boon were also interested in buying something for souvenir. The bags that I bought were much cheaper than Singapore. We spent sometime there and walked out with happy face, it’s weird that we felt happy to find something worth spending.

There were not many things to see in the mall. After scattered for a very short while, three of us met again and entered the upstair supermarket together. We had to surrender our backpacks and not allowed to bring anything in. Luckily they put the bag in the locker, I kind of worry to have my camera bag being tossed around. They didn’t allow Boon to put his pouch, but didn’t allow him to enter the supermarket without sealing his pouch inside a transparent plastic. Weird. We walked together from aisle to aisle looking for something interesting to buy. We finally found luncheon meat but it was our last night already, so we only bought some chewing gum. After paying, we went out and found Cham, who got separated inside. Cham told us he saw Aikheng and wanted to look for her, we made an agreement to meet at coffee shop downstair but before we made a step, we saw her. So four of us proceed to the coffee shop, Highlands Coffee, it’s a smoking coffee shop with Starbuck kind of pricing. Each of us ordered some coffee, and soon we hit the street again.

We dropped by the Pasar Kopro, when Aikheng and Boon bough some lotus seed snack. While walking past the stall, we kept getting molested; the shopkeepers would try to lure us by grabbing or touching our hands. It was not comfortable but as long as I walked with Boon, I was quite safe. Seems like the aunties like to grab him more. Ha ha… don’t know about Aikheng, didn’t have chance to ask her yet, but Cham was free from molestation. His theory is not to look interested with what they sold. But if a glance is what they consider as interested, then what should we do? Maybe we walked a bit slower, that’s why.

We hit the street again, soon we reached the bridge, walked to the traffic and to the big plaza where children were playing. It was hard work for the feet, but we had our spirit high and cheerful along the way. The best way to get around a foreign city is by foot, where you can see everything and be part of it. We walked to the riverside, the other side where we came from.

Han River in Da Nang

After work on the busy bridge - Da Nang

My buddies

Stretch of hotels along Han River

After having our walking fix and free-tourist day we hailed a cab to bring us back to Hoi An. It costed 300K dong, we passed by Da Nang beach (not sure which one) along the way. The beach looked good but it was crowded, anyway Cua Dai beach in Hoi An was in our ittenary tomorrow.
I loved that we used natural ventilation for the cab, felt like putting my head out and sticking out my tongue to enjoy the wind. It started to get dark; the circle of sun was around the same with Indonesia, where the sun sets around 6 pm.

We had been planning to see Hoi An and night and asked the cab to drive us to Le Loi street, the street we always walked pass. The lights at night was interesting, but we didn’t see any more life than in the day. We walked for a while before deciding to dine at a roof top of antique looking restaurant.
The restaurant looked rustic but cozy. We had a table in the roof garden but had to promise that we would leave the place before 7.30, as it had been reserved. We had more than one hour, unless they cooked slowly, we had plenty of time.

Aikheng had small chat with a table of two Americans next to us. (We saw these guys again along the street, in the shops afterward and in the hotel!) Again, everywhere we turned, it’s always Western Tourists or local. As it was our last night, we decided to order beer to share. All the while, Aikheng was the one who drank beer and the rest of us settled with coke or juice.
We cheered and wished for health, happiness and many future trips. Just as we were about to part our glass, Boon said ‘constipation’. He was talking about something else. I hope this one would not accidentally come true. Ha ha..

The beer was light and quite nice. I’m not a drinker, the last time I drank for fun was many many years ago. Our foods arrived, it didn’t taste as good as the lunch, but it was acceptable. We didn’t find good local food this time, seemed like the food here is very much different with Hanoi, so local mixed with Western food was probably a better choice.

Night view of Hoi An ancient street

We strolled around the night river again and decided to stop by Southern Silk to check whether their shirts were ready.

Tonight was the last battle day for Scrabble and although it was a much more hectic day than yesterday, we felt less tired. I think the more we active, the less the fatigue. Weird, but that’s us.
We re-watched Surrogator, Angel and Demon and not so funny Funny People while playing. We made instant noodle, minus luncheon meat. With Aikheng and Boon, we could be sure that there was always supply of instant noodle and hot tea/coffee, how nice. I was only running around trying to offer help but most probably I was useless.

The battle ended at almost four, and because we had to wake up early we decided to sleep.

30 December 2009

Beach day! No shower in the morning as we prepared to get dirty and went out early. We went out for breakfast and took shuttle bus to the beach. Original plan was to walk, as the receptionist told us it’s only 5km away. Seemed like their 5km stretched for so far we were grateful that we listened to Aikheng who insisted that we took bus.

Reaching the beach, we were, or at least I know I was, like a monkey being released from the cage. The beach was gorgeous, a gigantic, gargantuan, huge patch of fine brownish sand along the coast as far as you can see. Without wasting a moment, I took out my slipper and walked to the water. How I miss playing in the beach. Since picking up diving, I couldn’t remember playing in the beach anymore. To welcome the wave and let it carries you upside down.

Well, I couldn’t do so, we didn’t have much time and I didn’t want to get wet and scared everyone on the way back.

It’s nice standing in the middle of water as the wave crashing to the shore and pulling back again, it feels like you are the one moving. Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot and looked like over there Boon was enjoying it too. Aikheng and Cham couldn’t really understand the ‘shiokness’ and made fun of us by writing various terms and names on the sand pointing to us.

We ran, played sword, played rock throwing, tree bark throwing, sprint competition, drawing on the sand, collecting shell, meeting up with friendly dog, picking up rubbish, jumping while kicking the sand, following stranger’s footstep, football with coconut (well, I was the only one playing this because the rest were smart enough to know that it hurts to kick a coconut, but it’s not that bad, really ;p)

The younger ones were playing like there is no tomorrow as we were having fun, the sun was pleasant, hot but not sticky or humid, it was a perfect day. Our skins got burnt pretty fast. The older ones prefer to move around and taking pictures and both of them were not so willing to get their feet wet.

After a while, I think Cham and Aikheng were bored waiting for us as they started to slowly walk back, snapping pictures and drawing on the sand along the way. Boon and me were still busy innovating new games to play while at the same time walking back.

It was a nice beautiful morning.

We only spent around two hours plus on the beach as we were running out of time. The van picked us up, but except Aikheng, three of us requested for it to drop us half way near the paddy field, where we would then walked back to the hotel. We strolled along the road, went inside the paddy field although not for long, to see the snail, dragonfly, grasshopper, water buffalo, lonely boats and school of ducks. Every grass we kicked, there would be bunch of grasshoppers jumping around, so many of them. It’s a nice village feeling that not everyone care to enjoy.

I couldn’t take any picture as I left my camera back in the hotel. It was a pity but I didn’t regret it. Had I bought it with me, I wouldn’t enjoy the beach while carrying the bulky backpack that is not supposed to go in contact with the water.

The sun was shinning bright and it was digging hot into the skin. We started to walk faster as we were getting near the time for check-out while three of us still need to shower and did last minute packing.

After checked out, we still had sometime to go to town for lunch and short walk, then backed to hotel for a couple of pool games before taking van to the airport.

Overall, Hoi An is quite a sleepy town. If you plan to have relaxing trip, it’s not a bad choice but if you like free and easy activities, there are probably not so many things you can do. It could be a good idea to rent bicycle or motorbike and explore around the town and everywhere on your own, then Hoi An can be a much more interesting place. I’m sure it works for Da Nang too. It’s more fun to just go out and get lost. : )

Cheers for health, happiness and many future trips minus constipation.

JAKARTAAAAAH.... and Depok

2009-08-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

JAKARTA (11-18 JULY 2009)
P.S: All human photos. So, no photos posted here.

It has been two and a half years since the last time I went back Jakarta to visit my family, Chinese New Year 2007.

I dropped by for a night only in March 2009, for a transit between Singapore-Balikpapan-Berau. Chinese New Year 2008 we celebrated it here, my little brother already moving here, and the other young brother came for visit. CNY 2009 I didn’t go home, decided to shift the schedule in July to meet my big brother who is coming home with his family during mid year, so that we can reunite together.

As usual, I went Jakarta alone since hubby’s family is here already. I went back at the same time with Dad technically, however, he took different flight at different terminal since his ticket was bought at last minute.

The day before my flight, Friday, 10th July, two of my colleagues had half day, one for Army re-service, the other had to attend seminar somewhere in town. Anyway, I had to rush to finish a work I targeted so that I could go home with peace in mind. Around 2.30pm I guessed, there was a blackout in the office. I was just finished my work, and in the process of printing it when it happened. Blackout was very common in my office back then in Batam, but here, it’s major, especially when it wasn’t restored in few minutes. There was problem with Singapore Power Unit, not problem with office, it would take probably 3 hours to repair. My boss, a good boss, suggested that I go home, since 3 hourswas what was left for that working day. I felt uneasy leaving yet, so instead I tried to write something for my blog (that I forgot to post and not relevant anymore!).

So to say, I missed my two colleagues a lot. In this kind of situation, it would be fun to have companions because we could do a lot of things together, playing, eating, walking around or whatever that we always do. Now sitting in the office, dark, with no ventilation and thinning laptop battery, I finally decided to go home and came back Saturday to finish what I had left.

Morning in the office, afternoon I was in Budget Terminal killing two hours waiting time finding something decent to eat and my usual travel companion, magazine. It’s always diving magazine or National Geographic, although those light gossip magazines are very tempting, they are not worth of money because within minutes I can finish reading it. Nat Geo is the best because some articles are quite heavy and only long flight and unlikely boring holiday can give me the time for that.

An auntie was leaning next to me during check-in and asked me whether I had some 1-2 kg spare for my luggage. I said no, she insisted that I weighted it to see. I told her I weighted it already, which is true although I actually had, yah, around 1-2 kg spare. Lesson I learned, and persistently reminded by my dad, who travels very frequently is that, never carry somebody else’s luggage, whoever it is. The logic is clear, can’t be more relevant than current times, and I do really adopt that principle. However, I understand how desperate it is sometimes to squeeze the kilos in, I tried to help by advising her to move some into her hand carry luggage. She was travelling with someone who looked like her son and grand daughter who kept knocking the trolley to my feet (very annoying and not painless by the way!) I told her the airline would let her get away with one kilo overweight, but not two. So she could just move the other kilo to the hand carry and she would be fine. And her reason? She was too lazy to reopen her bags. What the--. Anyway, by that time I decided to better distance myself since she was leaning in more intimidating and persistent way, I wouldn’t be surprised if she followed me right to the time I put my bag to see that I really had extra kilos if I entertained her more.

It wasn’t really my day also, the man in front of me looked so nervous doing all his check in with his stack of papers and cards, he ended up sitting next to me at the last row and pushed my bag on the cabin overhead violently to make space for his bag. It was empty everywhere else or even on the other side of bag, but he just loved the spot where my bag was! I was a second away from asking him about what the hell he thinks he was doing to my bag.

There were some turbulence in the air, but as long as I don’t travel with people I care about, it doesn’t affect me. I have noticed my strange habit since long time ago, but I can’t fight it. If I travel with families or friends, unless I’m heavily sedated with travel sickness pills, I would always wake up between my sleep with thumping heart and worries about the safety of the journey, which is so uncomfortable that I would avoid sleeping. If I travel alone, I heck care about what happened as long as it doesn’t get really serious.

Reaching Jakarta airport, I waited for Dad who would arrive half an hour later. There was nothing to do except waiting, there wasn’t even places to sit. His plane arrived on time, he got some difficulties with the stuffs he brought but we were getting on the cab home. My second uncle was at home too, it was good to see him. He had been getting quite ill sometimes ago but now he recovers and became his usual active self. My mom, brothers, sister in-laws, nephews, niece, and sis-in-law’s mom who is already like part of core family was at home.

It was so great to be home and be with them again.

Except a few visit to nearby mall, market, hospital and one day out to Depok and Jakarta town, I spent my days at home. There were many things happening on my visit, which made our plan to have a getaway in Lembang postponed for another year. When I just reached Jakarta, there was a big fire in a restaurant in Kedoya. It was my friend’s family business. Even though the family was okay, they lost seven employees in the fire. It was traumatic and horrible incident.

Then my nephew was scheduled to go through tonsil operation, he had to go through some check ups to determine whether he was ready for the operation. Me and my first younger brother had gone through same operation in the past and we know what it means. Louzy watery food, the only other thing we could eat after the operation was ice cream, and believe me, it doesn’t taste as good when you are supposed to eat it.

Termite invasion at home. Upstair, the termite had destroyed good part of my big brother’s wardrobe. They spent days clearing and cleaning with the help of exterminator, so I got to help playing nanny which I don’t mind. It was quite a back-breaking task I must say, and good exercise for the ears. First few days I had culture shock with my ears, the decibel rate was unusually high. Being kids are so fun, they can fight when they feel angry, and be friend a moment later without grudge. How simple and nice it would be..unlike in adult world where we must surpress and control everything.

So the situation at home had been quite chaotic, combined with my short visit and very limited weekend, I didn't have enough time to do all I want or meet friends.
I met my longest best friend in Depok and my uni friends. They are all still the same, but everyone has grown up in certain way. We didn't spend enough time to find out more about each other so we just scratched the nostalgic surface.

On the day before I left Jakarta, there were bombs in the Marriot and Ritz Carlton hotels. When we saw the news early in the morning, it was reported as ‘explosion’ without any details and honestly I didn’t give it a thought that it could be something as disastrous as bombs. Damn murderers! Since my handphone was not active and the Jakarta number I got couldn’t receive msg from Singapore, I didn’t inform my friends here at first. Then again, I thought they might be worried and I dropped msg in the afternoon. The day after when turning on my handphone in airport, I did received msgs from them, I felt really guilty not informing them quick enough.

Although it seemed like there were a lot of unpleasant things happened in Jakarta, I liked going home and little time for myself to sort up my messy mind, not solving it, not solving it, because I can’t solve it. Blah. Life. Being human. Blah.

Anyway, Jakarta in many ways pretty much different or the same with the old Jakarta or Singapore ---> what kind of nonsense is this sentence…

My longest best friend.
She has different live, walking through different path from me. But she is still the same person she is, I actually wonder how come she is stuck in her situation now, while she has almost all it takes to get out. She is still the strong willed and strong minded person I knew. It’s maybe something I will not be able to understand. I chase happiness where it is while I can, if I have to break some invisible rules I might do it. She looks alright from the outside, but heartbreaking and lost her determination to be happy. However, I still think she is stronger in her own way, patient, really2 strong, something I could never be, she is like the calming power opposed to my erupted self, like she did, still, and always is. She would be a happier person later in life.

Jakarta street
We had this project during uni time, that the area where I stayed, Serpong,will become a independent town, it would have business and economy central that spins the wheel. It seemed like almost an impossible thing in the past, say, ten over years ago. But now, Serpong is much more different, it tends for itself and the independent town has emerged and steadily refines itself. We don’t need to go to ‘big town’ to search for entertainment, food, business, medical, so on and so forth. Economy and jobs are starting if not rooting well in the area, providing another option that the stuffy central Jakarta. Residential is growing really strong. Serpong is connected via various expressway to big town. Although the public transportation system still depends on mini vans and busses, we can actually live without central Jakarta.

Anyway, Jakarta street is better now. There is new mode of transportation called Busway. Okay, it existed since my last visit, but it spreads more. Well, sorry, I stop talking. My info is unreliable, I'm ashamed if this post is to be read by Jakartanians.

There are less beggars in the street. Quite a number of people agree with me. So I'm quite safe in this. When beggars etc approach car, they are less persistent also, in fact, no fight. Unlike last time. It's good news.

Airport
Not good news for the airport though.

Airport is still pathetic. It has good traditional ambience and themeing but it stops there. For people who are not familiar, Jakarta airport is so un-user friendly. When you missed the screen showing the baggage claim’s belt after immigration process, you have to make a guess. They have TV there, many, but most are showing Indonesia movie that international travelers will not understand. The more important is.. where is the baggage belt again? How is the status of the this and that flight? And baggage belt can be shifted, anyhow, during the wait, and they like to pick the one in front of the exit where people queuing the baggages adds to the chaos and line of people waiting to go out and going through the checks, while there are rows and rows of other belts left unoccupied.

Previous experience, domestic to international airport? Ask, it would be easier because the signs are hardly adequate.

International airport waiting room? Check-ins are advised to be done two hours prior to departure. Then, immigration and you are stuck inside. Duty free shopping, I stretch my ability to shop and still can’t really spend more than half an hour. Best thing? Waiting room only open slightly more than half an hour prior to departure? So passengers are scattered at the floor outside the waiting room. Chairs? You wish. It’s so simple yet never been improved.

Jakarta Food
Still good if not better. Those who stay or stayed overseas long enough, most probably can relate very well. We miss the food!!! The dirty, unhealthy, sinful street and kampong food! We are so-called human with iron stomach because Indonesian mostly can survive every where. Who can resist the melting greasy cheesy martabak late at night, roadside (muscle?) meatball, the very different fishcake, and more…droooooooooooollllll………….

The People
I almost forgot Indonesian’s hospitality. When we learn history subject in school back then, the book said Indonesia is a nation with friendly people. I was like, what a BS… now that I live abroad, I do understand what it means, and it was true.

Shopping in Jakarta, at the right place though, I felt like I was treated like a diva. It was crazy, the sales people were everywhere and they were all as attentive and friendly as they can be. No sour faces if the transaction failed, no accusation and icy cold stare when you don’t seem to like what you touch or see. No shopping as if you owe a salesperson money or you have just killed one of their family. Well, if it not obvious, I don’t like to stereotype, it’s just shopping here is not as fun sometimes.

However, the inefficiency and the drags are very prominent when shopping in Indo. Processing time yadda, yadda, and I actually counted the amount of shoppers and salesperson are around 1 to 3… whoa…!

But I love the hospitality, really. The smiles, the greeting, the friendliness. Some people forget about how beautiful are small things and gestures. It's good that Jakarta, in the coldness of being gigantic city, stil has the touch. It's priceless, imo.

So.. it’s good to be back.. mixed feeling. Tried in other post, but damn difficult to express.
I should make this annual if possible..

For Jakarta, story ends here.
Next, it’s just my footprint and midnight blabbering about my uni time. You know..those younger days..

University of Indonesia, Depok

Located outskirt of Jakarta, in a plot of beautiful land.

It used to have (now I'm not sure) forestry area with big trees, grass patches, 3 lake/reservoir, and many facilities for sports and quiet spots.

Tracing on the footprint to my uni, I went through the expressway of Bintaro from my area. It was quite convenient now, the expressway was only opened when I almost graduate, and by that time, it was not ‘officially open yet. Public transports could go through, human could go through by walking, and..goats could go through. Further before that, the road was all rocky with irregular shape, irregular earth and dirt. If you are active and not a diva, forget about owning a white shoe, unless you like beige or brown because that is what it would turn into.

I went pass Pasar Minggu, Lenteng Agung, Tanjung Barat, Pancasila, and I swear my rotten unability to recognize roads was not that bad. Everywhere looked almost the same. The junction where we used to stuck in traffic, the skimpy road passing by the railway, that roadside leather shop where I bought leather for model, the road side railway where I saw two chidren digging hole to bury their dead cat that was put next to them. I remember the railroad where I stuck my slipper into and far far away there was an incoming train, the spot where I board a bus and had to give someone an elbow to the stomach because he tried to grab my bag. It was still the same, except Margonda road outside my uni.

It was so well developed now that it has high density of vehicle and there was actually traffic jam on the weekday I was there. The traffic jam was much worse that what I got in Pasar Minggu terminal. Malls, shops are crowding around at the side of the street. I was feeling grateful that all of those were not too existent in the past. How do we get through the temptation with the limited student pocket? Anyway, I prefer the simpler Depok back then, when what they had was what we needed. Photocopier, book bundlers, paper shop, mounteneering equipment shop, affordable cinema, swimming pool and late night munchies.

Margonda was so different that I almost didn’t realize when I got out and suddenly I was in the turnover outside the university gate. It was even too late for me to hesitate whether I wanted to take a stroll as the car had already pulled out. There shouldn’t be a problem though, it’s just that maybe I don’t want to visit in the rush or just make a one round without feeling familiar because everything must be different now.

This place means so much to me. Place were I spent a very significant years of my life, growing into an adult, precious years.

During my very first month there, where everything was still strange and unfamiliar, I rode ‘ojek’, the motor taxi during one quiet day and suddenly I felt homesick sooo badly. I don’t know why it happened on that particular moment, perhaps the back of the mas ojek looked weird.

I liked to walk through the ‘forest’, where there are big trees surround me with their beautiful falling leaves and yellow flower tips, strolled through the green grass and the lakes. I have secret places and activities when I felt sad, just laying on the grass next to the bamboo tree, or climb and sit on the big cozy tree, sit for hours next to the big lakes where I can see various dragonflies and tadpoles. Wish I have the same secret places now, I hope they don’t change too much.

I liked to jog in the morning, weeks prior to any expedition to mountain or cliffs, or just a fun jogging around where me and my friend could stroll along the reservoir. I also liked to cycle early in the morning, although one day I provoked three big dogs (I was only staring at them!) and they started to chase me. It was very early in the morning when the sky has not turned bright yet, and no one was around to ‘outcycle’ to distract the dogs. Tell you, I had enough accidents riding bike by myself, let alone three crazy big dogs tailing behind. So I changed my cycling it to late afternoon. My favorite spot was the road next to the UI train station where I can let the bicycle slide by itself for hundreds of meter because of sloping down road, other than that, of course I liked to cycle through quiet roads, although it never felt the same again, thanks to the three crazy dogs.

It was also the place where I kept ‘wilder’ and more fun memories. Kayaking through the lake, competing for triatlohn or just friendly sport running and climbing competition in the faculty, or fun baseball game after study days, or running through the uni carrying heavy rubber boats for trip preparation. Gathering at the campus late at night, sleepover, whether it’s for expedition or not-intelligent club meeting that took all night and made me ended up being locked in the toilet, at 4 am in the morning. The people who were not sleeping that time was in the building five hundred meters away debating stuff that I don’t get of why it took the hours of my life I would never get back. I was not willing to spend the rest of the morning standing in the horrible condition toilet, imagining the giggle of the person who would rescue me. Luckily, my mom had hardware shop. Selling hardware, I had a little bit of knowledge and knew how hinges work. I took out the hinges of the door, dissembled the whole door and put it next to the toilet. I couldn’t remember going back to the meeting though.

Litterally staying in the campus that engraved to my mind stretched over almost last two semesters of my final year. We wore pajama, brought cooking appliances, sleeping equipment, music, food, coffee, energy drinks, snacks and toiletries. Some friends brought drum set and even their pet dog. It was agony; suffering but somehow it was enjoyable. Friends who didn’t take the same subject would come and help us and we repaid the favors when it was their time.

I remember the nights when I went around looking for working-not vandalized public phone with a stack of coins to call my family or my boyfriend back then. I got the best creeps, with one most memorable moment. My uni is very mystical with bunch of scary stories, mostly first hand experiences and it was super creepy when the story revolves around the places that I know.

I was making a call in my faculty. It was not in my building though, the place was semi-dark. Nothing unusual, I was talking in the phone then suddenly I felt all crept out with nothing. Hair standing though, and I suddenly remembered that someone had just been murdered just at the back of the faculty about a week or two. It felt intensely uncomfortable that I almost left that place running.

Ah well, there were many ore creepy stories in my own hostel, sometimes I had difficulty sleeping. The stories were narrated in location just next to my room, in the living hall, upstair, from friends or family who I trust, why should I sleep well every night? Luckily, it affected me in short term, until I heard the next story. Anyway, I was braver back then ha… Had to. To add to the creep, the people who I hung around with during my first year had the habit of listening of true horror stories in the radio (it was 90-ies, student’s life revolve around radio ok!) around midnight time and then freaked out about it. I swear, the scarier parts was the freaked out person who were hysterical and very small guts with hobby of listening to horror. Come on!

I got two experiences, whether it’s true or not, I believe it could be explained physically somewhere. The girl who stayed next to me, had the experience of being strangled during her sleep. My impression of her, she believes in a lot of myths and things so I didn’t take it seriously. The other girl next to me was more dramatic, she saw a big dark shadowed, something she called ginnie in her room, filling the whole ceiling ad it’s not cute. Of course the story made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t really believe in everything she said because she said a lot of ‘too hard to believe things’. Anyway, one night I was asleep in my bed when I felt something pressed on me, so hard that I couldn’t fight it and had difficulty breathing. I woke up, but couldn’t open my eyes or moved too much to so-called fight for my life. I had read before that this incident can be explained, it’s caused by tensed muscles or extensive fatigue. The uncomfortable thing is that I was fully wakened up. I remember similar thing that happened to my neighbor, I know that I should do something to free myself, without the ability to do so.
The next one was weirder. I was making model on the floor, I worked through the night and had been having lack of sleep for few days. I probably dozed up unknowingly, bottom line, I saw me leaving myself and floating around one meter above the body and said, hey, that’s me! I was probably dreaming because I’m here typing.

You probably thought my hostel was creepy, but I think it was the least from other places around.

I don’t miss the creepy parts, I miss everything else in the uni. The nature club where I should spent more time with, to explore the mountains, cliffs, rivers, caves and islands where I could. The activities and sports I could have done. Something I could have been good with. Something that would probably change the course and direction of my life 180 degree, well, 270 degree maybe.

I miss exploring, I miss trying out new things I should have tried. Things that I might not have chance to try anymore. Ah well. I don’t dwell on what-ifs. I’m just curious sometimes.
So, next time when I have the chance to go back. I promise if it changes too much, I’d be a visitor. If it’s still the same, I would like to go around, maybe hunting for cheap second hand book? Maybe laying on the grass next to the bamboo, climb tree, sitting at the edge of the lake watching tadpoles, or walking through the ‘forest’ with falling leaves and flower tips? Maybe.

So, if one day you are there and see a granny doing those…

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.
~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

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Kuching (25-28 June 2009)

2009-06-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Kuching, Malaysia (25-28 June 2009)

This is one of the trips that I’m looking forward to, because mid year is so boring, June is so hot, and the most important is I expected to have good companions..

When traveling together with friends, sometimes I can see certain personalities I’ve never seen before; journey brings out the worst and best of the people. If they used to mask it under normal circumstances, a trip is a good way to know someone better, the real personalities are shown, that is why a lot of couple breaks up doing Amazing Race. He he he..

My companions turn out as what I thought they would be,, fun and real, no drama, and I love it. We share a lot of common interest and same crazy attitudes. We are like bunch of kids regardless our ages.

We decided to go for this trip in less than half an hour, that was the first good sign, no wishy-washy. The location was also chosen by the cost of it. All we need is a getaway among ourselves, the activities and attractions can fit in later. I’m going with my whole department,, totaling only four of us. We have been friends for over a year yet we click as we have known each other for very long time, two of my colleagues have actually known each other for sixteen years.

Thrusdays, 25th June 2009.

It’s not easy to work on that day. We were excited, and we did some quick checks to see where we can go in Kuching. After lunch, we took cab to the airport and spent some waiting time by playing cards. The flight took about one hour and fifteen minutes before we reached Kuching.
Kuching is the capital city of Serawak, the most vibrant and largest city in Borneo. Cat’s city, although in modern day spelling (in Malaysian and Indonesian language) it’s spelt without h, Kucing. If you imagine a city full of cats, you’s be disappointed.

The name could come from Cochin, Indian name for port, first settlers in Kuching.
Or could come from the abundant “cat’s eye fruit” or “mata kucing” tree at the river bank.
Or could come from a stream called Kuching River.
Or originated from Chinese language means “Ku” for old and “Ching” for well. During the Rajah Charles Brooke’s time, the British adventurer who became Rajah of Sarawak, there was no proper water supply and water-borne disease were common like Cholera epidemic. Fortunately, clean water from a well at present day China Street saved the people, therefore “Kuching”.
(Wikipedia)

I’ve never though that Kuching is so modern. It has a very nice airport compared to, uhm Pontianak, my home town. Since my childhood, I’m familiar of hearing this place, one of the famous destination for medical, business or leisure, it’s eight hours away by bus and probably half an hour flight away from Pontianak. I‘ve never been there but I pictures it to be similar to Pontianak. I’m right in someway, but wrong in another way. Kuching airport, road, facilities are way above my expectation.

We stayed together in a service apartment consists of two bedroom, two bathrooms, living room and kitchen. There were washing machine, dryer, ironing board, dvd player and that’s wow to me. It’s spacious for four of us, the master bedroom even has so-called walk-in wardrobe. It also has great view from the window even though it’s only as high as six storey.

We went out to catch seafood dinner right behind our apartment. It was on the rooftop of a carpark and there were cluster of seafood stalls offering a lot of variety. One of my colleagues did the ordering, the food was okay. Getting later in the night, the place got more crowded.
We went to a shopping mall nearby to get the necessary; tidbits, drinks, snacks, bottled water and instant noodle for adding some midnight oil. It was almost closing time already.

That night was the first night that we officially opened our Scrabble game, with my ‘virgin’ Scrabble. We have been addicted to Scrabble from my Pocket PC for months, this is the first time we play physically, four of us. It’s good to finally found kakis otherwise my Scrabble board will be virgin forever.
We whacked the night playing until 3 plus, with instant noodle as the power supply. It was a fun night. I had trouble sleeping for a while, and woke up too early.

Friday, 26th June 2009
Bako National Park.

Woke up in the morning, we heard the news about the death of MJ from the Teve.
Departing for breakfast, we found a stack of newspaper outside our door. Neat!
However, the headline almost made our jaw dropped. It was written there that the passenger of flight so and so have been informed because there was a case of confirmed H1N1 victim on the same flight. It was out exact same flight. Our minds worked fast thinking of million possibilities. I found it odd that we ‘were’ not informed although the newspaper said so, so my panic had not sunk in yet. The incomplete article never once mentioned about which day of flight with the case.
In breakfast lobby we found another newspaper that explained better with the day of the flight, which was three days ago.

We hailed a cab from the road and negotiated the price to go to Bako jetty terminal. The cab cost us 45 Ringgit and it fit us just nice. The journey was long and a bit painful because the driver kept talking very loud and drove like a turtle. But when we saw the riverside, all the excitement came back.

Good thing about Kuching, there are not much room to cheat tourists. Everything has clear pricing. Airport cab, and the boat that we could take to various point of Bako National Park. From the jetty, we need to take boat to the headquarter in the island, from there then we could take another boats or land trekking to various locations.

Bako National Park was established in 1957, million years of erosion have created coastline of steep cliffs and carved rocky headlands into sea arches and sea stacks. It’s the final pit stop of Amazing Race Asia season One. Waw.. It had 16 color-coded trails with its rainforest, wildlife, jungle streams, waterfall, vegetation, secluded beach.

We took the boat for 9RM per person and had a good 15-20 minutes ride. I sat in front with a colleague whom we both enjoyed the sun and the wind, something I really miss when I’m back in town.
It was the lowest tide of the day, we had to walk through water because the boat couldn’t not land any closer to the shore. The water was greenish brown, because of sand and silt, not mud. We were giggling like kids when our feet touched the soft sand and water. Look what city had done to us, look how we miss the nature. The sand look like volcanic sand that reminded me of Bali. The scenery, beautiful rock cliff, gigantic display of sand, and bright blueeee sky.

The low tide brought the largest patch of sand I’ve ever seen. The shore was sooo wide and so peaceful because except few boats and few groups, no one else was around. The ultimate peaceful was when everyone except us had dispersed away.
We walked to the HQ and signed in our self, decided to take Paku as our trail.

We followed a track that led us to a bridge with wet earth on both side with numerous colorful crabs. I want to curse myself for not bringing my macro lens. Four of us squatting around and left the butts hanging on the air, trying to get better look and pictures of the crabs. There were so many of them among the wet mud and vegetation, together with the hermit crabs. After a while, we move down to the wet land until the mosquitoes started to bite. Mosquitoes! I haven’t recovered fully from my outdoor photography few weeks back, somehow I got bitten so bad that it left scars on my feet, but it’d be gone. What we could do was moving our legs often.
After quite a boardwalk under the direct hot sun and beautiful blueeeee sky, we reached the jetty we were supposed to be to catch the boat back. We caught a group of tourist staring at the distance with Proboscis Monkey! Wild Proboscis Monkeys! A while back a colleague I just known shared her story about seeing this exotic monkey in the wild and I imagine how fantastic it would be. It must be like seeing pelagic underwater, with a sudden appearance of shark, manta ray or whale shark. The feeling was quite similar although nothing can beat the world beyond the water. Again, I cursed myself of not bringing zoom lens, but I felt grateful just to be able to see them on the tree and walking on the wet land on the georgeous jetty.

The walks and everything was energy consuming, but we hadn’t even started, so we moved to track the Paku trail, the trail was covered well with shade.
It had been a long time since I did quite serious trekking like this. It sure did bring back memories and I love the smell of the forest. A long the way we encountered some insects, flowers and interesting tracks. The track was only 800 meter long, but it’s no ordinary 800 meter. At the end of the track, it led us into something, this…

The secluded and beautiful beach of our own. Except few boats, there was almost no one else. There were beautiful rock formations, shallow tiny pool in the rocks, cracks full of tiny snails, shrimps and crabs and again blueeeeeee sky. I have to emphasis on the blue because it was so blue, the Borneo sky. Blueeeeeeeeeee! Blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Love it!

We hung around, taking pictures and decided to go back to HQ by boat instead of walking back the trail. It was small sampan with motor and without life jacket. I have to give my Croc a very good credit here. Since the only shoes left that is suitable for trekking had given way few months ago, I figured it that there was no use of me to bring ordinary shoes and counted on the croc instead. It’s proven to reduce the rate of me, Slippery Feet Queen, accident from slippery floor. So I took a bet that it should sustain the trekking and it really did! Amazing… I have slave this shoe for so long, and it was all heavy duty activities, now it survived trekking, worth every cents, it had never gotten as dirty as that day.

We went back to the canteen near headquarter, savaged the fridge for cold cola-cola for a must needed refreshment. We sweated like crazy, and our cheeks were burned red by the sun.
The canteen was almost full house from all the ‘trekkers’ combine together. There are 16 six color-colored trails in Bako. Four of us chose a table near the deck railing and threw our butts on the chairs. Then it happened. My friend opened a pack of waffle and suddenly something passed by the table and he was sitting there wide-eyed, without the waffle. It happened in split second that we were not sure what was that about until we saw macaque sitting on the tree eating the wafer. Dasar monyettttt!!....

Lucky we decided not to have lunch there, otherwise a bunch of monkeys might be hugging our heads now trying to pry open our mouths for food. After a while, another monkey climbed up the table, in front of our nose literally, picked up a can of empty coca-cola, threw it back to the table in disgust, picked a leftover Fanta, and drank it in front of our eye, obnoxious about its crime victim’s feeling.

We sat there for a while, our boat appointment was still two hours away. I was expecting a boo when I suggested another trail, to my surprise, everyone was on. We picked the shortest trail, 500 meter although we need to walk almost twice the distance to reach the trail. We went by the beach and couldn’t see anything but the cliff. Jokingly I said 500 meter is probably up to the cliff. We still joked about it until we took the track and realized that the joke came true and the track was leading up up up with steep rock formation, tree roots or man-made wooden stairs. It was quite a enduring trek, until we reached the top and rewarded with this…

Too bad we had to rush down again, because we needed to count the tracking back to the start, the loooong walk along the beach, to pass through head quarter , then reached the jetty when we first saw the Prosboscis Monkeys. It was a significant distance.

We took a gamble to walk by the beach all the way to the jetty instead of tracking back the boardwalk because we could actually see the boat from distance. The sun was glaring on top of our head, but our spirit was really high and we enjoyed the day, we even did very mini sprint running competition. It’s irresistible, the beach was gorgeous, and the sky was blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Going back, I got to seat in front by myself and …

Along the way I was imagining dolphins and whale on the horizon. It could be fat hope, but who knows. Maybe some flying fish? I got none of those but none less, because I got my favorite wind and sky.
We spent sometime in jetty cooling down and taking pictures while waiting for the bus. All of us were burned by the sun and survived the whole long day with breakfast only, we sweated a bucket each (sort-of) and now we were hungry.

Taking bus was a good experience. It only cost us 2 Ringgit and we got an hour ride with the wind slapping on our face, such a nostalgic time with the time when my life was wasted on the road of Jakarta, trying to get from one place to another. I missed the slapping wind, it was a shiokkkkk one-hour ride.

We got kicked out by the driver when it was the end of the journey. Good thing about backpacking, everywhere is alright to us. Kuching didn’t give me dangerous impression and I let down my guard unlike everytime I visit somewhere new. We alighted at something like a terminal and dropped by to the food court and ordered few types of local food to try. Like Pontianak, there are a lot of Chinese in Kuching, with richer diversity in languages. We ordered rujak, laksa, kolo mee, char kuay tiaw, ice kachang, soya milk and shared it among us. Kolo mie and laksa got my vote, the ice kacang was also not bad, specially made from the traditional ice chipping machine.. put a block of ice, turn the handle.srot..srott…

We tried to walk around for a while, after that we navigated our way back to the hotel, by foot. The two guys did a great job navigating. We passed by Indian and China ‘town’ but most of the shops were closed. We then walked pass some kind of Farmer Exhibition and proceed to the Waterfront.

We stopped by a few shops before going back to apartment. We had tapau KFC for dinner.

With company of tea and instant noodle (now with added luncheon meat, yummy!)from midnight time to 3 plus, again, we closed the day with stack of clean laundry of the day and Scrabble again.

Saturday, 27th June 2009.

Today, we had light ittenary, shoppings and museums. Therefore we took our time and didn’t rush it. After breakfast we went back to the apartment and still got the chance to played cards before we went out. We decided to do everything on foot. Starting from waterfront to the museum that we saw along the bus ride. Again, the guys did the navigation, with everyone’s help of recognizing the landmarks along the way. After Waterfront, we stopped by for lunch at Sugarbun area and tried the rice with fried chicken, beed stew and fish head.

We passed by a tourist center and found out there are a lot more things to so in Kuching, including diving and kayaking with Irrawaddy dolphins. How we wish to have more time there to do more things.

We then proceed to the Sunday market that open longer hour in Saturday.
It started with wet market and I was starting to wonder why on earth people recommended tourist to go to wet market. I enjoyed wet market, that is one of place I love to go back then, but there was nothing a tourist can buy except what we could consume over the days we were staying.

Luckily, going deeper, we found the market also sold fish, plants, books, toys, clothing, souvenirs etc. We walked for quite a long time, bought a lot of mini cactus plants, then exited the market, crossed the street for something that looked like a shopping mall.

There were toy shops in the mall…and cd shops that sell great fake originals, I didn’t even know that it might not be orginal. We spent some time and went in to sit in a purple café that served extremely sweet tea. Outside the mall, we were attracted to enter a MerryBrown, Malaysia’s own fast food because we wanted to play with the swing seating. While swinging, we tried their banana split.

After the rest, we crossed the bridge back to the market to buy even more plants. At the bridge, we could see all the birds flying to perch on the electric cable, just like what I remember from Pontianak. Every dusk, there would be thousands of bird flying and filled the entire electric cable for all directions that I could see. I actually missed the sight in Jakarta and Singapore, how nice was it to see it here again, practically the closest city to my home town, with the blueeeeeeee sky.

We found post office, garden in the city, interesting building and scenery along the way to the cluster of museum with the highlight of Museum of Serawak. It was interesting and fascinating, too bad it's prohibited to take pictures. It has collection of dried animals, shells, authentic model of Borneo long houses, and even the replica of the house inside the museum with what I think to be authentic human skull. Creepy. The replica house was consisted of two storey connected by a tree trunk ladder next to the hanging skulls.
We decided to skip the seafood dinner because we were too full of food, and tapau serious (unlike yesterday ‘snack’) KFC for our last dinner there. It was long queue, we had a lot to order.

Sharing our dinner, we shared about our dream destinations and things we wanted to do before we proceed to last night Scrabble until wee hour in the morning, close to five o’clock. Along the trip, I slept only around 13 hours in total. Somehow the caffeine I got from my drinks kept me up, or probably, it was mostly the spirit of the holiday.

Sunday, 28th June 2009

Despite the will to wake up late, I still wake up early because of nature calls and decided to finish my packing. We went to three shopping malls for quick look around and managed to buy quite a lot of things, toys…! They have toys.. and we found Elepig, a creature that me and my two friends share. : )

We walked back to the hotel, freshen up, final packing and final Scrabble game continued with final cards game at the airport and plane.

The plane schedule was a bit late, but amazingly we reached Singapore earlier, I counted it around 45 minutes flight instead of what is supposed to be 1 hour 15 minutes. Hmm…speeding pilot??

So, what makes this such a memorable trip...

Beautiful places.

Great experience.

Blueeeee sky.

Wind on my face, sand on my feet, dirt on my shoes, burnt on my skin.

Companions. Companions. Companions.

I'll keep this in special place. : )

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
- Lao Tzu

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see
- G. K. Chesterton

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it
- Rosalia de Castro

I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine
- Caskie Stinnett quotes

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware - Martin Buber

Not all those who wander are lost - J. R. R. Tolkien

Taiwan-HK : Christmas in Furry Friendly Land

2009-01-21T07:32:00.000-08:00

Taiwan (19-23 December 2008)
Hong Kong (23-27 December 2008)

Taiwan (19-23 December 2008)

If it’s not been hubby’s office and family trip, we probably lost touch with city/civilization trip.
Anyway, this could be the last hopeful year for a while, with the recession is here, there might not be anymore opportunity for his office trip again.

Taiwan is the originally scheduled trip, while Hong Kong is our own extension because the plane transit there from and to Singapore. At first, we were hesitated to extent, since we only went there in September. But after discussing it with the friends, we were more looking forward towards it than Taiwan.

For Taiwan, as usual, the office use group tour and this time it accumulated into two big buses. I saw a quite a number of new faces, but most of all, there were all familiar faces that I know from previous trips or outside office outings, those who I can consider my own friends also.

Since internet is reporting cool windy weather, around 9-17 for both country, we packed big jacket and sweater, scarf and wool head wear. We didn’t pack any glove or anything beyond though.

The summary of the trip before hand. I must say that Taiwan is not one of my preferred destination at all, since whoever that I asked, always gave testimonial about food, food. I’m not really a food traveler.
Anyway, the trip was not fantastic at all because of the group tour. I have been with many group tours before, but this one felt a bit intimidating and worse, on the last two days, we felt bored.

1. Mandarin speaking tour guide.
One of the key of interest when we go to the new place is to hear the historical stories and background behind the places. If you know a guy keep talking about interesting things but you don’t understand, it was just like background noise…
With quantity like ours, we should be able to pull English speaking guide. Even in Thailand back then, they provide bilingual tour guides.
We did have English tour guide who followed us from Singapore and she tried to explain (privately) to us, but it was really uncomfortable because she repeated things that we actually understand while missed out a lot, it was also not in the right time as she translated when it’s about time to get down, chatting with friends or sleep. And, don’t know why, since we are not speaking mandarin, she kind of thought that we don’t really understand English also, she tried to find a Thesaurus meaning or synonym for almost everything. It’s so kind of her, but I would rather be left alone.

2. Ridiculously short time for place of interests.
15 minutes, 20 minutes and 30 minutes? Come on! We didn’t even reach the other end of Lover’s Bridge in 20 minutes, and we kept walking, even when we took pictures, we compromised with the pace. Yes, they didn’t penalize or left us if anybody is late, but we couldn’t really enjoy everything with that sort of deadline in our mind. Not to mention time spend queuing for toilet for almost every stops, since it was always quite a distance away.

3. Long and often…for commercial breaks.
Tour group, one of the main pain in the ass things is the commercial breaks. They like to bring you somewhere where you have to listen to sales presentation and expect you to buy. That, they give unlimited amount of time. Sure yes, they got commission, but this is not what I pay my money for, right…?
Anyway, the commercial breaks they brought us are ridiculously expensive, unnecessary and sorry, ridiculous. Only those who are really believers and bulging pocket can afford the herbal stuff, tea or gem that suppose to do magic. Ridiculous because I practically don’t believe that a stone can change your life and how the name’s mathematical explanation yadda yadda yadda…sorry for believers, but I really don’t buy it. Chinese, my own race, so no one can call me racist heh, always find explanation for every cause, regardless how unrelated it is. And they can make it convincing for those who want to believe. Come on, it’s a piece of rock! And you are supposed to pay a leg and limb because your name lack of some element and your life is miserable without…!

Okay..enough for the rant. It’s not normal that I start with the rant, but I do so now so that the happy part come later. Now happy parts. Yay.

We had to wake up around 4.30, took shower and buzz off to airport. Meeting time was 6.15 but we were way too early. After all the check in ho ha…we got..surprise…upgraded to Business Class. What a pleasant surprise. The plus is of course, the seat, the entertainment, the priority boarding and alighting, the food, and the cabin crew actually address you by name. We had nice breakfast in the flight, I admit there were only two times that I really enjoy flight food. Once, was flying long hours with Emirats long time ago, economy class but food were plentiful and nice. And the other was this one.

We transited for about an hour in Hong Kong but didn’t make any stop for sho[ing or sight seeing because the time was too short.

Reaching Taiwan, the weather felt alright, it was pleasantly cool, but at to the point until we felt the need to don jacket, it was 17 degree on the day of arrival.

First stop was to visit an office project, a mall. The mall was big, but dang, we only had 20 minutes, so we went around, look for food and necessary forgotten toiletries. I always remember the smell and the taste of French fries last year on the first day of Perth trip. But here, no French fries! We didn’t even find food at all! Where is Taiwan food? What we got is the packed food from 7-11 and Watsons. Turned out food court was in the 4th story. Damn, we only reached 3rd story as we spent time in basement looking at go-kart, roller blade circuit, basketball, squash, bowling, yes, they have it all.

We went directly to the hotel and reached there around 6, the sun had already at the edge of setting, the night falls early here.
Before that, we stopped for dinner. The dinner was quite disappointing, the fish was not fresh, soup was salty but most of all, I encountered the famous reputable of Taiwan’s toilet, it wasn’t a beautiful sight, worse when I saw it prior to dinner. Ouchh…

We got a tiny whiny room, double bed, half a meter walkway on the front and one side, wardrobe, tiny end table with teve, makeup table, the only place we could put the luggage and tiny bathroom with the floor that I swear could freeze your toes. The ceiling was so low that I whacked it so hard when I took off my shirt. There was no window, we suspect it was a converted store room..ha…in the floor plan it was supposed to be bigger than other room but no, the rests are much bigger.
Anyway, it’s small but comfortable, sort of homy even though we hit every side of the wall or buttock kept knocking against the glass partition for the bathroom.

After shower we went for Ximen market, only a few minutes walk from there the fun started. The long stretch of road was full of various stalls and hawkers.
We stormed to the crowd, five minutes into it, everyone of us had already hogging to the food stalls. We bought dumpling & mochi during that period of time.

We found some unique munchies like tomato with plum (the crunchy sweet tomato, sliced and inserted with black plum), chicken with cucumber snack (marinated white chicken and fresh cut cucumber with ingredient loaded formula), ham and cheese roadside pancake, and also the infamous misua. Everyone was willing to eat standing up in front of the misua stall, after defeating the long queue. It was okay, not fantastic, although the taste was quite unique. It was just a funny sight that the road were full of people eating misua, the cold weather probably made it more tasty than usual.

I tried BBQ corn from hell, the corn was alright, but the sauce tasted terrible for my tongue and they put it really generously. We also tried our first Taiwan sausage, red fat sausage crunchy skin. They have a lot of type, like the one with XO sauce, but mostly we found plain one. Plain one tasted better but each stall might have different taste than the other. We also tried their cone ice cream, which was towering high and not too sweet, you can choose vanilla or chocolate or mix. They also have another type of ice cream which they wrap like crepes, with some peanut and sliced honey.

We stumbled upon Taiwan cinema and decided to watch Bolt in 3-d. It wasn’t cheaper than Singapore though. After buying the ticket, we went back to hotel first took a shower before walked back to the cinema.

I don’t know whether i was very tired or the move was boring, despite trying very hard to stay awake, I slept 5/6 part of the movie, perfectly disguised under the 3D glass. I felt guilty the whole movie though, but yet, I couldn’t seem to stay awake, and I’ve never sleep in cinema since Godfather III, and that was because I was only 10 years old trying to understand the complicated movie. Apparently, hubby and Alan also slept at least half of the movie, while Dor was the only one awake. I think it’s the movie? Since all of us were very fresh before the movie and even after, when we walked down the street again. Seemed like, upon midnight, it was more happening than usual, although most of the shop were already closed.

That was the end of our first day.
Second and three days after, we visited a few interesting locations and attractions in Taiwan.

20-23 December 2008

People on strike.
This photo was taken in somewhere like Taiwan Liberation Center (it's not the name..I'm confident that I got cock-up translation), citizen are free to express their views and opinions here, you can stage a demonstration as long as it's peaceful.

Yeliou, a place in Taiwan full of natural rocks created by years of erosion and water force. It has many different rock formations, Queen’s head, elephant, fairy shoes, although you have to use your imagination. It was nice open area, but there were too little time to enjoy it. We were given only short time to explore the place. Basically we walked to the other end, spent few minutes and had to walk back already. Ah well…
Another scenic trip was the Taroko National park where we could see valley, cliff and waterfall with the myth that if a fish can swim upward and reach the top, it would become dragon. Should spread the news to the salmons don’t you think? Again, time was limited.
We also went to the lover bridge but we didn’t even reach the end before we had to turn back. Crap @#(*^#..we did take some nice pictures but I hate being chased in the butt like that.

Yeliou National Park

Taroko National Park

TamShui Fisherman Wharf Lover's Bridge

Mostly the time that we enjoyed them ost was when we were on our own at night time. There was not so many of such free time though, because the tour always ended at least at late evening, and we needed to change hotel every night. Check-in process, etc etc took up our free time as well.

There was one night where we spent in hot spring hotel According to the itinerary, from what we understand of course, we have hot spring facilities in every room overlooking beautiful scenery outside. Well, that is how they put it. Our hope grew bigger especially when the guide told us that the hotel is located outskirt of the Taipei city. However, the hotel was just usual hotel, overlooking to roofs. It was indeed located in hot spring area, and there was a hot spring facility in the hotel, but public. Since we had time constrain to enjoy ourselves, and of course, nude public spring and spa is still not in my list to do, especially with hubby’s office friends, although the hot spring is divided by gender. I skipped the whole facility. Urgh.. according to my friends who have been to Japan, everyone should be able to do it, enjoy yourself, no problem, unleash…huhahahha…what is there to unleash…self conscious..well maybe yes, but maybe the problem is not only be seen, but to see!
Except the hot spring facility, there was public hot spring, I mean really public around the hotel, from those spring pond in the park where you could dip your leg until the nude hot spring which I’m not sure whether genders are divided.

Anyway, we roamed round the hotel and found, again, yeah, food. We went to the famous 85 degree coffee shop and they had very good tiramisu to my surprise. I have had two of the bests tiramisu in Taiwan, one was in the Taroko National Park coffee shop and one was here. And, and, one vendor nearby 85 degree sold kacang rebus! My favorite boiled peanut, and this one actually tasted very good, especially in cold weather, it was yummy! After stuff our stomach we went further to look for the night market.

We found a very small night market and it was their closing time, but we found another gem, chow toufu in the van! Chow toufu is a delicacy I’m not sure whether it’s origin from Taiwan (sorry I can’t find English word for this) It emits unpleasant smell that actually smell like shit. The worse the smell, supposedly the better the taste. The uncle set up small portable seating near road ride. How we found him, by the smell of course! So when we strolled along the edge of the public spring, I smelt it, and as a instinct of normal human, I blamed the dog that happened to sit in my line of sight. I was wrong; it was the taufu, for the glorious smelly taufu, and it was a good one. The plus thing was the weather was great and the uncle was super friendly. We ordered one plate of taufu, to be shared by four (it’s not that we were hungry. If anything, we were more like overfed from all the things we put inside our mouth. The uncle then gave us a free bowl of soup, I don’t know what, one of Taiwan unique delicacy. We ordered another plate of toufu, he brought us another bowl of misua. We were so phaiseh, but he insisted, so we gabled up everything. Hubby and Alan only stopped because they no longer had space in the tummy. Me and Dor didn’t eat much, I’m not a fan of taufu, but I admit they have valid reason of calling this one good.

We packed back some taufu, because the uncle was packing also. If not, these two guys would sure sneak out again to get more.

They were so excited they wanted to share the toufu with their office friend, so we went into people hunting. We went to the street, hotel corridor and did some random name shouting and to the hotel hot spring. Dor went inside the hot spring to look for a female friend, I almost followed closely behind, then realized that that might not the sight I wanted to see. Ugh…..naked woman is not my cup of tea. Huhahahhaha….
Before I ventured away, Taiwan has two things I love and hate.

First, I love the way they treat dogs. Maybe unbeknownst to me, they have their fair share in animal abuses and dumping, but as far as I could see, they treat dogs like their child. Bring them everywhere because everywhere is dog friendly, even restaurant. And dogs are wearing clothes, shirt, sweater etc. I don’t like people who ‘clothe’ their dogs because I think it’s indog (read: inhuman), but in Taiwan during winter, it probably helps the dogs. It would be nice to live in dog friendly country, I imagine, when you can particularly bring you dogs everywhere and got Made In Taiwan dog products!

The other thing that I hate., well, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are probably the three worst countries in ‘miscellaneous' consumption, where you can easily find shark’s fin, tiger testicle where those trade are popular and the dishes are highly sought after. As the matter of fact, in these countries, it refers to how high social status is one person has. While I don’t know whether it’s right that I thought Taiwan is the mother of all shark’s fin culture, we bumped into a more nasty sight.

On one of the stop nearby the Harbour area, I don’t know which harbor, along the road we already saw the sign of mola-mola, lights shape as mola-mola, signage, shop name etc. It did occur to us that mola-mola probably exists in Taiwan. The famous location to see mola-mola is definitely Bali, but it has also been known to some other area and Taiwan could be one of them. This mola-mola/sunfish is family of pufferfish, with round flat body shape, one dorsal and pectoral fins (gee I hope I’m right) and tail, it’s ‘cute’. Mola-mola has size of 1,8 meter up to 4,2 meter with average weight of 1 ton. They can dive up to 600 meter deep, but they also enjoy basking near the surface.

Anyway, along the harbor, there are shosp, typical to the harbor area that sell sea produce. Dried cuttlefish, ikan bilis, and we stumbed to mola-mola. This is a species I have yet to see underwater. Yet there were there for display, in bucket of ice, in the shop. Even the eye was a kind of delicacy because it was displayed differently. Heart broken to see the first one, about 80 cm size, we saw second one, which was merely a baby, maybe around 30 cm. Darn! Crap.

It kind of spoil my day...Hiks...

Ican't remember exacly all the places that we went. I remember the road side nut seller. They sell this nut that is so-called can keep drivers awake. The further the shops from town, the sexier the seller. Some even only wore something like bra top in that kind of weather.

I also remember Ciu Fen, a village used to be inhabitated by only nine families and abandoned. It got popular again after being used as drama setting. It's quite a peaceful and unique place, where we could still find traditional house with traditional kitchen etc.

Taipei 101, it was rainy that day, and because of too many unnecessary sales stop, we only reached Taipei 101 when the sun just set, not night time yet, but not day. It was raining hard, and the wind was really chilling. We had to alight from the bus a distance away, so got to run to the building. Since weather is not good, and we had to pay extra money, most of us didn’t go up to the eighty something story. Ah well, I complain quite a lot about the tour, and this is still one of the arrangements that I don’t like. We have been asking them to go to 101 earlier in the day, yet here we are at night time. I also realize it well now that almost all the activities that a tour operator has are available for free, for the extra thing, you have to pay again.

Last day in Taiwan, we only walked around the hotel and it was only a while because we were enjoying our later wake up, we had been deprived of sleep for few days. It’s supposed to be the day we went back Singapore, but exhausted from the tour that left a lot of people feel constrained, we were excited to depart to Hong Kong.

Taipei International airport was in good condition, but they have limited duty free shop. At first we were hunting cigarette for Alan, the other Alan, our Hongki friend, who was really helpful to us in our previous trip (in one of the posts before this), we felt like we still owe him some gratitude and thought of bringing him a carton of cigarette, since that is what he likes. Not the healthiest gift, yes.

However, according to Taiwan duty free sales girl, visitors are only allowed to bring in max 3 packs of cigarette to Hong Kong. We could ask many of our friends who went to HongKong with us, but then again, it would be tedious and not presentable, so we decided to check it later at the Hong Kong airport.

Our group to Hong Kong consists of 13 people, 7 others went but not in the same group and the rest went back to Singapore.

HONG KONG (23-27 December 2008)

In Hong Kong airport, we didn’t find duty freeon the way out of the airport.
So we decided to forget about the cigarette. We took direct bus from airport to out motel in Jordan area. Previous trip, we stayed only a few buildings away from this motel, so we are quite familiar with the area, and this airport bus was very convenient, it cost us 33 HKD. The bus is specialized for airport transportation, so only few stops and large space for luggages. Our luggages stayed the same, but for some it had grown.

We went to our motel, I was expecting for the worst. First night was quite chaotic because they had given up our rooms to another tenant since they couldn’t contact us. From our 13 people group, one is the boss who stayed in other place, proper hotel and the other one is Hongki who would go back to her house. We all gathered together in this Hongki friend to celebrate her birthday, first by eating cake at her aunt house next to the motel, then continued with dinner at a very crowded restaurant.

It took us almost one hour to wait for seats, even though we had already made reservation. We walked around in Mongkok area, split up, so I could go to my favorite complex, Toy Mart. It sells all types of miniature but the prices are not cheap and normally unegotiable. I tried to look for 7X7 Rubix which I saw last time I was here, but to no avail. After drooling at the mini figurines, we went out. We went to the 7-11 to look for drink and found that they have this promo for New Year Doraemon. Damn..we had to collect stickers, after complete can exchange with doraemon surprise box and see what you got inside. Argh… I hate this kind of gimmick especially when I like the stuff!

But I got the Doraemon!!!!!! :))

Mongkok was still the same, even though now Hong Kong is in recession, like Singapore, we didn’t really see the symptom. Shoppers were still crowd the shopping area, queues were still formed in the paying line.
I would vote HongKong as the bussiest and most happening town for the places I’ve been. The ambience is just there, we were fascinated by the crowd, yet it was still comfortable and not so suffocating, maybe contributed by the fact we were tourists, we were there for fun, so our moods were not easily broken by some busy streets. Indeed, the flickering lights, low-rised buildings and busy street made us feel alive. The low rise building might be one big factor that makes it much more friendly and happening than the tall cold buildings in Orchard area.

Things we learn in Hong Kong, never ever remember a place or direction by certain billboard or shops, because they are literally everywhere, similar shops. Seven-eleven at almost every corner. It would work if the signboards you are choosing are distinct, but other than that, find another landmark or you can easily go around the same place. A tourist map would come in handy, especially when we were roaming around the similar street cluster of shops that can stretch long few MTR stations.
MTR station, is somewhat a reverse from MRT in Singapore. In Singapore for standing still in escalator, take left. For those in rush, take right side because it’s moving line. MTR is the other way around. Stand on the right, take over and rushing on the left. And they walk very fast, especially during peak hour.

Hong Kong prepaid phone card is worth to purchase if you stay for few days or if you need to. For 100 HKD, you can get the number with quite long expired date. First trip we were there, hubby called Singapore for few long chats discussing camera gear with friend, he also made local calls and international sms-es. It only costed us less than 30 HKD. This time we did the same thing, and when we were back, it still had 40 HKD in its balance.

So first night, four of us were cramped in the small room. Although it was very basic, it was better than what I thought. The lift going up was a challenge, it looks like it determinated to trap people on its door. The apartment motel looks very similar with old government housing here. The outside was very run down, but the inside of apartments were well renovated. On second day, we had the right room and this one was more spacious. However, we found another gimmick. Ouch, the toilet door was transparent! It has frosted glass door with stripes near the waist, but the frosted part was not frosted enough, especially when it’s wet. There was no way we didn’t get it wet as it was very cramp. And there is no way we could hide, because it was sliding door, and the door took the whole length of the bathroom.

What we could do was hanging a lot of coats and towels but I tell you, it was almost like my nightmare comes true. I was uncomfortable with it until the last day. Lucky we shared the room with Alan and Dor, we respect each other privacy of course.

24 December 2008

Second day in Hong Kong, one day before Christmas, we were heading for Disneyland. At first we wanted to go but we couldn’t get the ticket earlier, so we thought it was a dead plan. Apparently we got the ticket in the airport. So Disneyland, here we come.

This is me and hubby first time I Disneyland, according to the people I have talked with, first time, then it worth to go. Hong Kong Disneyland doesn’t have too good reputation and recommendation, so first timers would be more appreciative. September we went there to take a look, but the weather was horribly hot and it was not the right place to go with our parents.

It was not as crowded as I thought, although we still had to queue for everything. When we entered the park, we could catch the ambience, the ‘magical’, Disney music, props, balloon, characters on the street etc. When we looked around, suddenly hubby and Alan has already in the queue of taking picture with Goofy and Pluto. ;p
We went for the Lion King show, the figures on the stage were quite impressive, but the human characters were not.

Human dress as animal character, especially lion, would end up plain ugly with big hair, and this is the exact case.
Golden Mickey show, we had to queue for quite a long time, but it was worth it. It was the recap of all the Disney works, and man, I can relate to almost every one of it especially the older 2D animation that decorated my younger years. Uh, I sound like grandma in rocking chair, but suddenly I realize that Disney has a heavy mission on its shoulder, to become part of every kid childhood, which is by default should be the happy years. It is an achievement itself and that might be what makes the brand survive until now, long after the creator is had gone. That is precisely the cause why we were willing to queue to take picture with some fellow hidden in furry suit and interact with them as if there were the real duck or dog in Disney world.

There were not so much ride in the park, we could count it with finger. In total, we actually spend almost ten hours in the park but still we didn’t visit Tomorrow Land where all the thrill rides are located. We took River Cruise with those animatronics, ‘It’s a Small World’ boat ride which is basically like Istana Boneka in Jakarta but I had better memory in Jakarta. We took train ride and that’s about it?? What have we done…that’s all? That’s all! We spent more time taking pictures, queuing, eating, waiting for fireworks, watching shows and watching parade. Oh ya, they had special Christmas parade “Let It Snow”, it was okay, but he setback was all the basic characters were hidden inside the double decker bus. They were visible, of course, waving and all, but they should went out and parade on the street for us to get better pictures? Yah.

Eventhough by finger counting it seemed like we didn’t do much, we actually cover almost three quarter of the park. That’s why people are complaining about Hong Kong Disneyland. Well, not me, it was my first magical experience in this infamous trademark. Anyway, watching Golden Mickey itself had made me go back time and it was quite enough to make me happy Next time somewhere else I’d be a critical bitch, maybe, but I have promised myself to be nicer, and I always nice when I’m on holiday. Hoo..

Well, quite highlight of the day, since we spent almost two hours sitting in the open plaza, we watched the Christmas Eve fire works. I’m sure but I heard they have firework every nights, but Christmas Eve could be more special.

We had 3d glass given on entry point, anytime we see lights, under the glass, we would see flickering angels, if we move it up and down, the wings would flap. It’s very nice especially for those tiny thousands of Christmas lights on the tree, because we could see thousand of angels.

So, at least I can say Disney day was a satisfying day, we were dead tired when we left with the Mickey train to connect to train going to town. The other group was split into two, some stayed in hotel, some went to the city for count down. We declined the count down as we could imagine how crowded it would be and nah…we had our firework.

When we reached hotel area, the street was still busy as if it was not almost midnight. We went to the first restaurant near hotel we could find, the one that we knew has good price was already closed.

Anyway, I got to eat my luncheon meat instant noodle, my ‘must do’ food in Hong Kong. Ah well, Indomie tastes the best, but that was the closest I can get outside.
We left the restaurant five minutes to midnight, Alan almost couldn’t open his eyes, we dropped by 7-11 for some drink, the day turned 25 December, Happy Birthday Jesus!
We went back to hotel, shower like exhibitionist and dropped dead at one plus.

25 December 2008

Christmas day.., we started the day with traditional original Hongki breakfast inside the wet market behind motel. We had to go through clusters of market and it reminds me of how I always like to visit wet market with my mom. It’s fun for me, I got to see all the fresh vegetable, the red patch on village people cheek that is shaped by years of years of hardworking and facing the day before the rest of the world open their eyes. Ha…aunties bargaining, seller promoting their item. It’s just a simple part of everyday life that most people don’t get the chance to see nowadays in modern city.

Soooo…we split up after breakfast..four of us would go by foot starting from Prince Edward to Tsim Tsa Tshui, which covers five MTR station. We would see fish, flowers, birds, camera stuffs, ladies markets, toy shops, remote control shops and then going to the bay to watch the light show.

Alan (Hong Kong one) showed us the best spot to see the light the last time and we couldn’t find it, anyway, there was a big crowd that night. We met up with all the group and saw the light show from some rooftop, too bad there was not fireworks.
After that we found a couple and a grandma selling hot sweet potato and salted quail eggs. The sweet potato was warm and yummy-marvelous, magnificent-fabulous, splendid and lovely!! -in the cold weather.

Another tired day, but satisfying, we went around Tsim Tsa Tsui for awhile. It was crowded and tiring and damn, we couldn’t find anywhere to sit, although we finally found Starbuck, it was time for our legs to give away after walking the whole day and running the whole afternoon. We had good chat in Starbuck for one hour or more, hanging on the hot chocolate.

Went back to hotel, we roamed around the wet market area (which magically disappeared) and found a desert stall looked similar with what Alan HK brought us previous trip. The durian pancakes sold out, so we don’t know whether it has the same quality, but the fruit platter was definitely different. The stall in…ehm…I can’t even remember the place was gigantic and had all kind of fruits, this one was quite small, not fantastic but fresh.

Reaching midnight, it has become a norm for us to sleep only at one or more after all the queue to take shower. We were expecting our laundry to be ready. Here is the good thing about this motel. With 30 HK bucks, we could have one load of washing machine, which was extremely helpful. ( 9 days trip had accommodate bags and bags of laundry especially jacket, so it’s good that when we reached Singapore, our burden of laundry had been reduced greatly). Laundry wasn’t ready yet, but should be on time.

26 December 2008

The last full day, why everything is so fast in Hong Kong? Since Alan Sgp was planning to go Macau today, we decided this as our day. We still had breakfast together at the famous local Chee Cheong Fan., whoho…I can spell, correct or incorrect, I don’t care. Anyway, the CCF was really goooood, it’s still around the same wet market area. Why didn’t we know..

HK, we never had difficulty to find roadside eating places, although it was not the case with Tung Chung area. Since it kind of my day, I specifically wanted to come back here to hunt for attire, he he he…however the food court, Food Republic, it’s same brand with one of Singapore foodcourts, doesn’t provide good food, and too full. So we brought some bread to stuff our tummy first. The post office nearbywas closed on Boxing Day, so I had to forget about sending postcard to my friend. At that moment then I realized, I actually never saw any postcard this visit in HK. Usually I would saw it somewhere and remember the ‘obligation’ to send my friend, but not this time.

After Tung Chung, we went to UML, I can’t remember what it stands for, but it’s my favorite shop. It sells all kind of miniature toys that made me want to cry because I want to buy it all! It’s actually not toys, but collectible miniatures, everyday life, fantasy stuff, even traditional food cart etc. Hell…this time they happened to have promotion but the stuffs were limited as they hold the import after China poisonous lead paints found in toys. Anyway..

We had appointment with Alan HK tonight, and appointment with him means hectic night. Since it was the last night, I asked hubby to go back to his remote control complex so he could do some more spare parts shopping. I got feeling that he still have more things he might want and I was right. : )

I also ended up buying two die-cast Volkswagons, Samba Van and 1967 Squareback while waiting for him. Nooooo I don’t want to start collecting this stuff, as my miniature collection is quite a handful to buy and to display. But I couldn’t resist the VW…

We made it just time to put all the stuff that we bought, change some extra money because we wanted to treat Alan HK for dinner and we didn’t know where he was going to bring us. Alan HK is a very prompt person, he was already circling around motel area waiting for our call, that’s why we always think that we never able to repay this guy for his genuinety toward his friends, even for band new friends. We insisted to buy him dinner beforehand, otherwise it would be another disastrous night because he had ways and will to pay the dinner.
He reluctantly agreed, and brought us to this Thai restaurant with wawwy…very very nice food.

We tried the chicken feet salad, it’s cooked with some kind of vinegar that gave it fresh taste and crunchy. The sashimi prawn, of all our lives there were only two times that we ate prawns raw, both with him, and it was never disappointing, The prawn were sweet and nice without any fishy indication. We had another basil minced meat something something, we were using lettuce to wrap the mince meat and it was another favorite of mine. The rest kept coming, lumpia, fresh salad, coconut, there were one two dishes that I can’t remember now, I remember it as equally tasty, the only thing that wasn’t fantastic was the lumpia, as I’ve never liked lumpia at all (eits, expect the tukang goring cepe-an in front of my campus).

Alan HK told us that he went Disneyland yesterday, on Christmas, as annual program with his daughter and wife, it was more hectic than working, he said, even though he works through the day and most of the time at night too. Turned out he also had special fare for Disneyland, we actually knew but didn’t want to bother him since he is so sincere, We didn’t want him to buy the ticket and brings it for us as that is most likely what he is going to do. As usual, he has at least two bottles of beer but since we know his style, I was not worried, he is more sober than many people that I know. We talked about cameras, hubby, him and Alan Sgp, thereof them are using the same cameras and they have equal share of passions, which involve hunting and setting up, trick to get good pictures etc.

It’s not Alan if we can predict where we are going or what we’ll be doing. After dinner, he brought us to the central where the big Christmas tree was standing. We wrote our wish onto the cards and hung it to the tree. We hung one set and I keep one set.

We then proceed toward Lan Kwai Fong, the famous street with all the bars and pubs where Hong Kong artists like to show up and create scandal, just like the one still fresh in the news, some actor kiss another girl in the pub while his fiancée, one famous actress stayed at home. Tsk tsk.. Man.

He insisted of treating us this time, but we could only gobble up orange juice because we don’t drink. The area is located in a very steep road and secluded with various bars. This was the place while the rest of the group came down on Christmas day.

As the night crawled deeper, we saw more people and more angmohs. Alan refers to Ang Moh as ghost. Haha…interesting, I have collected various term : bule, Mat Soleh, Ang Moh, and now ghost.

It was around ten, I thought, safe. Nite was going to over soon. I felt quiet relieved because we never know when we were going to reach hotel to rest. Again, we’d never know.

We walked back to the car when he decided that we still had time and he wanted to show us the interesting escalator. Sometimes I didn’t really get what he was saying, so I thought it’s really just escalator, or travelator, anyway, along the way the road was quite interesting and unique. We walked up two-three escalators and he said more, more. Apparently we were climbing half the peak, the Hong Kong highest point. He brought us up there with car previously, now we climbed up half of it with escalator…and walked down by foot.

It was night time in Hong Kong winter, we don up our jacket as this night was cooler than usual. But when going down half the peak, even down, we started to sweat. It was long and crazy walk, but we enjoyed the night. Nice view. We can click with this guy well I think because three of us appreciate this kind of thing. Something unique, something unusual and most important, something not commercialized.
At the end of the walk down, three of us were desperately looking for toilet. We still had to walk horizontally as the building where he parked the car was looong way from the sight. That’s the thing with parking near the tallest building; we actually knew how far we had to walk.

He then drove us nearby the highest tower in Hong Kong, near Norman Foster Standard Chartered Bank (?!?) and Hong Kong bank, both are famous buildings in my architecture past conversation that I despise…mhahaha..

The nite was over? Nooo…he brought us to experience the topless bus that went up and down Hong Kong city, this bus can take passengers up to the peak. It’s quite a famous tourist ‘must do’ activities. A group of youngsters from Japan were enjoying it so much then took the trip front and back. Front and back. Front and back again.
That was our crazy night, he still wanted to bring us for dessert. But even though I was craving for the yummy durian cold pancake, I was relieved we could talk him out of it. He still needed to go to his night work, although he insisted he was not tired, we felt very phaiseh, and we were tired.

Thanks to him, again, he promised he would visit us here if everything goes well with his job, he would bring his daughter and wife. We will try to do what he does and bring him to interesting places as much as we can. It would be difficult, but we swear we will try hard. Even my parents were so touch with his sincerity they also committed to do the same. This kind of friends are very hard to come by.
When we reached motel, everyone was gathered around our Hk colleague aunt’s house. We greeted them and went straight to the room, we had important thing to do. Packing!
Just like the other time, we add one extra box where we could dump many things in, this time we were better prepared, we had plastic wrap and all the necessary tape etc, everything was neat and intact. Everything remained the same, except this big box, which came from our fruitful hobby shopping.

Everybody else was also busy with packing, our room was the noisiest.

27 December 2008

We woke up a bit later, had our last breakfast in the market and went to airport.
We got different airport than last time. Fair enough, this one is much more convenient, well, because this one was not budget airline. Back then we needed to take sky train whatever to reach the designated boarding gate.

We found another Disney shop here, but didn’t buy anything because it was so crowded and there was nothing else that we wanted. We had lunch, wander around a bit, and everybody, from the other group who split up with us, had gathered there.
Less than an hour prior to departure, there was an announcement that the plane was going to be delayed for unknown period of time because there was supporting land crew strike. End of year, bonus problem, I heard it’s quite usual there. Every passenger got food voucher for 40 HKD.

Our flight was only delayed about one hour plus, with some of the passenger baggage not flying in the same plane, lucky, for ours who did early checking, we all had our bags with us. Reaching Singapore around ten plus, we grabbed taxi home and caught our much needed sleep,

Well, almost a month has gone since the trip, my all miniature has been displayed, hubby’s spare part had even been used in the race, I’ve worn all the shirts that I bought and ate all the food that we brought but yet, yet I haven’t gone through the picture and finish with the journal. Ah well… I hope by the time this is up, it’s still January!

Macau & HK - The Tale of One of The Kind Fellow

2008-10-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Macau & Hong Kong/Kowloon (6-13 September 2008)

As it’s only about few months away from my first trip to this country, it’s still very fresh in my mind. This time, I was not with my classmates but with my husband and our parents, it’s so called a family trip I plan to make once a year if possible.

MACAU 6-9 September 2008

To move from one casino to another in Macau or Taipa island was a breeze because everywhere is quite near from our hotel and the facilities like shuttle bus is very good in there to lure visitors to visit their casinos. Basically we only need to o to the terminal ferry and from there we can take shuttle bus to any casino that we want, even when we are not actually visiting the casinos. Of course I brought them to Venetian. The last time my parents were there, they only spent a few hours and didn’t have the chance to visit any places other than Sands that is located next to the ferry terminal. Anyway, Venetian was quite a newly completed casino. It’s a must see as the building is special and huge, modeled after the Venetian in Vegas with the indoor and outdoor gigantic artificial canals. Too bad they missed the shows in Wynn because we split up many times to suit everybody’s preferred interests.

On a afternoon walk from hotel, we took a brisk walk to find convenient store to look for something. We ended up walking quite a distance, and I happened to recognize a road. I was in that road during my last trip, but all I did was following our tour guide in the flood of people, it was bloody crowded because of Labor Day holiday, while pissing off and keeping an eye with one of my classmates who wondered around as she pleased. So I wasn’t really convinced that I can correctly found the way but yeah…I did! After a long walk along the shopping area with some twist and turns, we reached the ruin of St.Paul. I think we didn’t spend a night without going there, reason being, we brought different people there every day, and we didn’t have much thing to so because we didn’t gamble, We tried to go to the Fisherman Wharf, it looks quite promising, but everything was closed, so we only wandered around and climbed the artificial volcano. The weather was quite unbearable as it was really hot we had to find some shade which ended us to a small little café with very huge cake. Worth it.

Another day brought everyone to Ama temple, the must see destination, a historic cultural site in Macau, a temple for fisherman, root of the name of Macau. And on the last night me and hubby wandered around Macau with all the lens and tripod trying to capture the night scenes, the colorful light of sincity of Asia At first we were hesitate about the safety, but then again, we found out that it was okay, a lot of people were still relaxing on the park even after midnight, I guess the city really never sleeps.

HONGKONG/KOWLOON – 9-13 September 2008

On the fourth day, we moved to Hong Kong. We were strolling around Mongkok area when this friend of hubby friend met up with us. His name is Alan and he is one of the craziest but most sincere guy I have ever met. He didn’t even know us before, but offered to drive us around through their mutual friend. We already politely reject the offer when we were still in Singapore, by that time we hadn’t know what type of person Alan is, ha…he doesn’t accept no for an answer.

So, after check in the hotel and everything ,we left around four o’clock to ladies market. Soon, our mothers found their heaven and went around enjoyed bargaining for bag and clothes.
Around seven in the afternoon, Alan called us and met us on the very place we stood. We hesitated that it’s going to be easy for him to look for us in the Mongkok area, as it was very crowded and the place is so full with shops, some has repeated shops on every corner, and we hadn’t even known how each other look like. But he did, and very fast. First impression this fellow is very outgoing and friendly. He brought us the jockey club nearby, so that we can try our luck for the 45 million draw that night. It is an unusual introduction, but he was so energetic and high spirited that we were influenced.

After that, he brought us for special seafood dinner. The dinner was indeed very good, although I don’t enjoy walking around display of live food anymore. The fish in display are in good condition, but I just imagining it’d be more fun to see them in the wild. Still, have to admit that we had very good and delicious meal, and this guy secretly paid for the meal. Again, he barely knew us, and we were party of five. During dinner, he drank beer, we were nervous with that fact, but he said he is used to that, and few bottle won’t knock him down. He mentioned about bringing us to the top of Kowloon, to see the whole scenery of Hongkong.

Only private car can go there. He is an engineer, and his car is full of tools it made a lot of noise; it’s a fun experience itself to be sitting in his car. Since it was already around ten we again, politely rejected his offer to climb the mountain. He obliged, but still mentioned about the rare scenery, so we use parent card, which is not a lie, to say that they are sleepy and tired, since it was the first day there and almost none of us had good sleep the night before savoring the last night scene in Macau. Anyway, the idea of being driven by a man who finished three bottle of beer through the mountain to the top is never appealing.

When we were at his car, he mentioned again that we just need to relax and sit down, not tiring thing to do, he would do all the driving. It seemed like there was nothing we could say to stop him anymore, so me and hubby just shrugged and what hoped nothing bad would happen. Anyway, everything looked fine, he didn’t look drunker than he already was. Ho….

We passed through mountainous and winding road along the way, Although Alan is breaking all the rules; he drank, he talked through his mobile and drove with one hand, he was steady. After a few kilometers of hesitation, I kind of letting go the doubts. Along the road it was totally dark, there were many stray dogs, big dogs like wolves but I don’t think they were wolves. They wandered n the sides on the road, in the forested area, some standing on the big rock or hardscapes we saw along the way.

The peak of Kowloon can only be reached by private car, even tour group wouldn’t bring tourist up to the peak but halfway only. So it was a rare opportunity for us and our luck to meet this fellow. We could see the full skyline of Hongkong and the way. It was pretty breathtaking, al the high rise buildings and penthouse are standing on the edge of the cliff and they are high rise! I’ve seen villas and pavilions clinging on the cliff, but this was the first time I saw high rise apartments and penthouse block that costs 50K HKD per square feet, for rent, a month, on the cliff. It certainly would be an agony to go up every day, but it must be worth it. So all this concrete jungle and the lighted up skyline decorate the night with fluorescent colors, blinking like stars and framed with the lush of greenery from the mountain. The bay was full of blinking ship, sailing through the silence of the night, accompanied by the lonely wind. We forgot the fatigues and after taking some shoots, we quietly enjoyed the twinkling city.

Previously before dinner, Alan brought us to the top of some building, I don’t know its name, to enjoy the light shows of Hongkong building. There was an audio performance while we saw the light comes from the building on the opposite end, separated by the bay, building beside and behind us. The light was shined from the rooftop or façade of the building penetrating through the sky and danced following the rhythm of the song.

After the peak, Alan parked nearby hotel and walked with us to the Temple street. Temple street is a night market and also known as man street, they sell everything from clothing to sex toys, which were displayed freely on the walkway across the table. It was only opened at night, obviously. We were tired, but very impressed with his sincerity to accompany and bring us around.

Almost an hour past midnight, we finally got back to hotel, cleaned up and dropped dead tired. We decided to change our habit from early riser to night owl to adjust to Alan.

The next morning we woke up only around almost ten and got ready to Stanley market. Alan has given us the direction of how to go. We only needed to take one bus from Central station, the journey itself is a scenic journey, where we were able to see various scenery as the bus climbed up and down the mountain and passed through a famous destinations like Repulse bay and some beach where we could see people sunbathing on the sand. The road was narrow, and at many points of time, we were only like half a meter away from the cliff, and it was a double decker bus. We sat in at the very front of upper storey so we could enjoy the chilling edge overlooking the apartments and tall buildings that hang on to the cliff, we were pretty sure that this was the skyline that we saw yesterday from the peak of Kowloon.

Staley market was not as big as we thought it would be, it has some shops where we could get rejected branded stuff for very cheap price, and one special shop selling wall-e keychain I liked so much and never found it anywhere else in Hong Kong. Too bad, I was holding to the belief that I will see it everywhere so I didn’t buy it. Well, at least I bought the Eva pin o accompany my Wall-e from Singapore, at least it’s consistent with the movie, they are from different area.
From Stanley market, we could go to the pier and looked or walked to the ocean but the weather was extremely hot during our stay, and our mothers didn’t like the idea to go under the sun where they could turn around and shopped again. He he..

We had lunch In a narrow alley, and trying desperately to communicate when ordering the food. They can’t speak meandarin or English, we can’t speak Cantonese, so the only option that we had was sign language ad pinpoint the menu they had. in mandarin. Our parents can speak and read mandarin well, but when it comes to asking something else or making sure what was in the menu, it was also comically funny.

Compare to Macau, Hong Kong food is cheaper. Maybe because in Macau we mostly wondering and staying around the Macau island, where the highest concentration of casinos are located.
That night, as mentioned, Alan came and brought us to the peak of Hong Kong. While Kowloon peak is quite inaccessible for tourist, Hong Kong’s has been commercialized as one of attraction and it is very easy to go there on your own by taking the tram or bus. The difference when we went with Alan was, we got the chance to be there pass midnight, when things were quiet and there were almost only us around.

That night, he brought us to the Japanese food district. Having been working in Japan before, Alan’s favorite food was Japanese food and he knows where to get the freshest and good Japanese food. But the thing was, this guy is one extreme guy who never ceased to amaze us. Except some really good food and sushi, he ordered sashimi. On our mind, sashimi is the pinkish fish flesh that comes with sushi or on its own, pieces of small pinky cutting on a plate. His sashimi was, well, when it was delivered to our table, me and my mom freaked out and almost jumped. There were ices on the plate with cut fish meat, and half of the fish with head facing up sitting on the ice, and the fish was still moving, jerking and breathing. All my life I had been afraid of dying fish, and now, it was before my very eyes and we were supposed to eat it. As fast as it got there, the dish was shifted from in front of me to in front of Alan and hubby. Alan seemed to feel quite guilty and he canceled some other ‘similar concept’ type of dish.

We learned that he was a certified scuba diver too, but again, nothing can be too ordinary for him. He actually asked whether we catch lobster during our diving trip etc because he did when he was still diving. I know that in many parts of the world, catching with own hand is allowed, but I hardly heard it in Asia. So he caught the lobster and there was his next meal. We were imagining diving with him. Taking pictures and he would give us the sign ‘Okay? Finish with the pictures? The he would grab the lobster and made his dinner. Ouch.

Back to the Hong Kong peak, the quiet midnight of the place was the perfect way to catch the skylight and the lights of the concrete jungle below. As pretty as it is, Kowloon peak still win my vote more.

Third day, we decided to go to Thung Chung, to take Ngong Ping cable car ride to a very big Buddha on the top of the Hill. The cable car was very stable and slightly bigger than what we usually took in Genting or Sentosa. But imagining if we come during peak period, one cable car is expected to hold as many as 10 people sitting and 7 people standing, and it’s only slightly bigger than the four-people car. I can imagine that it’s going to be elbow to elbow for the passenger, but to think about people actually have to stand for the almost half an hour journey is a way too much for the price. I would definitely give it a pass if it was crowded. Standing, see scenery through people shoulder, and it was hot when we rode back, and it would be heavy. Heavy. Cable car. I call skydiving calculated risk, but not this one.

The weather was quite unpleasant that day, even though we were so called on top of the hill, it was very hot digging into our skin and somehow there were this small little bug biting my leg, gave me around a dozen of polkadot. But overall, I don’t complain. We went back to the Thung Chung area to visit the outlet mall, when everything is ‘outlet’. Good stuff, good price. Shopping it was then. I had never been convinced why would somebody take a shopping trip to Hog Kong, but now I understand. We found a food court which is maybe the branch from Singapore, the food kind of tasted like Singapore food, bland.

We also spent times around Yau Ma Tei that day wandering around the RC, camera and miniature shops. It was mouth drooling window shopping. RC stuff was much cheaper for hubby delight, camera depends, but it was high price for miniatures although the variety and the quality made me didn’t want to go back.

Our hotel is located strategically near Yau Ma Tei and Mongkok area, so it was okay to let our parents roamed by themselves while we were searching for our own stuffs. There were times and again we got lost in the crowd, the shopping district stretch from Tsim Tsa Shui until I think, Prince Edward area, so there are a lot of chances of us getting lost.

Hongkong transport system is quite similar with here. That’s why during my half a day visit in May, I was confident that it would be easy to roam around. They are using card with deposit to pay for the transport, while I borrowed from a friend, the rest of the group had o purchase the card, but it was very helpful for our convenience to get around and also for our future visit in December.

The MRT is called MTR. Mass Rapid Trasit = Mass Transit Rapid? Not sure. While in Singapore, we have to stand on the left of escalator for those who are not in hurry, in Hongkong is the on the left. Staircase here is freeway, although I notice the tendency to walk on the right (which is weird thinking of the left side system on the road). In Hong Kong it depends, there will be some arrow to let you know which way you should be taking, and it could be right or left. They drive on the left side, just like Indonesia and Singapore. In Macau, they have two types of cars, driver on the right, or on the left, but they also drive on the left side.

While I heard a lot about Hong Kong people walking four times as fast as Singaporean, it’s quite an exaggeration. Either Singaporean had been catching up, or our experience squeezing the MTR during peak hour was not an adequate sample.
Rudeness, they are facing same problem with Singapore. While the younger generation or majority can be friendly and helpful, some aunties were extremely rude. But then again, who know if the friendly ones were foreigners and vice versa? But for what I know, although hubby is lucky to always have this kind of friend, people like Alan is very rare. Someone so genuine and crazy.

He becomes the highlight of our trip. When there was one day we decided to just do shopping around Mongkok, he still came to bring us around to camera and miniature shops, because he knew we were looking for some stuffs. While with him, we had always been totally full until we couldn’t eat anymore, one night without dinner with Alan ,we actually missed it and fell hungry. Kee keke..

Hong Kong food, what to say, our friend brought us to the best food. The last night he brought us to the steamboat where we really ate very fresh octopus and prawn. Dead. We insisted to have dead food. Yet, it was the first time I ate raw prawn and it tasted very good and fresh. The steamboat was special, they have meatball with cheese inside and it melted in the mouth when we bit it. He also ordered some other unusual things that we didn’t even know the names but it tasted very good, even the soup was tasty. After the big meal, we were all stuffed and full, he brought us for special desert, durian and mango wrapped with special skin with cream inside, also fruit platter with all kinds of fruit. The durian dessert tasted very good and although we were full, we happily trying to stuff it in.

For that dinner and dessert, Alan especially did a lot of effort. The place is in new territory, pass through the underwater tunnel in place I can’t even pronounce, I remember seeing Pak ‘Oi on the street signage. He worked and stayed nearby. So he purposely picked us up at the other island, brought to dinner, sent us back to hotel and went back to work again after midnight. As he was a civil engineer, he works almost 24/6, after midnight is popular hours if he need to get on the road. During dinner, we told him not to send us back, we could take MTR or cab. But he grinned and said the place doesn’t have MTR yet and the taxi around are only green taxis. Green taxis are not allowed to cross to Kowloon. Ha….his broken English made it funnier. He is Cantonese speaker, with quite good English and Mandarin, and command other languages like Thai and Japan too.

We fell that we owe this guy so much every one of us pledge that if he ever come to Singapore for visit, we would do all we can to help him the same deal. But from our stories, he said he doesn’t see himself liking Singapore. What? 10.30 above we only can eat in Mc. Donald or pubs? Sight seeing on the mountain, the most we can do it take Singapore Flyer that can cost us ten-days lunch.
Dinner and dessert? Night food? Night life? There are only limited places that we know and it was not all that good. So…

So I think he deserves it that I attribute this trip to him for his kindness and uniqueness.
Even until now, we can’t help to laugh remembering how crazy the fellow, how nervous our moms went through the adventurous times with him. You should see how my mom looked when we were climbing the mountain or when the sashimi arrived at our table, or when mil had to stay up pass midnight while usually knocked off to bed at nine.

Other than shopping and a lot of sightseeing and eating, me and hubby stole few hours to Disneyland….entrance. We didn’t go in because it was not the place that our parents would like to go ,and the weather was crazily hot that it burned even though we only moved around to take pictures for a while. Anyway, when we are back in December with hubby’s colleagues, it would be more suitable and the weather should be cooler.

Overall, Hong Kong is the city life that we like. It’s busy it’s modern, yet the touch of small people and street are so alive. It’s like what we would like Jakarta to be. Where we can roam the street easily without afraid being mugged. Where we can tasted the street food where everything is cheap and affordable, where scenery is still free and there is heaven for our hobby.

Of course, 5 -6 days experience is not too fair to justify, but supposedly close enough to tell.

I'm very sorry that I still haven't put up all pictures, so here are some pictures hubby took that might not possible without our new good friend, Alan.

Dayang Gloomy Trip

2008-06-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

An very sad accident happened during night dive in Dayang Jetty on 7^th, Saturday night. A diver was hit by boat propeller and suffered cuts on arms and head. He was evacuated to Mersing jetty and to Mersing hospital. Everyone did their part to try to render helps, supports or resources for the rescue. Unfortunately, the diver passed away...

...

Deepest sorrow and condolences for the family who had been left behind...

RIP...

Not a pinpoint for this particular case, because nobody understand what happened,

just something to remember for me or anyone else..

Water is not human’s natural environment. We rely on equipments, skills and self diligence to know our limits and respect the boundary. There are many times we take things for granted, or treat weekend trip as just another short trip where we thought it was okay to loosen our awareness and carefulness. I’m guilty for this too. Weekend trip or whatever trip is still water, still same or even more amount of risks. Some currents there are more ripping, some waves are dangerously higher, some dangerous components and animals are the same. Anywhere in the world, dive accidents constantly happen, regardless how technology has evolves. Human is still made of flesh and breathes air.

...

When we got home to Singapore, somehow I can’t get it out of my mind that someone else wasn’t going to….

...

Dayang Island

6-8 June 2008

It was a very hectic week for me before the trip. Suddenly there were so many things to do after came back from Genting until I had to listed it down to make sure nothing is left out, from making check up appointment for Dad to submitting the first draft of my final project. Workplace didn’t help at all because there was equally amount of work so I couldn’t do my personal thing.

It all got worse because I didn’t feel perfectly well. So for the few days between the two weekend, I actually didn’t have the mood to go, imagining the rough journey on the way to the island.

But things were picking up when we met Cynthia, Froggie and James our old friends. Restoring my mood, the journey didn’t feel that bad even though we were hit by a very bad jam. Since Singapore important captive went lose months ago (I think it’s months already!) they kept tightening the security on the check border despite public pessimism. The result is the horrible jam on the immigration check point. Leaving from Newton around 7.30, we only managed to pass Malaysia almost ten o’clock.

The journey to Mersing was the rougher one, the van’s driver didn’t know how to use brake. On the way to Mersing the road was winding and long…and he turned here and there without stepping on the brake at all in the dark. Sometimes I really feel amazed that we managed to go through it, the other times I felt pity for those dive operators who has to go through it weekly.

It was very good unlike usual in Mersing jetty. Half an hour pass midnight, instead of waiting, we could board the jetty directly and we got the whole boat for ourselves. We also didn’t need to use transfer boat because the tide was still high enough. It was a bigger boat with seats and a lot of floor space. Each of us can occupied 3-4 seats, so I slept well until we reach the island at almost 5 am.

Walked through the jetty, I felt alive again. Dayang looked pretty in the shade of moonlight. It’s the island I liked more compared to Tioman. We went here many times during 2006, so in 2007 we skipped it at all and changed our weekend trip destination to Tioman. Tioman is a more developed and commercialized island, while Dayang is only a little patch of white beach with nobody but divers. No activities to do but dives and no shops but two little very basic shops served by the dive resorts. The nice characteristics it has are the high cliff and white sandy beach.

Usual schedule is to sleep until around 8.30 and get ready for first dive. But this time we aimed to do dawn dive. Hubby and Froggie wanted to test out their new cameras. I was supposed to test my strobe too, but we had too many things to bring already and we haven’t been diving for 9 months! ..the longest break since we started!, so no camera for me because I didn’t want to have too many things to worry about and just wanted to enjoy the dive. So, dawn dive! We assembled our gears and camera near the beach, it actually felt very nice because the surrounding was semi dark and quiet. There was only one group of divers, and one of them was Joshua. They looked seriously deep involved in quiet discussion. Around 6, we donned our gears and walked along the beach to get nearer to the dive site. It was time to visit the Dayang wreck again, my very first wreck, since it was low tide, it wasn’t so deep.

This time diving, the visibility was not so clear, it was less than 4 meters on our first dive, and the most we had for the trip was maybe 6-8 meters?

There were not so many things to see around the wreck, it was half dark and we had to keep track about everyone whereabouts in not so good visibility. But I liked the dawn dive because we were still fresh instead of just waking up from sleep like usual first dive.

After breakfast, around 9 we headed out for the sea on the boat. First dive we went…argh..somewhere.. can’t remember..I jumped in first so that I could take hubby’s camera before he jumped. But, when I ‘giant stride’ in, turned back, I found out I was already three meters away on the left where I jumped. I got to fight back to the ladder and from above, everyone called it quit for that dive site, current too strong. So took out my fins, climbed out and we went for another site. It looked quite bad still but when we went down it was alright and even very calm.

For the rest of the day we mostly dived on our own, three of us with Froggie. The dives were quite awarding, we saw Thor shrimp, small school of barracuda (looks like giant barracuda), nudibranches and amazing color variation for Christmas Tree Worms, seriously! From white, blue, yellow, maroon, black, orange, purple, green, stripes, you name it, they have it.

Late afternoon before night dive, Cynthia and Jerric brought us to the secret place they called as Blue Lagoon. It’s a tiny patch of beach surrounded by rocks and cliff with white sand. It was indeed quite pretty with occasionally wave crashing to the shore. We played around for sometimes. Riding the wave, jumping on the sea, laughing like mad and ended up like sandy man. The tiny fine sands were really hard to get rid off; wetsuit, booties, hair. We went nuts for about an hour, it happened that all ten of us had same amount of craziness and childishness, the combination made it all real fun.

The better one was night dive, where we saw spider crab, few big crabs, big huge unidentified yellow-green-flat-almost 20 cm nudibranch, tiny crabs, tiny shrimps, and of course sleeping parrotfish. This time I found two sleeping rabbitfishes under the table coral.

But after night dive, there was a sad incident. We were gathering around in the dining area when there was a commotion on the jetty. Since there were so many people around, we could only wait and see if any more helps were needed. There were flow of first aid and oxygen tank, and people. After awhile, a boat left.

~~~~~

Not as usual, this time we took a break on Sunday. Four of us with Ong, Froggie’s non diver friend stayed in the island. Since we did 5 dives in Saturday, we were so called 'break even' and wanted to relax on Sunday. We could sleep a bit late until 8.30, had breakfast and enjoy the scenery. When everyone else came back for breakfast, we went to the oat to pack our gears. The morning went out very fast, it didn’t really feel like we were wasting time at all. It was a quite a good idea to dive intensively on Saturday and relax on Sunday. I felt fresh the whole day, because we started the dawn dive fresh instead of rudely awaken for first morning dive. We could relaxing and packed our gear leisurely without rushing as usual and we wouldn’t feel too tired on Monday at work.

We saw a dolphin’s carcass washed up to the shore. At first I thought it was a turtle, ccan’t remember why I guessed so also. The dolphin skin was totally white, the carcass almost broken by half because of very big wound that left the stomach part ripped open. From the grey color of the organs, it must had been quite sometimes.

Hm.. things were quite gloomy this weekend. The whole two days were also decorated by pouring rain.

We left the island about one pm in different boat. We had to transfer our gears. The boat was very uncomfortable because it was full, there was no many seats left inside the boat, and seats available were only like middle seat in the middle of two people who used it for their legs, luggage, extended belly etc. So four of us sat on the upper deck. I almost kissed the floor when I fell asleep, I was very sleepy because of the pills, so it was quite a tedious four hours to stay awake.

Luckily at Mersing, the tide was still high, it was still early and we were optimist to be able to reach Singapore early. However, we wasted a lot of time for dinner because of a gigantic group of some Lexus community in the same restaurant, and we had the record long of jam time at the borders. We stuck in jam for about four hours, and finally reached home after midnight.

Photos from Hubby..

(Click for bigger view)

Above The Cloud Again

2008-06-09T07:32:00.001-07:00

Genting
30th May - 1st June 2008

This time I visited Genting with my classmates. After our casual tea time hang out, we decided to further our ‘study trip’ and booked a trip for the next weekend.

We departed on Friday night around 10.30 and reached there at 4.30 am, it was quite a quick ride although we still made the usual stops. With some classmate’s extended family, our group consisted of 13 people. Before we were able to check in, we stranded around, ate and went to do some observations.

Actually, there are not so many stories. We spent a lot of time together eating, walking around, chatting and even watching movie. As I get to know my classmates better, I saw certain people came out with their shocking personality, but for the others, it seems like we could be good friends. I guess at this age, around ten years difference between the youngest and the oldest doesn’t seem so much apart. I also realized that no matter what age stage I am and the world around me is, there are always that little fun things that make we all little children at times. Perhaps laughing at some silly jokes, having little fun or doing some childish things and even play stupid games.

Well. I guess deep down, nobody ever grow old. We never pass our time to get to know new people, and meet new friends. J

Because my memory card was given up on me, I just picked a photo we took from our previous trip there. Different season of course. Overall, Genting is still the same, except the weather kind of getting warmer. Unlike old time, we didn’t need any sweater indoor at all.

Sincity of Asia-Macau & Kowloon, Hong Kong

2008-05-14T20:32:00.001-07:00

Macau & Hong Kong (30th April - 4th May 2008)

The trip is arranged right after a series of hectic exams & classes squeezed in to be conducted before the trip. The school management did very disappointing stupid arrangement resulted in horrible schedule, we are so called never see the sunlight since 25th of April because we had classes every nights until the trip. &%@#%!

On the night before departure, after the night class, all of us are half dead tired, but I think ‘holiday’ or trip really have magical effects. On the night we touched down, we felt replenished again. It’s nice to have a trip together with my classmates, although for certain person, it brought out some undesirable personality we’ve hardly seen before.

Macau might not be in my favorite list of cities, but going there gives me the chance to feel what the casino city is. Honestly, for non gambler, there are many times when I feel bored, really bored, or half bored. Especially when we roamed from casinos to casinos. At first, I planned to give try, to be a millionaire, rich! (That is the idea of all the gamblers!). Yeah, I planned to give table game a try., since jackpot machine is boring and waste of money. Perhaps some blackjack, baccarat or roulette game. I’m quite confident because normally for leisure card gaming, I can say I have above average skills..ho ho… But when I got there, looking at how our 20 bucks (minimal 100 HKD per hand) can vanish within seconds, I have no mood at all…ha…chicken..

Macau in English spelling and Macao in Portuguese. (I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealy hope I don’t mix this one up).

The name is actually a mistake. It used to known as Haojing (Oyster Mirror) or Jinghai (Mirror Sea). The famous temple, A-ma, now still a famous tourist attraction, built in 1448 dedicated to Matsu – the goddess of seafarers and fishermen. When Portuguese land at the coast outside the temple, they asked the native about name of the place and got A-Ma-Gao as reply, means Bay of A-Ma, the Portuguese since calls it Macao, or Macau.
Macau was handed over back to China in 1999, with joint declaration that the systems and structures are to remain unchanged for at least 50 years. So Macau has its own currency, Pataca, immigration and border controls etc.

From casino industry, Macau is actually a very impressive city. It’s the world’s highest biggest volume gambling centre in the world, the revenue per number of casino is at least few fold of Las Vegas. In the world, Macau ranks 21st in terms of tourism arrival. Venetian Macau is one of the impressive casinos, opened in 2007, the third largest building in the world. Sands Macau is the largest casino of the world in term of total number of table games.

For almost all of us, this was our first trip to Macau, and of course, we visited the glorious grand casinos first.

First casino we visited on the first night was Star World. I didn’t really have good impression because by the time we walked in, I could smell the.. let me describe, it should be a fragrance for some, but for me, it’s the smell that I hate…combination of taxi smell, hair tonic and recycled indoor air. Urgh..but of course, this is subjective. I have sensitive nose and I dislike strong smell.

Wynn is impressive casino, it has nice warm interior that I picked it as the one that I like amongst others. We were lucky to get there just before the rotunda show. So around the rotunda, there was a circular railing goes around a golden half of sphere. The half-sphere was half buried inside the floor. People crowed around leaning on the railing. We were wondering why this bunch of idiots were looking at the golden half-ball. Okay, perhaps it’s gold plated. But so? Because the ceiling is more interesting, it’s an impressive circular ceiling with three dimensional features of twelve animals in Chinese horoscope. So we took pictures and intended to go inside casino, then suddenly, kocheng kencheng kencreng… music came out and the lights was changing.

I remember exactly, one of my friends pointed to the ceiling. I thought there was an earthquake or something. Because I saw the ceiling shifted, it opened up from the middle, all the twelve horoscopes shifted and slide to form smaller perimeter, and smaller until all the ceiling areas were open. While it was happening, animations played in the ‘hole’, it’s indeed a gigantic Lcd display. Okay, I didn’t know how the lcd panel disappear, I was more into taking pictures of my friends, because they were running around trying to get good angles. When I looked up again, Lcd disappeared, there was a gargantuan chandeliers coming down from the black hole. It was glorious I must say, then my friend pointed below (hey, this friend is very fast…!) The golden halfball below was opened, then a tree, big tree grew from there and ended up standing majestically before our eyes, changing colors from winter to autumn. Whoaaa…
As grand as it appeared, after a while the tree went down, chandeliers gone and the ceiling closed. Lights up, and it was as if nothing ever happened at all. I must say it’s very impressive, no wonder everyone was gathered around the ‘stupid’ ball…so it’s not because it’s gold-plated at all..

Sands Macau, located by the bay, from the ferry back from Kowloon, Hong Kong, we could see it as the welcome landmark of the city. Ponte 16, if I’m not wrong, is the newest casino in town. The thing I remember about Sands and Ponte 16 is the show. Ears up guys….Sexy ladies, bikini clad or G-string….And you can watch for free anytime…!
We had dinner in Sands, reasonable food and reasonable price, even cheaper than the first road side eatery we visited on the first night. But for a short visit in casino there, we had two not-so-nice experiences. First, they chased us away from glass railing (safety? Security? Or afraid we ‘count’ the cards from tables below? It’s a solid thick glass railing that even elephant can lean and smoke weed..) Second, they chase us when we just touched our butts on jackpot chairs, attempting to rest our feet. The jackpot machines area was empty all the time, so we felt quite ‘hurt’. Huh.
Ponte 16, this was the smokiest casino of all, if I’m not wrong, it’s located in Taipa.

Grand Lisboa, day time, the building looked very ugly, it uses the concept of Lotus flower, but end up looking like pinnacle or fido dido. At night, with all the lighting on, it’s not too bad. It’s built heavily based on Chinese beliefs and feng-shui. Golden, sparkling..red.. the older generation of Hotel Lisboa is connected via a bridge where they still hosted traditional gambling table using buttons. It’s quite interesting to watch. So there was a pile of button on the table, the croupier then ‘shuffled’ them, put some inside inverted cone shape thingy and then divided the buttons into rows; each row consisted of four buttons. The players has to bet whether the last row consisted of 1,2,3 or 4 buttons, or combination of 2 or 3 guesses. Up to 75% probability.

Crown casino, I guess it’s the sister of Melbourne’s Crown. It’s located in Taipa.. We had to travel through the bridge. Although physically disappointing, it’s dim, small, even tiny compared to others, they didn’t have much to offer, like water and soft drinks. But not to be deceived by appearance, Crown is the casino with the highest revenue in the world. It’s so called proven, the higher the level, the more we didn’t belong to. The casino chips are different, from round to square with different nominal value. Stack of 10.000 dollar chips were exchanged between dealers and players in matters of second. We didn’t even dare to get close enough to look at the nominal value of other colored square chips and even, ellipse chips.

Venetian, located in Taipa. I heard it’s modeled like the Venetian of Las Vegas. As mentioned, it’s very impressive in size. Except that, Venetian is the must go. This gargantuan building, completed within three years, has different things to offer. The building has bus parking area, that notably bigger than most bus interchange in Singapore. Huge! It has outdoor canal, with gondolas. It also has 3 long artificial canals inside the building, complete with the gondolas and Italian look-alike boat rowers who can sing very well with the help of interior acoustic and they sing….! The canal areas are call The Grand Canal Shoppes, it is indoor, but made to feel like outdoor with artificial sky, which looks very real and the ambience is there. Paintings decorate the interior everywhere, from walls to ceilings. If you are going to Macau from airport at night time, the Venetian building is the one that welcomes you and it lights up impressively. To bad we didn’t take a shot of it. The other thing that draw me to Venetian two times during my stay was because that was the only place I could find Times, the only bookshop or places that sell books and magazines, in language I can understand. I don’t normally look for bookshop during a trip, but this time I needed it, because I had some hours to kill on the plane and airport, especially on the way back due to unpleasant noisy flying companies..Ha…

The Grand Canal Shoppes

Statue Artist (but they move quite often leh :)

Babylon is small casino near the Fisherman Dwarf. Fisherman Dwarf looked like some interesting place to visit, although we perhaps saw it all from the bus. It’s a miniature of many places., but time was too tight…

MGM…three layer colored building with huge golden lion sitting outside. MGM has a nice bar in the middle of the casino floor. We hung out there one night. The music and band were not bad, actually they had very good vocal, but for performance, they kind of talked too much and spoiled the music by repeating certain part of song hysterically. For example; I am hungry…haayayyayyaa..I’m hungry….how is everybody tonight…bla bla bla…then I’m hungry again x 20 times. The female lead singer went around in seductively kind of way. I guess nothing is innocent in Macau.

MGM Internal Courtyard

Corridor Museum with changing colors

GROAWWWWWW

We had some unpleasant experience so we went straight home and didn’t explore the casino. It was quite nice to walk back home, Macau is quite safe, the streets are all brightly lit like daytime. Almost all casinos open 24 hours. We can find food almost 24 hours too, even the pawnshops were still open way after midnight, in case someone need money after gambling…hmm…
We found nice lok-lok as supper. Lok-lok is uh….so you pick whatever food you want, from meat ball to tendon and chicken blood and unrecognizable shapes of food. The rule of eating something is, never look at the kitchen. You know what I mean. And, never offend restaurant staff before your food arrive. You know what I mean.

About the people., we met nice and rude people and many intimidating people. Mostly they came from mainland. They stare at people like nobody business, up and down, left and right in very intimidating way, they speak extremely loud, it’s the culture but to cross-fit with another culture, it came out rude.

Sincity is the same everywhere. People praying and hoping to win. People lost their cool and control upon entering casino floor. It’s reality. I could see someone you never expected go berserk because of gambling, and I could see the real ‘cool’ personality who stood out temptation. It’s kind of personality test there. Weird, but interesting, and horrible.

We visited the tourist area like A-ma temple and ruin of St. Paul. St. Paul church was made of wood, except the front façade. During a fire breakout, it burned down, everything was gone except the front stone façade that stood up alone like a movie set. I’m pretty sure I would enjoy the sight but the numbers of tourists flooding up the place made me want to go as soon as possible. When something is too comercialized, somehow it loses its attractiveness. We also visited Kun Lam statue on the waterfront bay, it’s the Goddess of Mercy in one interpretation to suit Chinese Buddhist and Mother Mary for Portuguese. Along the old Macau area that day we could see old buildings and buildings on the hills. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to explore.

Ruin of St. Paul

Nice rooftop garden...uhm...near St. Paul

See the pinnaeple..?

Kun Lam Statue

Macau

On our last day in Macau, we went to the famous Lord Stow’s café with so called the best Portuguese tart in town. It’s in Coloane Island. The shop keepers are friendly Filipinos.
In Coloane Lord Stow’s, we were like entering a different time frame. It was located in nice, quite area near the bay. There were benches in the park and stone table for us to sit under the big tree, enjoy the silence and clear air, drastically different with all the happening days in Macau. It was very nice and all of us liked the area instantly.

During our 5-day stay, I managed to cross border with my two friends to Hong Kong for a day. We tried the dimsum (excellent!), the infamous steam egg and the instant noodle with luncheon meat (it is nice although our instant noodle are still the best..).
We went to Ladies Market, Temple Street or Man Street. Basically we roamed in Kowloon area. Ladies Market is the “squeezy” road side market where we had to engage in war of bargaining to get things. As what I intend to, I found many Doraemon stuff, he he…although that was not the best place for it.. Man street was more for adult, they sold sex toys just like that, displayed on the table everywhere. It was not opened yet when we reached there. Because of exhaustion and some other reason, we cut short the trip and went back to Macau earlier.

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A glimpse at Mongkok, Kowloon

Macau Bridge

So that’s my impression about Macau. It has different sides of life but mostly, what you see are colors of lights, smokes and rich men going poor or hardly, poor men going rich.

Hong Kong, or actually Kowloon, we saw different type of people. Some rude, some are nice. We met quite a lot of nice people. It’s quite similar to Singaporean and the place are messier version of Singapore. Messier, but it looked more friendly, and the public transportation were much better than here. However, that’s my short one day sight…