Thursday, September 25, 2008

My Merdeka Weekends at Pulau Pangkor



This is the story of my third conquest that I’ve set my foot upon on West Malaysia, Pulau Pangkor. And the first island in West Malaysia that I’ve been to.

Frankly the trip was quite a last minute plan, luckily there are still places for us to book and stay amidst the Merdaka Holidays. The journey took about 3 hours of driving from PJ up to the town of Lumut whereby we took a ferry to cross to Pangkor Island. It was my first time that I drive for 3 hours plus and also the first time I drove my car into the federal high ways. Wow, the speed can easily went up to 120kmph. It was also the first time that I drove so fast but yet still don’t really feel that you’re fast while at it.


Hmm….sky blue sky….you can only see this outside of KL.


We’ve even pass by some vast expanses of rice field. The rice field almost covers up the whole horizon!


The island is quite big to have a bustling small town in it.


This is one of the place to buy local sea products. haiz.... i knew i should have buy more packets of dried cuttlefish!

Renting a Kancil for bout 2days cost us around RM200 plus. Having a car is more convenient to travel around the island, compare to renting a bike or bicycle. Renting a bicycle seems to be the ideal holiday transportation of choice. But luckily we’ve done some research beforehand saying that some roads around the island are quite mountainous and it took them hell of a time and effort by cycling >_<


This is an old Dutch fort. To tell the truth I was quite disappointed. How can you call this a fort if they don’t have canons. Canons! Canons! Yup that’s right! Like Fort Margretta in Kuching, Kota A Famosa in Melaka, haha, even the Sarawak Museum got canons! Haha, cos if there’s a cannon I would want to mount on it and take picture with it.

But nevertheless it has quite good scenery.


this pic reminds me of the old malay kampung that i used to draw and color in art class a long long time ago:)


I quite like this pic, not that i looked good in it, but because of the background. Old forts, trees, sands, seas, mountains and skies, wow the entire combo in it.

Next we hit the beach to catch the sunset. And then my friend suggested us to take those time stop levitation pictures.


Wow, I forgot how many times was the NG take. Oh ya, this is also my first time taking such pictures.


Then, we sit down on the beach, a little exhausted and enjoy the evening sunset while munching local sea products and also imagining the evening clouds to be of ships and star fighters.

There’s one place at night at Pangkor which is quite a good hang out place to go, Daddy’s Café. One Thing special is that it’s located by the seaside and the tables and chairs are put upon the sand. It has quite a very good atmosphere and surroundings, whereby they play light music, and there’s many little decorated colorful lights.



You’ll also be able to listen to the sound of waves and enjoying the night sky view full of stars while eating snacks and drinking a hot cup of milo or beer.

The waiter that is serving us is also quite friendly and we even manage to have a short conversation with us. Haha, I think this is the first time I have a conversation this long with a waiter that I met for the first time. Furthermore, most importantly, the food there tastes quite ok and the price is still affordable.


A toast to friendship and housemate ship^_^

After the supper, we go take some newspaper and put in on the beach as we lay down to continue our star gazing. Haha, need to appreciate the beautiful night sky as much as possible as it is impossible to see one back in KL. We lay down, chit chat, and slowly munching local sea products again. Wah She, eat somemore!

Yes, I sleep like pig in the weekends. But if is weekend+holiday+being somewhere else for holidays, then you know la….. Waking up seems like forever. Luckly we went for a 3 days 2 nites trip so I can salvage more time to sleep, no need to be in a too tight schedule hohoho.


see that? battleships! er.. nola, it's not big enough to be battleship, seems Lumut is also a parking bay for our country's navy.

We went snookering the next day, unfortunately there’s no picture taken as we think that it is unsafe to leave the camera abroad when we’re all at the ocean. According to my friend, he ranked this time’s snookering experience to be 1 out of 10 as the water here is very unclear and there are not much corals to see, only fish. This is my second time in the open ocean but I have more fun and I’m braver this time as there’s a lot of people going together.

This also my first time snookering. Wow, if u accidentally kena sea water in your nose, wow, it’s extremely uncomfortable and you really can’t do anything about it. The boat captain which is very humorous gave us a tip on snookering “oh, snookering very easy one, when you’re in the water, move your hand like playing mahjong and move your leg like your cycling”

The boat captain also gave us a roller coaster boat ride which would bump your butt out from your seat and landing heavily again on your seat. One time, I’ve been bump again in midair before my butt landed. Ngaiti, luckily my breakfast remain there inside in my stomach.

My best experience of the sea trip is that he went off diving to the sea to collect sea cucumber and other sea creatures for us to see. We are quite lucky as we saw that on other boats, the boat captain doesn’t perform this extra service. Oh.. this reminds me, does that means that he charged us more?! Haha, but I think RM25 is still quite worth it, for the experience and fun of the trip.


picture of sea cucumber (it's twice or three times bigger than land cucumber)taken from here

My first encounter with sea cucumber is at Sentosa Island Underwater World whereby there’s a small shallow pool whereby they let you touch the sea cucumber. Oh my, I’ve never prepared for that day’s encounter of sea cucumber at Pangkor! The boat captain says that there’s another nickname for it which is called “Sea Man Bird” (direct translation from Mandarin, take note that the Bird here does not mean those Bird that can fly in the sky)

When he catch the sea cucumber and shows us in his hands we all move to the side of the boat to see, and when he suddenly throw the sea cucumber at us, everyone quickly scrambles aside and the girls scream like hell. When it landed on the boat, it started to release a white sticky liquid, which looks very similar to sperm ( I don’t why it did this, for self defense?) and more funny thing is that is its size can grow big or small. The boat captain say we need to throw the sea cucumber back to the sea as it cannot survive too long without water. So I took it up, oh man…when I touch it I feel so grouse, hmm…feels spongy…and I quickly throw it off and as I pick up and throw, it even leaves a trail of “sperm” on the boat>_<

Now I understand why they have such nicknames. Too bad we couldn’t take picture of the sea man bird and it's leftovers.



oh well, this trip would be perfect if not for one incident. me and my friend left our wallet in our room and when we're back we found that a few RM50 notes is missing. damn...and my watch is missing also. I was quite kek tiok becos the watch was a gift from dad before i come here to KL. We've complained to the management and he was kind enough to counter-offer by giving us the rental free.

so the lesson learned here, alwasy hide your things well while going vacation, even in a locked room!


It was a nice trip indeed, 3days 2 nights costing about RM300 each person. Haha, this month I would be eating more Maggie Mee then. Haha, look forward to my next trip!:)

Sunday, September 21, 2008

周末的小打扫

哈哈,虽然我的卫生观念也没有那么好(是属猪的关系吗?>_<),但偶尔我也是会自发去打扫和整理周围的。
是罗,当我看到灰尘推倒一些程度我会感到pai seh 的。

一边收拾一边听音乐,慢慢一步步的做,慢慢看到成果。心情也奇妙的会变得比较好一点。
hmmm.... 也许收拾东西时,也同样可以收拾心情。

哈哈,有时感觉像做这些简单的事也可以让自己开心一点,会觉得比较有意义。生活中有多一些意义,不是很好吗?:)

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Melaka~ my sight seeing and makan makan makan trip

It was not very long since my last trip to another state and now I’m glad I got the chance to set foot in yet another state. Last weekend I followed my friends for a 2 days 1 night trip to the Ancient City of Melaka.


See those tree behind me, the government even set up machine to play bird's voice on the tree:P


my housemate, me & A-Famosa canon, seeing that makes me remember the sitting on top of the canon sceen again.

Melaka is quite a nice place. There’s less pollution, less tall buildings, more trees and a lot of unique old buildings, and most importantly a lot of eating place.


This is Portugese Ikan Bakar, oh..the fish is under the sauce so you can't see it here haha, too bad it is too hot for me>_<
The drink is a freshly made mango juice, i quite enjoy this one(i drank two cup :P)

Haha. What I like about this trip is that most of the time, we’re like going from one eating place to another: P Really, there’s a lot of unique food only available in Melaka.


This is luo han guo drink which is really cooling, it tasted as good as the good as the one in petaling street.

Well, after tasting a lot, I wouldn’t say everything is nice, yes, there are things that is nice, and also some that is not suitable for my taste.


This is Satay Celup, whereby you take alot of sticks of stuff and dip it in a curry lookaclike paste which is in the middle of the table and it's cooking it below, since it's hot so i don't get to enjoy it alot. but it really has a unique eating style.


This is round shape rice, hmm...too bad they cannot make the chikcen round also haha.


Haha, I think the best is the cendol in Jonker Walk. Wah, thinking of it now, even can make my mouth drool. due to time limit, i didn't get the chance to eat two bowls>_<...

oh by the way, don't go to the roadside stall selling cendol oposite the red clock tower, it is really not consumable by human.

I would like to thank my friend for letting us stay at her place for the night. Wow, it’s freezing cold that night and luckily I didn’t catch flu. Their family even cooks a nice meal for us all.

It’s quite nice to walk along the old streets and shops of Melaka. It somehow reminds me of Kuching’s carpenter street, with all those old buildings from the British colonial era.


With my two housemate, Haha, i like the Bruce Lee poster at the wall.

We went to Junker’s walk, a street which sells a lot of interesting home made Melaka stuff. It is really a nice place to shop and bought hand made souvenirs.


This is geographer's cafe in Jonker Walk, it is the place where a part of the movie "Summer Mo Mo Tea" is filmed. my friend say it's pretty expensive so just managed to take pic from outside:P


Haha, you don't have to go to London to see a double decker bus:)

Melaka, hmm...a nice trip indeed.