A Day trip to Penang Hill

First of all, I wasn't planning a trip to the Penang hill, nevertheless we went on with the trip as it was the intention of a family and friends gathering in a day trip to the famous Penang Hill. My mother had talked about going up the hill for at least a year now and well the trip did realised in the end! Thanks to her that baby got to go up the hill for the first time. I would say, I've never been up there since schooldays.......... wow so long ago!

Overall, it's been an amazingly wonderful trip for all of us. It was fun and baby did explore a lot and love being blown by the wind and enjoy the fresh air and the sounds of nature. She managed to take her nap no matter how excited she was..... I thought she wouldn't sleep at first but after some time she was asleep as the breeze there was in fact cooling and comfortable.

Later in the night, after the BBQ dinner, we celebrated my hubby's birthday up there as a surprise to everyone there too. All and all, it was a fun day for everyone!

P/s: Would love to go back there again, the breeze is so good and the quality of air is totally great.

First Visit to KekLokSi

During the Chinese New Year, we brought Baby to the Kek Lok Si Temple to see the lights. She was fascinated by the lights and although she looks sleepy but she wanted to look at those beautiful lights lit up only once in a year during Chinese New Year for a month!

Unfortunately, we are not able to see the New "Kuan Yin" Pavilion lit up, so it will be next year then! Papa & Mama will make sure this is one of Baby's anual function..... :)

Bonjour!

Had been away for a long time.... too busy to blog and also was having my long planned holiday trip to Paris! Here's some photos for you guys to enjoy! Love there so much and feel like stayin g there forever! The picture above is the Notre Dame Cathedral!
The Champ-Elysees.....

The Arc du Triomphe... whereby it is a round about that 12 roads actually link to it!

The Famous Eiffle Tower........... all time favourite, the Symbol of Paris, and France!

The Grand Arche at La Defense is a must see! It's like a window towards the earth! It is a monument and a building fill with offices! Awesome!

Taiping Trip - Kuala Sepatang Mangrove Park

Here we are at the Mangrove Park in Kuala Sepatang. It is one of the world's most well preserved Mangrove swamp. Amazing huh!
See those huge roots! Really fascinating, it has really been a wonderful trip. We suddenly entered the park and the temperature just drop. It feels so cooling in this whole area. For a city girl like me this is really something I yearn to come often!


Some of my nice shots of the mangrove swamp park. Amazingly there are lots of monkeys and various type of birds in this area. When the water rises, you may catch glimpse of fishes as well too.

Today is my 3rd Wedding Anniversary.... hubby and I went for dinner at a new nice restaurant down town. Love it! :)

Visiting Taiping - Part 1

The beauty of nature, Taiping Lake Garden is famous for its environment and its trees. Used to be some mining lakes long time ago but now has turn into beautiful man-made lakes.
Imagining that you are having a picnic under this tree and beside the lake, interesting!

I would definately love to do that!

Memories of SiChuan

Visited the Sichuan Province in 2002. Memories of this beautiful place 都江堰 DuJiangYan Irrigation System, was built by the Qin governor Li Bing (李冰). In 2000, Dujiangyan became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since the major earthquake happened on May 12, 2008; lots of lives been taken. In the city of Dujiangyan, a school collapsed with 900 students buried and 50 dead. The project's famous Fish Mouth was cracked but not severely damaged otherwise. The victims are suffereing. So let's pray hard for them and also count our blessings. Lots of people are suffering out there, so do appreciate every moment that we live in everyday.

Day02- Beijing 2007

Here we are again, showing here are some pictures from Beijing. I am about to take you through a journey to the Famous Forbidden City of China(紫禁城). The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. Above here is a the entrance to the Great Forbidden City, whereby long long time ago, only the Emporer and his delegates used to walk in and out from these doors/ gates. Well as you can see here now, it's the face of Chairman Mao. After the step down of the Last Emperor, the forbidden city is turned into Palace Museum and later open to the public. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987,[2] and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. Everyday, there are hundreds and thousands of people entering through these gates to take a glimpse of what is it like to be inside the Forbidden city!
This is a site map for references......... well I got this from wikipedia.... :P See how far is the palace from the entrace! Well, the front Door is entered only by the Emperor, and Emperess on her wedding day. After that she will never walk out of the palace anymore. If you study the map closely, the back door / gate is actually where all the young beautiful maidens are selected and enter through it. Also, she will not allow to leave the palace too after she enters. Only the maids are allowed to go out through the side doors, (C) to do some chores and running errants. So life in the palace is almost like a prison for the Imperial court ladies! This is one of its court yards. It is definately a long walk from the entrance to this place. Inside there are more of these huge red walls. The yellow roof or Gloden roof is actually meant for the royals only. No peasants or anyone are allowed these yellow roofs! Wow....

As you can see here that the weather is quite pleasant and bright blue sky with no clouds at all. This is considered rare in Beijing these days due to pollution and weather conditions. Well we are lucky to get these wonderful pictures; as the great weather is helping us too. This time is during October, and it is autumn. The tourist guide says October has the best weather in Beijing.

Well I took one of huge doors/ gates picture as I think we can only see these gates in Beijing, China. So much so that we can see these huge doors everywhere. Kind of like a symbol too. The story is that there are 9 rows and 9 columns of these studs so altogether is 81 studs. Interesting! The number 9 is considered as auspicious for the Emperors. Number is quite an important issue here in China, as everything is calculated, even the numbers of pillars, doors, tiles, dragons, trees.... etc.

The picture here shows the Emperor's Court Costume. This is a portrait of one of theEmperor. Here shows the Headgear, Accessories and the Dragon costume.

Here is the Emperess costume. It shows her Head pieces, Necklace, Earings, Jeweleries, etc. These are the formal wear. They will wear these clothes for formal function and celebration.

You can view additional information from here too!

Palace Museum official site
Forbidden City, A Photographic Tour

Cameron Here I come!

First of all, I would like to think that most people would not go for holiday in Cameron Highlands, but I thought, give it a try, support our Malaysian tourism product! Well, it turn out to be so wonderful that I'll definitely never forget the experience and will do it again! By chance I read about it in the net and magazines and we end up driving up there and stayed there for few days. I will strongly recommend all of ya to give it a go... I mean a MUST TRY!
Alright, this is like spring time everywhere, you get to see all these different types of blooms in this Honey Bee Farm called (Er Feng Gu). Take out your camera and start shooting folks!
Well, we went to this Rose Garden whereby you get to see all sorts of potted plants and interesting Roses..... ahh I forgot to mention they have all kinds of Cactus as well. Mind you, don't buy any potted plants from Cameron as the weather down town and up in highlands are very mush different!
I do have to suggests that you guys should visit this Simpang Pulai Boh Tea Plantation as it has the best viewing platform of all. The view is fantastic and also you get to drink some of the favourite teas here. Just some info, when drinking tea, you have to first sip some tea and roll it in your tongue and mouth to taste it before you drink the tea. It is sort of like wine tasting. They call it tea tasting and how they enjoy their cup of tea here! Oh.... do not forget to stop by at the Smokehouse or Lake house to grab some scones with cream & strawberry jam together with a cuppa tea here. YUMMY......... they all serve home-made jams! They serve these around tea time at 3pm. So do not miss this! Trust me it's real good stuff.
Let me show you where we stayed! This is the view from my petite window. Nice place huh! Well, this is the Lake house that we stayed in. Real cool and authentic. I find it really cozy and warm. Will definitely come back here.
So this is the Tudor style room that we had! We got this 4-pole bed, quite huge. Two arm chair, some flowers when we arrive, we actually bought those strawberries! Well, I guess by now you would love to go where I've been right? hehhee.....

Finally, This is the best destination that I've been...... the Mossy Forest! We join this forest trip as an adventure........... they told us there's this jungle trail that we should try, so I say why not? Oh, trust me on this, we were the only 2 locals in this short trip. All of them were tourists from all over the world!

OK, some briefing for you guys out there.... if you are thinking of those normal jungle trails that has some tiny paths for you to follow... too bad, this is not one of them! We practically go on all fours to get up the jungle trail and go through this mossy forest! So, if you are not fit enough, I guess you should call it a miss...

Beijing Here I Come! - Day1

A visit to Beijing was an interesting and valuable experience for me. As an individual who is interested in culture and traditional aspects of live, this trip had actually inspire lots of thoughts into my understanding of the Chinese culture and values.

The picture here shows the "Temple of Heaven". A wonderful architecture.... the whole building is made of wood except the roof tiles, then again there are no nails on this building and particularly unique due to its beams and columns are all made of each individual tree trunk, also all are similar in sizes, and height. Wonderful isn't it? When we arrive that day, it was raining in this autumn season. Funny thing is , beijing having a morning shower is like rarely happened at all. So you can see the sky here is so blue and beautiful! That's how I manage to capture a good picture without any enhancement!

The purpose of this temple is that it was used to pray the gods in heaven and also to pray the forefathers of the emperor. So this is actually where the emperor pray centuries ago......

As you see, no one else was allowed to pray here except the emperor!

This picture is taken outside of the temple of heaven whereby there is a huge park/garden that most people of Beijing, China come to relax and having their leisure time during mornings and evenings.... there will be different groups of people having their choir singing, some dancing, some playing games, chess... etc. Most of them are old folks who hangs out and "lepak" along the long corridors that leads you to the Temple. This corridor is about 5 meters wide and over 300 meters long.

Here's a small group of ladies doing thier singing cum acting, well there are lots of people there actually watching them.... telling me about Chinese being shy in public?!?!!

Sunset in Bakheng Hill

Before I start describing where this place is, I would like to mention that why we choose to go to Cambodia as our ideal place for Honeymoon. Well a lot of people would go to a more enchanting places or a romantic island, but me and my partner prefer some interesting place that we never been before and we can do some sight seeing and relax and reasonable price as well. So we choose Siam Rep in Cambodia. We did not go to Phnom Penh at all, which most tours do, both of us spent a week in Siam Rep only as we would like to venture Angkor Wat only. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992.

Before I kept bragging about, the first stop that we went when we were in Siam Rep was to experience this intense hill climbing to watch the beautiful sunset. Well it was worth it! Look at those people that were climbing to gether with us!
Well, this is how the steps up the Bakheng hill looks like! Interesting isn't it? I was feeling like Lady croft myself! Mind yourself those trees by the side, the trunks all had sharp needle-like long torns!
The thing is despite all the tourists going up and down the hill, there's this group of Cambodian band, playing khmer music.
Beautiful sunset! The sunset was really enchanting. Both me and my hubby will never forget this wonderful experience. You have to be there to experience this captivating view. Although the crowd of people is considerably immense but there were peace and silence when everyone watch this breathtaking view.
Well, look at the amount of people there waiting to watch and capture the Sunset!
Phnom Bakheng at Angkor, Cambodia, is a Hindu temple in the form of a temple mountain. Dedicated to Shiva, it was built at the end of the 9th century. This picture was taken after the sunset. It was around 7pm in Cambodia.

Bang-In Palace

This is one of the royal summer palace's garden in the Bang-In palace inThailand. Plants are cut and trim to form into various animals. As you know one of the Thai people favourite anilmal is Elephant! See what I mean....







This shot here shows a unique bridge wherby both sides have roman statues on it. This bridge is obviously inspire by the roman art....

Look at this palace, it's one of the summer palace that the emperor of Thailand stay during summer. Fantastic right? It's one of the building in Bang-In Palace. Ermm....... it's like a whole big estate full of different types of buildings from different countries..... this was the brainchild of the current emperor's great grand father!! Fantastic right?
This is a sort of a temple which has the statue of the Emperor's son, according to history, he was one of the favourite son. You actually need to take a boatride to go near it!
This is one of the bulidings as well. Looks like a boat right? In the olden times, this is where the emperor and the royal family docks.... they travel by "klong" which is the thailand traditional long tail boat... and arrive and dock here to their summer palace!
This looks like a huge light house right? You can actually climb up there and view the whole palace! In the background, there is this Chinese temple look-a-like! Well, it's not a temple, but a chinese architecture palace!! Inside is where they store all the antique gifts that the China Emperor sent to the Thai Emperor.... you'll wonder how many antiques are there.... well we did not get to see it though!

If you ever visit Bangkok.... don't forget to visit this palace! Wonderful place......