well, it has been AGES since I update my blog. Sorry bloggy dear, I promise I won’t neglect you for long from now on. Ah well… then again, you are only too aware of my ‘promises’. Just like how I promise I’m going to lose those extra kgs since 12yo, how I promise I’m going to eat more veges and less meat, how I promise I will sleep early and fag less.

Then again, usually I write when I’m pissed off. Guess life’s been good to me this year so I got nothing much to write. Haha!

So now, let me slowly update one-by-one my discovery excursions in Malaysia since I have a certified local guide – JC. Hohoho.

Let’s start with the most recent Cameron Highland trip:
1. The strawberries are overrated. ALL of them are SOUR.
2. The strawberried-everything are OVERLY SWEET.
3. The food is nothing to shout about. But steamboat in cold weather is YUMMY!
4. They have starbucks in CH now. So un-highland-ky.
5. Staring at the tea plantation while sipping tea and nibbling scones does
6. You can finish visiting the bee farm, the insect farm, the strawberry farm, the bird farm (is there one?), each and every farm in about 2 days time. And they are all within walking distance. Yes, I walked!

There’s only one reason to visit Cameron Highlands – the cold weather and the tea plantations. Try walking down the hill at the Scone place beside the highway on your way up/down Cameron Highlands, and dip your feet into the chilly chilly water in the cold cold air. SHIOKK!!

Also I must highlight that you have visit all the flower/cactus/plants nurseries because they are THE BEST excursion you can find. Just look at some of the very interesting things I chanced by!

Isn’t this flower just GORGEOUS? Doesn’t they look as if there’s little pixies flitting in and out of them? And the colour! Bright pink and fabulous purple! What a combo! And the greatest thing is the name – FUSHCIA. Haha!

And then here’s the palace for the fairy kings & queens! No idea what flower is this…

And then there’s this bigger than life Hibiscus – our national flower. They come in all sorts of colours – pink, white, yellow, purple, red and a bunch of mix and match.

And then there’s this cutesy itsy bitsy round flower with lots of petal. Of course I don’t know the name of it!

And then there’s this grape-look-alike plant. I pinched one and then some sticky juices popped outta it. Guess it’s some kind of cactus relative? Just imagine if you have a full house of this and then when you gave one bunch to your unsuspecting neighbour claiming it’s grapes… nyek nyek.

And then here come the BEST OF THE BEST plant!

Just to show you that I did not make this up…

It has little flowers on top! HOHOHOHO!!!

(5x “and then there’s…”)

Anyway… more pictures below!

Popularity: 28% [?]

Nevermind that Cherating is 5 hours away from KL; nevermind that it was last minute notice; nevermind that we have to leave at odd hours; nevermind that I have never surf before – I was going to the famous Cherating Beach!!!!!

So it was at 11.30pm that the 3 crazy folks – Fang, JC & me drove from KL to Cherating. We stopped for gas, for teh tarik, for food, for cigarette breaks – NO WONDER IT TOOK 5 HOURS TO REACH! And when we reached there it’s about… 5am? Just in time to sleep a little with mozzies keeping us company, woke up & then had the famous little shack nasi lemak by the road side.

So the 2 surfer dudes immediately jumped down the sea the moment day breaked. Me? Not in a million bucks will I jumped in the freezing sea water with barely enough sleep to keep my eyelids open and my bones sore enough to rattle (this is from sleeping in the car). So I remained firmly at the beach having a good time sleeping and sun baking. The whole day. *heh heh

The beach itself was… heaven. It was quiet, serene, clean, and not with a lot of people. Best of all, no funky animals like sea gulls or monkeys who just might be interested in my infested left toe.

In anycase, I decided to try surfing the next day. But then my Belly Button Ring stood in the way. No way in hell would JC let me anywhere near his surfboard as long as that ring was in plain sight. What’s a girl got to do when she wants to surf right?

So JC borrowed a spanner from the reception counter and gallantly helped to unscrew my BBR – since I couldn’t unscrew my BBR using my good’ol fingers (a result of never taking it out ever since its planted in) – in full view of the hotel personnels! *there goes my sophisticated image

Ok, now, back to surfing. After the initial fear of ‘will I be swept away by the waves?’ and ‘is my bikini top going to fall off?’ and ‘will my toes be bitten off by a nasty fish?’ I discovered it was really a COOL sport! No wonder people get addicted to it. Thanks to JC who so patiently taught me how to balance myself on the surfboard. *beam*

Come to think about it, the highlight of this trip was that I get to eat really yummy food (stuffed crabs @ StuffCrabs, famous nasi lemak @ Hai Peng, seafood @ Duyong Seafood Restaurant, river prawn noodles @ Bukit Tinggi) and sunbaked till I got a golden tan. Oh, and drooling at the washboard abs of the cute surfers!

Since I’m the official photographer there, the below pictures are mainly not of me la~ :’(

Here’s the famous Hai Peng coffee shop

And here’s the most delicious prawn noodle I’ve ever eaten!

Popularity: 4% [?]

I know I’m going to go down in hell by saying this (wait, I’m already Pagan, so I’m doomed anyway… *shrugged*),but 5 consecutive days touring with family is more than enough.

Note to self: Keep all family tours strictly to 4D3N only.

Don’t get me wrong, I had an enjoyable time annoying my brothers, eating all the good stuff like there’s no tomorrow, sleeping till I feel like a pig, and dodging motorists in the midst of hubbub in Ho Chi Minh City… BUT DARN, IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK!

I miss my stuffy room, my new bed, my beaten up car, my loony friends, my comfort local food… everything that’s there about my normal KL life. It’s crazy really, as I don’t feel the same way when I’m down in Singapore or Australia. Hmmphh… I guess it has something to do my ever increasing age, the growing tendency to hold on to familiar stuff, ugh. Shucks, will I be one of those grandmas who will collect all rubbish and treat them as treasure? *gasp*

Well in any case I will be blogging about my Vietnam Trip shortly. Stay tune!

Happy New Year!
Wishing all of you a joyous year ahead!

Popularity: 10% [?]

I promised myself I will go to ZoukOut before I turned 30. But I would have never have thought that my ZoukOut trip will be SO interesting…

Incident 1 @ Friday
First off, somebody*ahem* remembered that she did NOT bring her passport AFTER we got pass Malacca! (And she only realized when she was trying to tell her friend that he needed a visa to go to Singapore.) We have three options really:
1) To dump her on the side of the road;
2) To dump her at JB;
3) To call any friends that we knew that might be heading down to Singapore for ZoukOut and hope that they haven’t depart yet so they could get her passport.

Being naturally nice people, plus the fact that she was lucky enough to find such a friend, we waited two hours for the most important delivery of all times to arrive at the Ayer Keroh pit stop while talking nonsense and listening to ipod music and drinking tea.

Incident 2 @ Friday
At long last we hit Singapore at 3.00pm and were all set to paint the town red! We went bar hopping at Clark Quay @ MOS which we saw saw a white guy dancing too drunk to notice he’s dancing with a katoey; at Lunar which we saw some cat fight and gangster fight (woohoo!); and at Attica which we met some drunk dudes who had bad BO… yuck!).

Incident 3 @ Saturday
After 5 hours max of sleep (no thanks to the super hyper babes) we got freshen up and went to PS Cafe. By the way it has THE MOST FABULOUS big breakfast that I haven’t had for the longest time since Perth.. And although we have no problem finding a cab to PS Cafe, we waited for almost 1 hour to get the cab to PS Cafe and brought us home!

Incident 4 @ Saturday
I cannot stop thinking about my encounter with the most beautiful Aldo pumps I have ever met in my life… the bright pink and yellow one… I even dream about them…

Incident 5 @ Saturday
Somebody got drunk and lost…. I think I will skipped the entire story here.. Luckily she was OK. Actually half of the time I don’t know where my friends are!!!!!

Incident 6 @ Saturday
Somebody lost her shoes… (ok fine, it’s ME)

All in all, it was great fun @ ZoukOut and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Count me in for ZoukOut next year!

Popularity: 22% [?]

I spent an unhealthy amount of time in KL Convention Centre doing events throughout my course of life in KL, and passed by the entrance of Aquaria endless times, but I never get around to step my foot into it. Strange, consider I like fishes a lot.

There are many reasons why I prefer fish above all moving living things. The popular ones are:
1) they don’t quite ever bark, or meow, or moo, or oink, or make any sound in general
2) they require very little food
3) they generally keep to themselves
4) they do not require a lot of attention
5) even when they perish, they die quietly and peacefully and won’t make a stink around the area
…Which makes me think, did anyone ever cry because their fishes die?

Ok, I digress. Well, I finally went to Aquaria last Saturday with a very nice JC who indulged me in my crazy mood. Dark, dank and with the pipe-in waves sound, I already felt relaxed the moment I stepped into it.

They had a touch pool right after the registration counter with the normal harmless sharks, siputs, and starfishes. They did not, however, have any facilities for us to wash or even wipe our hands after that! I had fishy smelling hands with me the whole trip.

After that were the spiders, the geckos, the urm.. monkey-look-alike-sad-looking-mammal, iguanas, alligators or crocodiles. It totally escaped me why would they want to feature any unfishlike or non-water based animals in the Aquaria at first place.

Then came the turtles, the fresh water fishes, the salt water fishes (I don’t know the difference, and no, I didn’t bother to taste the water to find out), the coral type fishes, the cousin of piranha, etc etc etc. (Can anyone tell me why are all the fishes so big? Is it because they are overfed and they lack of room to exercise?)

My favourite will have to be the Lion Fish! They are soooooo awfully cute and colourful, poisonous not withstanding.

…and then we eventually reached the tunnel! Actually before the tunnel they had a skunk and a small kangaroo, according to the personnel. (I think it’s actually a willabe. I, afterall, just went to the zoo but anyway) for photo ops session. Again, why anyone wants to take pictures of a skunk / kangaroo during their visit to the Aquaria completely eludes me.

Back to topic. The sharks and the sting rays were HUGGGEEEEE with a big capital ‘H’! JC told me that the sharks will have to be trained to turn their bodies because in the big wide ocean, they don’t ever have to since it’s so wide. I got to examine the razor teeth of one particularly nasty looking shark up close! Hohoho.

Over the PA system there was this woman who kept repeating NON-STOP some annoying facts about Napolean Fish from the time we stepped into the tunnel till we left! And throughout all her announcement I have no frigging idea what was a Napolean fish until I googled it… and found out that I actually took a picture with this big fish. (sweat)

The last thing on the menu were the jellyfishes and the peculiar looking huge snails and some weird distorted fishes. I’m really bad at remembering names so I don’t know what they are called. But we were fascinated by the jellyfish… I also like jellyfish because I like the concept that they are brainless. (mwahaha)

Honestly at the end of my trip I felt like I was turtle-nized because if nothing else, I really saw a lot of turtles. But I had a splendid time touring the Aquaria and will recommend any of you to pay it a visit as long as it’s not during weekends (else you’ll be swarmed by school kids like I did).

And by the way, if any of the Aquaria folks read my blog (fat chance), please have signs in both Malay and English, and make them SUPER BIG as I don’t fancy lecturing yet another inconsiderate prick who actually smacked a turtle down towards the bottom when it broke for the water surface.

Enjoy the pictures!
PS: Zephyerseeker, the pictures of tarantulas are a special tribute to your dead one and served as a note to you – don’t ever attempt to rear one again.

And here’s the map!

Popularity: 34% [?]

I actually have a list of place that I wanted to visit in KL like Zoo Negara, Aquaria, the whatever wheel, FRIM, Science Centre. So couple weeks ago, I was bored out of my mind and decided to visit the Zoo Negara since I’ve never been there ever (shame on me) and dragged DB along with me.

I must say that the map provided in the Zoo Negara website is USELESS for people who are not familiar with that region. The map I found in mycen is not much better. The road sign that leads to Zoo Negara is PATHETIC. In any case, I found it since I’m such a good navigator haha.

When I reached there, I saw families upon families with little kids and strollers and I was thinking to myself “What the heck is a grown woman like me visiting the Zoo?”. But my worries were worthless because I saw grown MEN visiting the Zoo in PAIRS haha. (No, they did not hold hands!)

We had some Ramli burger to boost our energy first. Then we went to see the monkeys, more monkeys, and more and more monkeys, till I swore that if I saw one more type of monkey I would eliminate the entire race of monkeys from the surface of earth!

Before I could made my threat come true it started pouring. How timely. We had no choice but to buy an umbrella each, and I was forced to roll up my jeans like an ah-sam or else my jeans will soak up all the rain and gather all the rubbish along the way.

And so we continue with our journey to the next stop – the bears. We were taken aback by the sheer size of the brown bears! They were like 2 of us combined standing up! I don’t fancy meeting any bears in the wild anymore… The honey bear looked really cute foraging the ground for earthworms though.

Next came the tortoise. One can only imagine how heavy is their shell with size that big. That’s why they move so slowly? In any case I wouldn’t want to be a tortoise in my next life – think about how you would feel if you can’t change out of your clothes even after you are dead…

Then we reached the reptiles section. In good time too, since it started pouring cats and dogs (why not pouring donkeys and asses? fishes and frogs? hmm…). Let’s just say that there’s no snake I’ve not seen in other zoos before.

After that were the giraffes, lions, tigers, leopards, emus, ostriches, elephants, wild cats, birds, birds, birds, and birds. *blek*

The highlight of the day – the Orang Utans! You cannot believe how cute they were. At first we only saw a huge orange furball and we were wondering if the zookeeper accidentally left the rugs there. Then it MOVED and we found out that the two love birds (or love apes) were actually kissing and cuddling. The female OU was throwing a little tantrum and the male OU was trying to pacify her by kissing her and holding her hands. (The female OU sneaked some looks at us when she was kissing the male OU… talk about female’s multitasking ability.) I guess the female OU got pissed off by us looking on and decided to give the male OU the cold shoulder treatment and run off to play with the ropes haha.

The worst letdown of the day – the penguins and the aquarium. What penguins!? There’s none since their home is under renovation! And I was looking forward to see the penguins all day! *argghh* And the aquarium is murky with humongous overfed pale looking aimless ugly fishes. *yuck* I wouldn’t even consider eating those fishes.

Despite the rain and the let down, I had an extremely good time there with DB. (Thanks DB for being so supportive of my crazy idea! *mwah*) But honestly, if you have the money, go to Singapore Zoo. At least they have penguins there!

Popularity: 16% [?]