Day 5 of Bali Travelogue, January 2010

We kinda slept in on the last day and finally left our villa to visit the Seminyak beach at about 10 in the morning. We've stayed in Seminyak for 4 days prior to that and never had the time in our schedule to visit Seminyak as by the time we were back from our daytrips, it was already dark.



From our villa, its about 400m walk to Seminyak beach. Although its only 400m, it felt very long due to the extreme heat and humidity. But yes, we could hear the sea waves as we are about to approach the beach. We got even more excited when the sea was within our horizon.




This is the famous Seminyak beach. The sand on the beach is black, so the water will not look as blue as white sand beaches. Here as you can see, an owner bringing her dogs to the beach for some play time.





We came, we saw, and we casted our shadows! (Veni, Vedi, We casted our shadows; I dont know how to translate it to the Roman language).




The water is super duper clean! I'm very happy with what i saw on the beach, hardly any trash in sight (Seminyak is after all, an upmarket beach with mostly villas in this area). The black sand, was super fine which made the beach feel a bit compact, hence you can walk without losing balance here.

Yup, ppl even took their kids on pony rides on the beach. How cool is that?

The tides maybe a bit strong especially during the off peak season, hence, you need to beware of the rip currents that may drag you out to see. Bali is after all, a surfer's paradise, hence the waves will be stronger than other beaches in Malaysia. After our stroll on the beach, we left to look for breakfast, wondering if we could extend our stay by 1 more day so we could just enjoy Seminyak beach...

This brings public toilet to a whole new level =)

We roamed the streets of Seminyak for a final time, while looking around for spa Packages.

Here, nasi padang is quite famous. It's something like our Economy rice / chap fan, back here.

The only difference is that they stack up all the dishes in a creative manner.

Bike rentals are pretty common among the tourists here. And the Bike designs here trump our M'sian bikes anyday

The very famous Teh Botol in Indonesia. Its just like Teh-O over here but in bottles!

I guess its cheap and more hygienic alternative for those who may have a weak tummy.

As for me? I whack anything that the locals take, hehehe

After our breakfast, we headed back to our villa, for one last dip in the pool as well as just laying down on the sundeck, listening to the birds chirping while looking at the blue skies.

We then checked out of our hotel in the afternoon and headed to the Spa of our choice, where we could kill some time before our flight in the evening. EC took the 4 hours spa package which included Scrub, massage, facial, mani and pedi for something like RM200

I took the 2 hours package which had consists of an hours massage and an hours body scrub. All for less than Rm100! I've never done body scrub before this and I must say, i thoroughly enjoyed my 2 hours. I actually enjoyed laying down in a bathtub full of flower petals and the smoothness of my skin after that ;-p

My sister, had an hours massage and did hair braids on the whole head. and that took about 3 hours to complete.

It was then time for us to head to the airport, and the ride there was complimentary of the villa we rented. We had tonnes of fun and food during our 5 day stay there. It was a beautiful island and I'm sure all of us would like to return again in the future.

By the time we left, we felt we could get used to this balinese lifestyle, heheheh.

We left Bali reluctantly, and with a tinge of sadness.

Boodyboy, out!!

p.s. I did get back and suffered Post Holiday Depression (PHD) the next day, hahahah

Krabi Travelogue Part 1

As some of you may have known or found out, I went to Krabi for the 2nd time this year for a week's holiday. The first time was in Feb and this recent trip was in early May.


Now ppl always ask me, why go back there again? Really so many things to do ar?


Well, to me yes. The stuff i do may not appeal to some people, but I'm sure they do for most of us.


Well here is a brief Travelogue:


Day 1


Arrived in Krabi in the afternoon. Took a 600baht taxi ride to Aonang (the main beach area for Krabi). Checked into the Royal Nakara Hotel. Price in low season is 1,200 baht a night. They gave us a free room upgrade to a deluxe seaview room, right at the rooftop.


Went out to town to look for food and check out the price for the day trips to local attractions. Paid 450 baht per person for a 4 Island Full day trip for the next day. Had lunch at one of the roadside stalls and the food was quite decent. Walked some more and looked at more stuff to buy (survey the price 1st). Trekked over a hill thru a little jungle to reach Centara Resort. It has its own private beach and the place looked really nice. Then it took us another 15 minutes trek back to Aonang beach strip. Had dinner before going back to our hotel, which is about 400-500m from the main beach strip. It was a very tiring day, having walked all day. Slept in at about 10pm after i took a little solo stroll along the street of Nopparat Thara beach, which is also 500m away.


Day 2


Woke up at 7am before taking a shower. Breakfast started at about 7.30 so we had an early breakfast. Then went back to our room to do our "business", if any because for our 4 island day trip, none of the islands has a toilet.


Tuk Tuk picked us up from our hotel at about 8.45 and we headed towards the Nopparat thara beach for our day trip. Climbed into the long tail boat and we headed towards Poda Island. Soft fine sand, crystal clear waters.... what more could you ask for. Then we headed towards Koh Kai (Chicken Island) to see an island with the rock formation which looks like a chickens head. Did some snorkelling around there before heading to Tup Island. This place is my fave as we could see fishes swimming around us eventhough the waters were only knee deep. Totally syok!!


The last place we visited was Phranang Beach / Phranang Cave (Princess Cave/beach). The sand was fine and waters were clear. But by then i was already tired from soaking in salt water all day. So i just lounged by the beach until it was time to get back.


We got back to our hotel at about 4pm. Took a quick shower and went out for early dinner cause we were super hungry. Had some mediocre dinner then walked around to shop some more. I was looking around, checking out the tailors to make my shirts. On our way back, we bought more day trips from this company called Starlight tours, which was just 100m from our hotel. The owner, Ching, was very friendly and provided us with lots of information. She also had a very cute daughter, who was a mix of thai and caucasian as Ching's husband is Caucasian. Cute kid. We then went back and I think I crashed at about 8pm. Never in my life have i slept so early but i was dead exhausted.


Day 3


WOke up around the same time again but this time we took our time to have breakfast. Today's day trip is to the famous Phi Phi Island.


The trip is by speedboat because it only take 45 minutes. Longtail boats take about 2 hours. The boat ride was super freaky for me as we sat right at the front of the boat. Due to the choppy seas, i almost shat in my pants as we bounced up and down without life vests (U know lah, I cant swim mar...). I had to hang on to the sides of the boat for my dear life.


I thanked my lucky stars when we arrived in Bamboo island half an hour later.


This picture says it all


Spent some time snorkelling here before heading off to Phi Phi Lay, the smaller of the 2 Phi Phi Islands. Stopped by the Viking Cave as well as the Loh Dalum Bay before heading towards the famed Maya Beach. Maya beach was the location for the movie, The Beach, starring Leonardo Di Caprio. Yup, this is how Maya Beach looked like:





Spent some time swimming and lazing before going off to Phi Phi Don (main island) for lunch. But before that we had a quick stopover at Monkey bay to feed the monkeys that can swim in the ocean! Lunch was in a restaurant and the food served wasnt bad at all. Stuffed silly from lunch, we had some time to wander around Phi Phi Don. Managed to take a picture of the place where we docked:





After that, we headed towards shark bay for more snorkelling before going back to Aonang. After cleaning up and taking a short break in the hotel, we headed out for early dinner yet again. This time around, I went to a tailor to made a shirt and a pair of pants. Took some time to choose the materials and the design. It would take 3 days for them to get it completed, so that was fine with me anyway.

We then went for a massage on the Beach front of the Golden beach Resort. Only 200 baht for 1 hours massage. Dirt cheap!! Got a great massage while listening to the sound of the sea waves.
Ahhh... This is the life!

Had dinner at one of the roadside stalls near Krabi Resort but the food isn't anything to shout about. Then walked some more around the streets. My friend was totally crazy over 2 things to buy in Krabi. Cushion covers and Soap carvings. Hahaha! Dont ask me, I'm not all that crazy over them.


However, what i did next was to go to another tailor to make more shirts. This time around, with a more refined bargaining skill, i managed to get 4 shirts and 1 pants for 3,200 baht. Dirt cheap!


For my shirts, the material i chose was Egyptian cotton which my Pants were made of Cashmere wool. High end stuff, custom made for rock bottom price. Hehehe...



Day 4


Went for the Hong Islands tour (aka 5 islands trip). Left at about 9am and we reached Red Island 1st. Didnt snorkel in the open sea due to my fear of the water. Then we headed towards the famous Hong Lagoon, which was a pretty amazing sight.

Inside the Hong Lagoon

The water inside the lagoon was quite shallow, about 8 feet during high tide, which is really cool considering that its in the middle of the ocean.

The next spot was a little island called Paradise island, or Lading Island. It has a very small beach and there were very little people on it. At most there were about 30 plus people on that Island. It was great as we felt that we had a private island finally. Most of the islands we visited had a much larger crowd, but the Hong archipelago was just serene. THis wa salso where we had our picnic lunch. Food was decent as well.



Our next stop was to a little islet called Pakbia Island. THe key feature to this island is that it has a sandbar that connects it to another islet. Nothing fancy about the beach though, full of stones and broken coral.



The last stop for the day is of course, Hong island itself. We spent about 2 hours here. Its the biggest island among those we have visited for the day. The great thing about this island that it has 2 bays. 1 of them is used as a place for boats to dock, while the other is for the visitors to enjoy. I enjoyed spending time just lazing around the island as there were very few people.




The Hong Island


When we left, i was pretty reluctant to leave this island as i could really just see myself spending 2-3 days of just waking up to this view and doing nothing the whole day. OK, maybe i can live here. I can "work from home" after all right? All i need is my laptop and and internet connection, then i'm set. Hehehe....



When we got back to our hotel, we were very tired, having spent the most amount of time swimming (in my case, attempting to swim). Took a nap then went out to see my tailors for a inital fitting. Got them to make some adjustments. We then had Northern Indian food for dinner. We always walked past the place when we are heading out to the streets so we decided to give it a try. Food was really good. The Papadum was toasted, which tasted really good. the cicken masal and the aloo tikka we had was delicious, as was our garlic naan. This place has got to serve one of the best Indian food i have ever tasted. The service from one of the managers was also good. he hung around and chatted with us, keeping us entertained. We even talked about our favourite Bollywood actor and actresses. The downside was that dinner was very expensive. It cost us about 900 baht for 2 ppl. A big ouch, but we would recommend the place if you have a few spare dollars and want some really good indian food.


I guess, this is where Part 1 ends. Will continue part 2 in another post.




Boodyboy, Out!!

Boody's Travelogue. China Day 1

Yes, itsbeen almost another month since my last post. Was kinda busy with work and working out after that. That made me tired enough to just go home and straight to sleep soon after.

Well anyways, as the title of this post mentions, I went back to mainland China for the last 10 days of November. Here I shall recount what happened on Day 1.Pictures will be up on Facebook as soon as I'm done going editing and resizing them (almost 2,000 pics snapped!!!).

Ok. So after working late and packing the final pieces of clothing to be brought, i slept at about 2am. Woke up at 5.20am to take a quick shower and had a few bites of bread before heading to the airport. Our flight was 9am so we had to be there by about at least 7am. Reached theresafely with many bags to carry (i had to help carry my mum'sbag since she has lots of things to carry (u know women lar..., her bag was so full she had to "tumpang" some stuff in my bag as well). My luggage consisted of my backpack and a mid sized trolley bag. Brought my Ricoh camera (with its full gear: 3x 1Gb memory cards, spare batt, charger) along as well despite my sis bringing the newly bought Sony @300 (2x 4gb card, spare batt, zoom lens kit and charger) along.

Plane left on schedule and it took about 4 hours plus to reach Xiamen (SOuth west of CHina, Facing the straights of Taiwan. We flew by MAS on a Thursday, so there were plenty of empty seats in Economy. One passenger had the whole middle row to himself, so he slept across all 4 seats after lifting up the armrest. LOL!! Food served wasn't too bad, but I remember MAS serving better food. oh well, it comes with cost cutting i guess.

Watched Journey to the Centre of the Earth to kill timeas well as snapped pictures on the plane. On the flight was my family of4, my 5th aunt (GK), my last aunt(BK) and her daughter/ my cousin (HH).

Arrived at 2pm and once we got our stuff and cleared customs, wemet u with the tour co-ordinator. We had a connecting flight from Xiamen, Fujian Province to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province (more towards Central China) at 4.00pm. Here we joined up with the rest of the tour group (whom had arrived a day earlier and stayed one night in Xiamen). So in total there were 44 ppl on this tour(yes i was surprised at the huge amount of ppl).

It was here at the airport that they took away my Shokubutsu body shampoo!! I had forgotten that there was a bottle of it in my backpack and since i did not check it in, it was confiscated. Doh!!! silly me...

We flew on Xiamen Airlines, using their newly refurbished Boeing 777 (i think). THe seat and interior was spanking new. EVery 2 rows, there was an LCD monitor on top which displayed a map of china, and where the plane was flying towards.It even showed how fast the plane was going, temperature, and well as how many miles to reaching the destination. The flight to Nanchang was about 1.5 hours long. We arrived at 5.30pm and headed to the hotel in 2 buses. The temperature outside the airport was about 17 Celcius. It was freaking cold for me as i was wearing just a t shirt and a jacket. The sun sets earlier during winter and 6 6pm, its total darkness, like the 8pm in ouR country.

We jammed our way to our hotel. Nanchang city is split into 2 parts by a river. In fact the Jiangxi provice has lots of ultra huge lakes(some the size of a little sea) as it has pretty low flat lands. The riverside was done up nicely, with lots of lights and beautiful walkways. however, we stayed some distance away from the river. In fact, we were horrifed when the tour guide told us that the place we are staying in is 3 star and the 3 star hotels here are of worse quality than malaysia. We thought of the worst.

THen when we stopped at the place wewere staying, I was mortified... The name of the place was called Motel 168. MOTEL?!?!? Outrageous!!! But wait a minute, this motel is 15 storey high... Hmm.. something must give.ANyways, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was 6pm and we were all cold and very hungry. Food served wasnt really tasty but nobody cared. Every1 just stuffed themselves silly. I, myself had 3 bowls of rice. YEs, the cold weather has an effect on people.

I then braced myself when we walked into our rooms for the night. But wait, the key used is a key card. And its a touch card system, something like touchn go. tap the card on the door and it opens... Hmm... very high tech. Turned ont he lights and the rooms were bad at all. Inf act, very much better than our 3 star hotels. It even had rain-style showers!!! Woohoo!! I couldnt wait to hit the showers!!. After our showers, we headed out to town for a walk since it was only 8pm. We only walked the streets nearby our hotel as we weren't very familiar with the place and we were freaking cold. we then discovered we were actually beside a train terminal and the train terminal in Nanchang is like what KL sentral is in malaysia. Its a transit point for most train travellers in the south west of China. There were plenty of cheap hotels or motels or just a place to bunk for the night all over town. there were lots of little food stores selling almnost the same thing; mixed rice. THere were also lots of provision stores around our place. We had supper of Xiu loong pau (soup dumplings) at a nearby restaurant before going back to the hotel. Watched some tv before going to sleep at about 12am. The bed here is damn hard... but who cares? I'm too tired anyways... Zzzz....