Bits and Pieces of Life…

Well I have had some really bad dives that I wish I am back in the office...

Taking advantage of season-opening Early Bird Promotion (see another post here), I visited Redang Island again from 28~30 March 2009. No diving this time, only signing up for the standard 3D2N snorkeling package, but nevertheless as tired if not more.

Redang Island, a beautiful tropical island retreat, is located 45km off the coast of Terengganu state, about 400km from Kuala Lumpur. It can be reached either by air (http://www.airasia.com, http://www.malaysiaairlines.com) or by road. Either way, you will en route Kuala Terengganu, the state capital of Terengganu. Besides that. Berjaya Air operates Dash 7 flights directly touching down on the island from Subang Airport, Kuala Lumpur.

Sharing some of the transportation details from my March 2009 Redang 3D2N trip:

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Redang Holiday Beach Villa - Seaview Semi-D Bungalow

Visited Redang again last weekend, 28~30 March 2009 to be exact. No diving this time, just 3D2N snorkeling pacakge. This write up is not really about the trip as a whole, but just about the resort we were staying during the trip – Redang Holiday Beach Villa.

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Bali Dive Map:

Vacation diving and holiday packages in dive resorts, on liveaboards, PADI courses, and scuba travel, tours and trips worldwide.

7th Apr – Arriving Denpasar airport ~7pm. Too late for Tanah Lot. Eat etc. Drive to Gilimanuk (110km, ~3hours). Stay @ Gilimanuk. The car better be prepared there!

8th Apr – Dive Secret Bay at Gilimanuk. Departs afternoon, heading to Labuhan Lalang (jetty to Manjangan). It is quite near Gilimanuk from the map, maybe 45mins or so. Stay.

9th Apr – Dive Menjangan. This should be one of the highlights of the trip. Top dive sites are:

• the Anker Wreck (40+ meters),

• Eel Garden

• Pos II.

Depends on how it goes, maybe stay extra night here, or heads to Tulamben after the dives. The road is straight forward, moving across the north of Bali, maybe 2-3 hours. Stay at Tulamben.

10th Apr – Dive Tulamben + Amed. Maybe not enought time for Amed.

• Liberty Wreack
• Drop Off
• Batu Kelebit

Heads back to Kuta afternoon. Stay at Kuta. If time allows, go straight to Uluwatu before dask.

11th ~ 12th Apr: standard thingy. Short trip to Ubud? Pantai Kuta, Uluwatu or Tanah Lot, souvenir.

Romance

Date: Late Dec 2008

Location: Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Bangkok

My third time visiting Bangkok’s famous floating market. Was walking alone having lost both of my travel buddies in this busy place. The hoards of wooden boats were causing a really bad traffic jam on the canal.

I was just going to capture a few more boat photos at the sidewalk while a pair of Caucasian couple strolled in front of me and slowed down. Holding hands, he turned around, whispered to her, and touched his nose to her face, like forever. Right here at the busy floating market.

Love is in the air.

Leading To Angkor Wat

Date: 24th Feb, 2005, 7:45am

Location: Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Finally! After 3 weeks’ tiring travel linking us from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, to Chiang Mai, to Huai Xuey, Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Pakse, Veun Kham, Phnom Penh, we reached the climax of the trip – at Angkor Wat.

This is my favorite photo of the Angkor trip. Not one of those must-have-sunrise-over-Angkor Wat photos – I have those too, but to me, the photo above has something special that I can’t describe. At least it is not one of those.

We made it, finally. Save the best for last.

First Ray of Light on St. John's Peak, Mt. Kinabalu

Date: Mid Oct 2005, 5:57am

Location: Summit of Mt. Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

The Story: 2nd time is much easier. I was not the first ones to reach the Summit of Mt. Kinabalu that day, but at least I have enough time to capture the moment of the ray of light hits the mountain. A few climbers already sitting down, chilling out (literally). The sun gets out from the thick clouds, paints the left side of St. John’s Peak with orange color. The magic moment is short-lived, though – the sky turns bright soon and before long, the orange color is gone, replaced by blinding glare.

Dusk at Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir.

Date: Oct 2005

Location: From the boat house, the view of Dal Lake at Srinagar.

The sun has just set. Late autumn evening is getting colder by the minute. Dal Lake is as calm as it can be, but can’t say the same to Srinagar, the Summer Capital of Kashmir – the disputed state that has multiple blasts that killed and injured many, before and after my visit. Srinagar is so beautiful at this time, it must be amazing during the Spring time when the flowers blossom. I wish I would have chance to revisit the place again, in Spring. I hope.

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Sipadan Island - Tiny but Famed

It’s been a while – 6 months to be exact – since I came back from my Sipadan trip, but it is just like yesterday, that I can still remember details of the trip. I had my best dives, not saying a lot as I have just over 50 in total, but the memories of this trip will not go away for a very long time. Because the trip is very special to me.

So, I am obligated to write down some notes about this trip, on one hand to record down my memories, but on the other hand promote our own little Malaysian islands – Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai – to the rest of the travelers and divers. Not that these famed islands still need any more promotion, though.

Some trip information for my 5D4N Sipadan trip last August (8/82008 ~ 12/8/2008):

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Great Barracuda, length of 1.5m or so

Date: 11th August, 2008; ~1pm

Location: one of Kapalai’s dive sites

Equipment: Canon Powershot A620 in Canon WP-DC90 waterproof housing, Inon Z240 single strobe

It was almost 50 minutes into our 2nd dive of the day, at Kapalai (near Sipadan, Sabah, Malaysia). 6 of us together with our dive master ascended to ~7m, getting ready to do the safety stop and call it an end to another great dive. Thus far, the dive is excellent – among other sightings, I saw my first ribbon eels – 2 adults in blue and yellow colors, and one pitch black juvenile. I spent quite some time with one of the adult ribbon eels, trying to get a good shot of it but not really successful. My buddy Bill was not helping at all in that regard, but that is another story.

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Ferrero Garden

I was going to get some chocolates as souvenir in the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport’s duty-free shop while waiting for the flight back home to Kuala Lumpur, and noticed that that there is a different kind of Ferrero chocolates. I’ve seen only one type of Ferrero chocolate in Malaysia – pardon my ignorance – which is the Ferrero Rocher.

The prestige Strawberry flavor

There, sitting on the shelf, is this Ferrero Garden chocolates in a clear plastic box. Total 18 pieces of chocolates inside, all individually wrapped just like the Rocher. There are 5 different flavors, namely Almond, Pistachio, Strawberry, Hazelnut and Coconut, differentiated by the wrapper color as well as the logo on the wrapper itself. Interestingly the Strawberry flavor has only 2 pieces in all the boxes that I see in the duty-free shop, while other flavors all having 4 pieces each.

I bought a box of the Ferrero Garden, costs me 320 Baht, and it ended up as a souvenir. I did try a piece of the Coconut flavor – it is sweet, white-milky and there is an almond inside. Unlike the Rocher, the Garden’s coating did not have the little chopped nuts, which to me is a plus.

Go check out the duty-free shops when you are in one of the airports around the world, and try it yourself!

Beach Volleyball is the daily routine on Lipe's Pattaya Beach at dawn

I first heard about Koh Lipe, or Lipe Island, in southern Thailand in Andaman Sea, was during Dive Expo in PWTC, Kuala Lumpur. Got some brochures about Lipe from one of the booths, read it up but didn’t really have any plan to go visit. And then I heard about it from a diver friend who herself hasn’t been there. And then I read an article introducing Koh Lipe in one of the dive magazines. Checked out some Lipe websites and I am sold, and managed to get Bill and JS onboard with me.

We went there 20 Dec 2007 (yea I know, it was over a year ago, but so what?) – it was super peak season during year end so if you happen to plan going Oct/Nov/Dec you better book the resort first. We’ve seen backpackers walking to and fro at the main Lipe beach (called Pattaya Beach) trying to get a place to stay but to no avail.

Getting There

The most convenient way for Malaysians (or from Malaysia) to get to Lipe is thru Langkawi Island. We used boat transfer from Langkawi direct to Lipe which costs RM228/person for a roundtrip, using Telaga Harbour’s service. There are other boats departing from other harbours at Kuah so you need to ask around (heard that those would be cheaper). Telaga Harbour’s catamaran takes about 10-12 persons and the trip takes just over 1 hour. Telaga Harbour is just beside the Petronas at the northern side of Langkawi island, and not that far from the Langkawi airport. There is a simple custom facility up at the 1st floor of the Telaga Harbour building for cleerance purpose, and on Thailand side, a little hut situated at the Lipe main beach served as the custom checkpoint. Do call and confirm the boat schedule in Telaga Harbour.

There are other ways of getting into Koh Lipe if you are from Thailand side. Check out the Useful Links at the bottom of this page.

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Overall I spent about RM1050 for the trip, including everything and airfare (more on the airfare later). This is considered cheap if compared to some of my other trips.

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Leaving from Malioboro Street, Yogja, we took city bus (Rp2k) to arrive at the city bus terminal. It was a long journey from Malioboro to the city bus terminal – it took us 45mins, and a few ‘free bus entertainment’ (if you know what I mean!). The city bus was cramped and crowded but I managed to reserve an extra seat for my backpack. An old lady starts to chat to me a little bit, and she was heading to bus terminal too to catch a bus back to Surabaya…

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Hiu and myself made a trip down to Tioman Island off Pahang coast on Thursday morning. It was a rush planning – we decided to get away for a couple of days and go diving. Tioman is the obvious choice since I’ve just got back from Redang on late May. Tioman will be different than the Redang/Perhentian Island area, we reckoned. Read more…

Tioman Island used to be named one of the top 10 most beautiful islands in the world, but that was like 10 years ago. Me and my diving buddy Hiu just got back from a short 3D2N trip to Tioman Island (we stayed at Teluk Air Batang, or dubbed ABC), and we know the island needs some serious help.

The State Govt. is having so many projects at Kampung Tekek and surrouding areas, like widening the river bed just beside the beach, the marina project etc. that have put off tourists – who wants to see tractors going about the front of their chalet while having vacation?

It is also having littering everywhere near Kampung Tekek, not to mention the pocket of dirty and smelly water patches along the construction areas. More importantly the marine ecosystem will be damaged or out right destroyed by all these projects at the beach front.

In fact we've seen so many of the chalets being discarded along the road from Tekek leading the ABC, it is just an eye sore. Even the Marine Park's Headquater – a elegent white & blue painted big buliding blocks, but really out-of-place here – near ABC beach, is having its drainage directly flow to the marine reservation park beach just in front of it! The waste water can be seen forming while bubbles at the marine park beach shallow water near the rocky area . What are you thinking, the Marine Park Officer?

The locals are unhappy with the constructions that have been going on but there is little that they can do. At least they managed to stop the State Govt. to widening the existing cement road – at least for now.

The Tioman beaches are already inheritedly not as good as those in Redang Island or Perhentian Island which are renowned for their fine white long pristine beach and crystal clear water. The least the State Govt. can do is to not further destroying the island. The tourists are not here to see a modern township or the construction work-in-progress, it is the rich variety of coral reefs and fishes (and of course, some really cool wrecks) that attracted the tourists and divers around the world to Tioman Island. WWF ran 2 articles on concern on Tioman Island's projects on 2004:
1. Controversial marina project threatens Malaysia's Pulau Tioman Marine Park
2. WWF-Malaysia Position Statement on Proposed Airport And Marina Projects In
Pulau Tioman

and so did CDNN Eco News:

Government-backed marina project will destroy Malaysia's Tioman marine park

It is useless trying to attract tourists by making the island a tax-free heaven if the constructions are still going on and the marine life are being threaten or destroyed. Tioman needs help! And it needs it fast!