Happy New Year folks! So here is the very first entry for the year of 2010. Me and a group of friends decided to spend the new year at somewhere cold – Cameron Highland – away from hustling and bustling of KL, away from traffic jam,

well, not really. Traffics at Cameron Highland can be as pack at certain area, especially at the Equatorial Hotel area.

We stayed at the usual place that we stay everything we are here – Villa Dahlia.

Bought carrom a few days before. So this is one of the main activity for the night.

Activities to do here pretty much the same as my last visiting – visiting rose, strawberry and cactus farm, tea drinking, visiting night market, shopping for fruits and vegetables, etc. So rather I’m blabbing about what I do here, just enjoy a few photos that I managed to snap. Decided to walk around with my 50mm lens this time.

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Had a very good sleep last night, and I’m ready for the activities for the third day here. Click the link below to visit the sub page of each of the activity.

• Souvenir shopping at Krisna (coming soon)
• Visiting Tanah Lot (coming soon)
• Watching Kecak Dance at Uluwatu (coming soon)

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Finding lunch for today was quite an adventurous one. At first, our “pak supir” brought us to a place, where most of us find the food is quite expensive. Then, we decided just to find Nasi Padang. Next stop is Gunung Batur.

As we go higher than the sea level, the temperature here is quite cool, same as what you feel when you are at Cameron Highland. Gunung Batur is still an active volcano. At the mouth of this mountain, there’s not much life and colour, just this dull grey surrounding, marking that the lava once being spit out of this volcano.

It turned out that they have buffet here. Darn. If we know that this place have a buffet, we will be taking lunch here instead. But the scenery is so good, and not to miss the cool feeling oh eating at somewhere at this high altitude.

Read the rest of stories about by Bali Trip

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

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Day 2 at Bali is quite packed with activities. Click the link below to visit the sub page of each of the activity.

• Watching Barong & Kris dance (coming soon)
• Tid-bits shopping at Puteri Bali (coming soon)
• Drinking coffee at Buana Amertha Sari Agrotourism (coming soon)
• Having lunch at Gunung Batur
• Buying handicraft at Tegallalang (coming soon)
• Visiting art market at Pasar Ubud (coming soon)
• Dinner at Jinbaram (coming soon)

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The day that I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived – the day that I will be going to Bali. Got out from the house as early as 12pm to catch the 5pm flight at LCCT. Got to get out early as there are 20 people all together that will be on this trip, just to allow ample time for all of them to gather around.

Arrived at Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali at around 8:10pm. Yay! Another stamp in my passport. Since I just recently renew my passport, this is the third stamp that I got in my new passport (the other 2 were for my Bulgaria and Thailand work trip).

There a little bit confusion at the baggage claim area. There’s no monitor telling which carousel that I should go to claim my baggage. I have to revisit from one carousel to another, only to find out that all Air Asia flight will be using this carousel.

As I passed the immigration and custom area, there’s this whole stretch of money changer counters, each one competing on offering the good exchange rate.

Getting cab at the airport is not a problem. On our way to hotel, we had a little chat with the cab driver. Surprisingly, the cab driver thought that we are from Jakarta, where we told them that we are from Kuala Lumpur. Thanks for the “sinetron” that we have aired in Malaysia where we already get so used to Indonesian slang.

Well, this is the hotel that I’m staying here in Bali, the recently opened Tune Hotel, Kuta Bali.

The counter has a Balinese decoration,

and the landscape is very Balinese.

Doh! That’s for sure since I’m in Bali.

Once we have settled down at the hotel room, it’s time to go for dinner. We took a 20 minutes walk to the Legian district. It’s quite happening here with numerous clubs and eating place.

It’s not that hard to find halal food shop in Bali. Just look for “Masakan Padang” and “Masakan Sunda”.

Yummy! I’m so hungry now.

On my way back to hotel, I saw there’s a little commotion at this place, with crowds keep lingering at this area.

Getting closer to that place, it seems that this place is having a foam party tonight.

And out of the blue, there’s this “minah salleh” just came in front of me while I’m taking photo, and strike a post. Using DSLR, I can rapidly press the trigger and capture this beautiful moment.

Well. Got to go know. Have to be in the hotel lobby by 8:30am tomorrow for the tour. I’ll write more of the places that I visit during my trip here in Bali.

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

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It’s been a while since I travel for leisure, where the last one was the trip to Phuket early last year. Most of the time, it’s due to work which I don’t have time to enjoy, and furhermore, I’m travelling alone, and it’s kinda boring just to do the sightseeing on my own.

Went to see my friends for the final discussion before the flight tomorrow.

Well, I’ve got all the essential stuffs packed – passport, hotel confirmation, flight ticket and money. I’m a millionaire now. That is 3 millions worth of Indonesia Rupiah.

Bali, here I come.

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Public holidays for Malaysia this year are so nice. Most of them fall on Sunday, which the next Monday is automatically been made as replacement holiday. What does this mean? It means long weekend.

Chinese New Year for this year also fall on very nice day – Monday and Tuesday. Therefore, I have 4 days to kill. Don’t intent to take leave for the coming Wednesday to Friday. Rather save that for something else.

So, for this long weekend, I’ll be going to 3 different places. First stop – Genting Highland. Book a hotel room there for one night.

Below are a few photos that I managed to take while I’m there around my hotel and indoor erena.

Next stop is Penang. Just visiting friends. Didn’t take any photos there, only a few shots of my friend’s cats. There will be another post on this. Anyway, went to Pantai Bersih to witness the sun eclipse, but too bad, it’s quite cloudy that day and thick cloud cover the sun.

And the final stop is Perlis – my friend mum’s house. Aaahhh.. Finally a break away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

And since Padang Besar is not far from here, that’s my final destination before heading back to KL. Didn’t buy much thing though. I don’t have anything in mind at that moment of what to buy.

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Second day of 2009, I’m taking leave on this day thus make my New Year holiday is quite a long one. Me and other 12 members decided to back to nature this time – spending the night at Sungai Congkak Park & Resort.

Well. Not that back to nature actually. We rented 2 chalet there instead of camping. It’s more convenience and comfortable that way.

Upon reaching there and after settling down, the first activity that they do is to swim in the river. Well, you know right that I’m water phobic? Well suffered that from a little incident that happened when I was 6. I settle down with even more safer activities – taking photos. LOL

How time flies so fast when you are having fun. Without knowing, it almost dinner time already. Better to start cooking for tonight’s dinner before it gets dark.

No instant food here. Dinner is prepared right from the raw ingredient that we brought, inline with the theme of us getting back to nature.

All raw ingredients are ready for cooking…

…and the final product – Fried Rice for dinner tonight…

…and compliment that with BBQ will be really delicious. So next, BBQing session.

The fun part of BBQing is getting the fire started. It such a nice thing to see how the black coal transform into reddish hot thing.

And the so not likable thing of BBQing is to flip over the meat regularly so it is evenly cooked.

But out of all, the most fun part is to taste the final product.

Everybody gets tired after the dinner. The ghost bedtime story telling is always a nice thing to do at place like this. Well, we actually did that. Luckily I fell asleep earlier that night. Do you want to be awake alone in the solitary of a jungle late at night? LOL

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It’s the second day here in Cameron Highlands already. I was having a very good sleep last night. I really enjoy the cold temperature. I wish Malaysia is this cold all year round. No fear of electricity running high from those air conditioned room. How I miss cold weather (minus rain) in UK during my 3-year degree program.

Anyway, checkout from apartment and we will visit various places today in Cameron. Our first stop is Cactus Valley. Cactus is something in my shopping list already.

This gigantic enterance greet us once we got there.

I’m so fascinated with variety of cactus that are on display here. I’m wondering where the hell that they get that much types of cactus. Also, cactus is synonym with dessert, hot, dry. And how on earth cold place like Cameron Highlands have cactus growing happily?

Walk around here a little first to the top, and took this panorama photo.

There is also a good view of Brinchang town from up here. And it’s another panorama photo taking.

After all the walk and photo snapping, the last thing to do here is to buy a few of cactus pots.

The next stop is, Boh Tea Centre. Since Cameron Highlands is very synonym with tea plantation, I guess this is a must visit place.

Ahh great. The centre is just about 200 metres away from the place where we park our cars, and they have this bush walk where you can walk between the bushes of tea plants to the tea centre.

But this has turned out to be one of the worst 200 metres of my life (and most of my other friends). It is actually 200 metres of hill climbing walk to the tea centre. Darn. Only the half way I ran out of breath already climbing those steep narrow road to the top of the hill. See the other level road? We should took that one instead.

Anyhow, we manage to reach the top at last. Sit for a while to catch back my breath. But it is really worth it. The green scenery really soothing.

It’s a good time for tea break I guess. And tea is all that they are selling here with cakes and sandwiches.

It’s time now to go. Final stop here is the Tea Shop.

Plenty of different type of tea sold here. Actually, all of these you can find them too everywhere in KL. And why bother buying? Well. It’s the feeling that counts. The idea of knowing the fresh tea leaves are picked, processed and packed here, and went to the shelf right out of the factory.

I bought a few types of flavoured tea that I haven’t taste before.

Back to KL after that. It is really a relaxing and fun 2 days in Cameron Highland. There was also a discussion on where to go for the next gathering / outing. Pangkor Island trip maybe?

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There are 2 groups of people going to Cameron Highlands this time – the Penang group, and my group from KL. The original plan was, on Saturday morning, both of the groups begins the journey, with the Penang group exiting at Simpang Pulai exit, and KL group exiting at Tapah exit, and we just meet at Cameron.

But anyway, my friend thought that it will be fun to go and drive there together. Furthermore, we never use Simpang Pulai exit before, which the road is much much better that the narrow and winding road to the Cameron is using Tapah exit. So my friend decided to go to Penang first, so here I am in Penang since yesterday.

Our journey to Cameron Highlands starts. Not having enough sleep last time, I end up sleeping most of the time during the journey, and happened to be awake for a while during the dispute that no one don’t know how to get to Cameron Highlands after Simpang Pulai exit. Well, there’s a sign board at last telling where we should be heading to.

Then I continue my sleep. Hehehe. And the next time that I awake, we are already in Cameron Highlands. Guess we better go and check in first. Staying at Villa Dahlia this time.

I’ve been longing this steamed sweet corn for so long already. You can’t this kind of sweet corn anywhere else (well, I haven’t seen it anywhere else). The corn size is big, and the taste is really sweet.

While my friends went out for the vegetables shopping for tonight’s dinner, they get me a cup. Here I am, enjoying every spoon of the corn.

I didn’t realize that so many of my friends are a good cook. All of them are so eager to cook – I guess so eager to let others try their cooking. This is good, all I have to do is just sit and wait for the dinner to be prepared.

All the vegetables have been chopped already.

And the cooking begins.

Finally, walla! A dinner feast at last.

Burrrpppp… I’m so full. But hey, isn’t it AF4 final tonight? Too bad the place where we stay doesn’t have Astro. So we end up having to go to one of the restaurant nearby with Astro and watching AF4 final.

Then, back to the apartment again, played some games, and I just fall asleep right away after that. Quite a tiring day.

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