Pangkor Island!
September 19, 2007 | Filed Under Photography, Travel | 8 Comments
We cheerfully went to Pangkor Island the next day for a one day trip despite the heavy rain in the morning. The ticket price for 2 way ferry to Pangkor Island from Lumut Port cost for RM10. The journey took around 40 minutes to reach Pangkor jetty at 1.20pm. It was Sunday and the jetty was so crowded with people waiting to go back to main land. I heard some had already waited for 2 hours queuing up for ferry. According to the locals, the jetty will become less crowded on the evening after 4pm.
We managed to rent a car the moment we step out from the jetty. Cost for RM50 for 1 whole day without the hassle of registration or filling up forms or showing your id. It’s a new model of Proton Iswara which is in very good condition. The car owner also provided us a map of Pangkor Island marked with places of interest.
From Pangkor jetty, we turn right to the main road towards town area. Our first stop is the Chinese temple called Fu Ling Gong situated on the hill side of town. The temple is neat and well decorated with colourful sculpture. On the front side there is a fish pond, resting area and play ground for children. For those with lots of energy, you can also climb stairs up the hill behind the temple and enjoy the scenery above. None of us climb the stairs as we are not filled with lunch yet. We bought 2 big portion of sweet and cool herbal drinks called Liu Wei in Chinese (6 flavours) and the taste was magnificent! 5 grown up people drinking from 2 plastic bowls right in front of the temples without realizing we are actually blocking other visitors from taking group photo in front of the temple. No wonder so many people standing there with us without doing anything…
The next stop, food of course! This is when we apply the basic rule of looking for food in a foreign place. As simple as ABC, just join the crowd and avoid empty restaurant. In that case, the chances to get good food will be very high (Note: Rule does not apply during public holiday as basically every restaurant will be full). We ended up in a modest looking restaurant in town selling sour soup noodle. It is a simple food, noodles in clear soup with 5 extremely fresh cockles and some meat added with red sour spicy paste on top. But the taste is really marvelous! Sweet tasty soup with QQ white thick noodle, the sour spicy paste added extra tang to the soup and of course the almost raw cockles! At that time I really wanted to order another bowl to satisfy my taste bud again but since the guys are enough with just one bowl, I’m quite embarrass to voice out my thought… I would definitely miss this noodle in Pangkor very much and it only cost for RM2.20 per bowl.
Damai Laut
September 18, 2007 | Filed Under Photography, Travel | Leave a Comment
The journey to Damai Laut continued after Sekinchan. Along the way, passed by another paddy field area with lots of smaller paddy seedling planting machine. After a long way through straight roads, we finally reached the junction into Damai Laut. According to signboard, we need to travel another 12km to reach the resort. Everyone thought 12km is such a short distance but it took such a long time to reach due to the narrow and winding road, with mangrove forest on both side and some small size monkey hang around the roadside eating grass. We seriously think those monkeys purposely stage up an ‘I only have grass to eat’ show for passerby…
We stayed in Swiss Garden Resort’s Apartment area and need to travel with car in order to put our footsteps on beach. Seriously, none of us really interested with beaches along Straits of Malacca. If you are thinking about Redang Island’s silky smooth sand beach with crystal clear water… sorry, don’t have. From the beach at Swiss Garden main hotel, we can see big ships passing by to the nearest port. Fancy a swim? I don’t think so…
We spent our next day exploring nearby areas like Sitiawan, Teluk Batik Beach and Lumut Port. There is one newly open Sea Shell Museum (Muzium Siput) located in Teluk Batik. It is worth to pay a visit if you pass by the area. Even though the museum is small scale operated, there are various types of sea shell from all over the world displayed inside. From shells bigger than your head to as tiny as small pebbles of stone, you just have to pay RM2 for adult entrance fees. The museum curator aka the ticket seller is very friendly and willing to entertain all your silly questions. Just be careful when you hold the biggest sea shell being display at the counter for photography reason. The curator’s face became nervous and her eyes fixed to the largest sea shell (>1kg) I held with just 1 hand… Hope next time those sea shells will still be available for touch.
Sekinchan (Part I)
September 12, 2007 | Filed Under Environment, Photography, Travel | 4 Comments
Aug 31st, I started my Swiss Garden Holiday in Damai Laut, Perak with a wonderful team of veterinarian at 10am. We avoided highway and use road towards Kuala Selangor in order to stop by Sekinchan paddy field. We had our lunch in Kuala Selangor and by the time we reached Sekinchan it was 1.15pm. The weather was very hot with sun right above our head but everyone seems to be mesmerized by the vast area of windy paddy field and totally forgot about the sun! No one applies sun block lotion, no one wear cap, no one complain…
We are lucky to come across few workers started to get into field to trim the young paddy seedling and at another side workers planting paddy seedling using machine. We keep reminding each other not to shoot too many photographs in Sekinchan so we can have enough space for our actual destination. At the end, we actually spent 2 hours in Sekinchan.
