Achia's Little Travel Notebook

Haha..let's peep into Achia's little travel notebook.
The date starts only from Day 2 (21/12/2007) after she bought the small note pad together with a blue ball pen at RM1.00 from a sundry shop at Pantai Remis. (Had been looking around for the cheapest she could get for this budget trip.)

We stopped by Pantai Remis for a short photography session at the fishing village. Since the whole stretch of the shops had closed up the sea view, we had moved to the end lot and asked for the owner's permission to get in. The uncle was very kind that he let us entered the jetty through his shop lot. At 1pm, the place looked less busy. They are already cleaning the floor with water hose. Some of them repairing fishing net on their colourfully painted boat.

After a while, we departed to Taiping for quick lunch at hawker centre before packing a bucket of KFC and some bread to bring up to Bukit Larut for dinner.

Once we arrived and parked our car at the entrance of Bukit Larut, a group of monkeys came out from the bushes, just like saying hello to the tourist. Wow... we quickly took out our luggage and headed to the ticket counter.

That is how I got to snap so many photos of the cute kitten at the waiting area for transportation to go up to Bukit Larut. Dai Meng did his very best protecting our KFC dinner from the cats attack. Although it had became a bit soggy, the fried chicken still tasted good. Maybe we were hungry on the chilling cold Maxwell Hill.

It was a nice experience for us at Bukit Larut. First time, I admired the sun set, Taiping city view and full moon accompanied by stars up on the hill. They looked so near. Maybe I was tired... at 11pm, I fell asleep on the very comfortable single bed that I had for my very own.

Day 3:
I woke up at 5.30am by nature's call on that Saturday. It was dark and the stars were very bright, the lights from Taiping City was clearly visible. It was one of my best "journey to toilet" experience. :) Haha... I could hear animals singing songs of the forest.

Once everyone woke up, we went down to visit the tulips. They looked nicer during the fresh morning. Again, we took pictures of the lovely red tulips. Walked down hill to the "hanging bridge", more like a look out point. It took a while for us to go back to the place we rented. The hill road was really steep and can be tiring when walking up. We took a jeep to go down the hill after checked out from Cendana Hut. The jeep driver told us he had been in this job since 1981, everyday climb up and down the hill. The drivers were well versed with the 93 turnings slope.

The War Memorial Cemetery outside Bukit Larut gate became our next stop for photography. Then we headed to Taiping town for proper breakfast before we went back to Taiping Lake Garden to capture the lovely scene of the relections. We liked the place so much that we were late to Bukit Mertajam. Siu Keong's friend served us chilled longan drink during our late yam rice lunch at 4pm.

The traffic on the Penang bridge was heavy. We took 1h 30min to cross over to Penang Island.
We landed in Queen's Bay Mall Jusco to shop for mineral water and some fruits. Iyfer brought us to Permata Sports Complex for check in. After putting our luggage in the room, Ah Tun became our tour guide for the night and brought us to town to get some exotic Penang food for dinner. We had tried the "lou kai keok", almond tea, duck koay chap and seafood char koay teow. After we finished, Ah Tun still wanted to show us the famous prawn noodle. I made a mistake asking the old uncle at newspaper stall, "Uncle, do lok u beh hae mee?" The uncle had no idea what I meant by "hae mee". Then the other uncle had a tinkle and said, "Hokkien mee, ee lang keow hae mee." He pointed to Macalister road and told us the second stall does sell prawn noodle, which was not the place that we looked for. In the end, we gave up, since all of us still carrying a round belly after walking up and down 3 to 4 streets to look for the legendary prawn noodle.

We went to Penang's most happening place (in my very own opinion), the Gurney Drive to rest while sight seeing. We were all over very sticky and uncomfortable after some half an hour sitting at the bay. Haha... The street lights were very deem and made the place looked old. There were two children playing beside me and the boy wanted to go down to the water... I said no and asked him where were their parents... He showed me some place behind, I saw a group of old Chinese adults. They looked at me as well. I thought the children's costume was a bit old fashion, they really do not look like locals. Maybe they were tourists. I didn't ask further as we were going back to our hostels.

Day 4:
It was a super Sunday! After we had breakfast at coffee shop in Ayer Itam, we went up to Kek Lok Si as early as 9am. There were not many people until 10am when the tour buses started to rush in. The place became flooded with tourist from everywhere and transformed into an International meeting point. Haha... The 5 of us were scattered everywhere to capture our own picture of interest. Suddenly, I saw Ah Tun hang my McD rabbit on his bag! "Aah~" Then I dropped my camera on the cemented floor. (At the height of 1 meter from my hands to the floor, my compact camera still function well.) Sigh. First time I see guy hang toy on his bag. Hmm... He didn't give it back to me and even brought the rabbit along when he went to the toilet. Cannot figure out what he was thinking.

Caryn drove us to Air Itam Dam for another photography session! :) (My Penang friend, RM2 said he has not been up there yet.) Haha... I think every "lubang cacing" also we stopped by during this trip. From Air Itam to Georgetown for laksa lunch, then to the Burmese and Siamese temple, Chew Jetty for another round of food then to Batu Ferringhi for sunset view.
Wow...what a spectacular eye opener to me.
There were many places of Penang Island that I visited for first time. Among them were the Air Itam Dam, some temple, Chew Jetty and first time having duck rice supper at 12am in Penang.

The weather was very warm, with blue sky and white clouds, that caused me sunburnt and a bad headache after sunset. After dinner, I asked for uphamol 650mg from Ah Tun and took 3 quarter of one pill. ( I did enjoy the big feast that Iyfer and husband treated us, because 2M is important to me, "makan & main".) Haha..the pill worked like magic. I was fresh again after 2 hours and I let Ah Tun have my rabbit for the rest of the days during the trip. (The other two guys also took turn to hang my rabbit on their camera bags. I washed my rabbit with facial foam right after I came back to KL.)


Day 5:
I woke up at 7.30am on Christmas Eve. After late night yogurt drink, banana and "teh si kosong", I woke up (or I awaken the whole team up with heavy slam on the door) 2 times to answer nature call. Hehe... really didn't sleep well in the oven room. The bed sink as if I was over weight, made me changed position often, arching and stretching, so bored when you are the only one awake while the others are still too tired to wake up in the room.
After check out from Permata Sports Complex Hostel, we headed to Farlim Business Centre for breakfast. The best gift from Santa to us, the legendary peanut butter+shrimp paste "che cheong fun" was found at the coffee shop we went! Wow... so yummy that I could imagine rainbows are above us. We couldn't stop taking photos of our food and made ourselves so outstanding among the rest. The lady attendant came to us introducing other types of food too which is said to be equally as popular as the che cheong fun.

Due to festive holiday, many of the "tau sa peah" shop were only operating on half day and there were no stocks supply unless pre-ordered. With few disappointment, we left to Cornwallis Port to have photography session. Wow. The light house that we visited was just newly operated since last year. There we met a very friendly tour officer that showed us around the place. It was a bit scary when we climb up the bare staircase up to the look out point. After we came down, he cleared the 'bushes' under light house and showed us the "0" point marking stone where Francis Light had started drawing Peninsular Malaysia's map from there.

Together, we crossed back to mainland on a ferry for the first time. It took us only 15 minutes.
We stopped by at Kuala Kangsar to capture the image of Ubadiah Mosque and the Perak Palace Museum before reached Ipoh at 3.30pm. We were all exhausted and decided to take our late lunch at Ipoh's famous open air hawker stall where the table numbers are hanging on the shady trees branches. Each of us had a bowl of Ipoh assam laksa (since we ordered wrongly) and fried fish paste stuffed veges. We then bought a salted chicken and check in at Ipoh Majestic STation Hotel.

Caryn and Siu Keong then decided that we buy some coolers from Jusco Kinta City. We enjoyed the festive mood in the shopping mall and later had supper and dessert at the hawker street infront of Sam Tet school. We got ourselves ice cubes for our drinks from the hawker before get back to hotel for our little Christmas party. Ah Tun and Dai Meng went out to take some night shot surrounding the hotel until it was nearly 12.

"4...3...2...1! Merry Christmas!" Although we were all tired, still not forgetting to finish up our salted chicken and coolers.

Day 6:

快乐的时间虽然过得特别快，但是最后一天，我们还是很愉快！啊，一大早导演叫我下去下面拍照。听说是下面，被我译成是酒店楼下。所以穿着睡衣，拖鞋，连锁匙也带下楼了。嗯，走着走着，不知不觉也过了一条又一条宁静的怡保城公路，离酒店也蛮远了。就这时，Caryn起身了，要出也不是，不出也不是，只怪我大蒙头，拿了钥匙，她怎么锁门呢？啊，Caryn,对不起啦！

终于，小强和Caryn在电话商量一番后，Caryn驾着车子到St. Michael中学前面来接我们去咖啡室吃早餐了。哇，又是点心，咖喱面，冬菇汁猪肠粉，蛋治配白咖啡。我们的圣诞早餐丰富得很。过后就回酒店冲凉再出发。 我们分别到过极乐洞和霹历三宝洞。

令人难忘的极乐洞莲花池公园。尤其从阴凉的极乐洞望下去，一片油绿的草原配上蓝天白云，又是山，又是水。好比来到了仙境。不知不觉我们在那里逗留了两个钟头。

到三宝洞探望了百年长寿乌龟过后，我们打算买一些柚子带回家。哈哈，Ah Tun 向我们take order后，下车去买。怎知他就这样避过了一群迷你裙柚子美眉，选了一间样貌似老师的中年女士的店。啊，我的photo collection就这样少了柚子美眉。

来了一个late check out后，我们到街上吃滑滑的绿色豆腐花。过后还打包白咖啡和糕点上路到Pusing去。半路，经过了落魄的Papan小镇。哈哈，我们有发狂的跳下车kacak kacak一番。

Pusing的糕点和咖喱刀马切，还有小强家乡的味道。哈哈，我们Sibehhojiak都尝试了。

难忘的六天五夜，变成我们心里的美丽回忆（至少我是这么想的）。

在此要感谢leng kor leng jie对阿佳的爱待。

哈哈！