A little photo

Sorry for the long hiatus in updating this blog. Here's a photo for you to enjoy, taken at the SPCA shelter.

Borobudur, Indonesia

Since my long post have been stuck in my other laptop (weirdly, the program was unable to 'connect to internet') and I'm on the road for the whole week, I though of giving you guys just a little preview of Borobudur, Indonesia which I've visited last year.

30,000 monks in Bangkok

A day in March is the Makha Bucha Day. But this year is a special year, marking the 2,600th anniversary of Buddha's enlightenment day. So, there were a series of alms giving ceremonies around Bangkok. On March 24th, I went to witness the one in Chinatown where there were estimated about 30,000 monks gathered to receive alms from Buddhists. Had to wake up early as it starts at 6.30 am, but it was worth it. Here are some pictures.

Those kitty eyes!

Just step into any animal shelter and you're bound to come across lots of homeless cats. And there will be those that will give you that 'Puss-in-boots' eyes! *you've been warned*

Do visit your local shelter, and when you can, open up your home and your heart to a pair of those eyes.

For those around KL, you can visit the SPCA Selangor (www.spca.org.my)

Heli-hike on Franz Josef Glacier

One of the fantastic experience in New Zealand is Heli-hiking up on the glacier. Franz Josef glacier is located on the West Coast of South Island in New Zealand. It is situated within the rainforest climate of New Zealand, which means it gets quite a lot of rain over the years. But these rain actually help make the glaciers.

The glaciers itself is beautiful and much more expansive and huge than any photos can show. It is constantly moving, which is why you can hear cracks, falling ice and even small waterfalls from the melted ice.

A Heli-hike involves taking a helicopter up the the top of the glacier and then a guide brings you to climb around the glaciers, exploring the nooks and crannies of formed ice caves.

Even though sitting in a helicopter and looking down, it the glacier still looks small until you see another helicopter flying around, then you'll get an idea of how massive it really is.

I'm not sure if you're allowed on the glaciers on your own, but having a guide is really the only safe (and sane) choice. With experience, they know which areas are safe to step on without having any ice fall on you, or falling into the crevice of melted ice. Trust me, its worth it.

A guide will also explain the different landscapes around the glaciers and show you things you'd never expect. Like a small stream of melted ice.

Or the best thing on the glaciers, going through an ice cave! The pressure from the formation of the glacier produces this nice blue tinge (which turns white after exposure to the sun). So, finding a blue ice cave that you can slide through is amazing!

If you ever go that way, I'd definitely recommend a hike over the glacier (either Franz Josef or Fox Glacier, both should be equally good, but also depends on your luck with the weather!). The helicopter ride is a bonus, where you get to experience the massiveness of the glaciers and take in the entire glacier.

Pretty cool forest

Some forests in New Zealand are pine forests. These pine trees are not native to the country, but was brought in by early European settlers to replant the area so it would 'look better'. Some of these pines grew so well that it became pests and a danger to the native plants and wildlife.

Anyway, regardless, it is still pretty cool to walk through a pine forests, especially when the lower areas are covered with some kind of fluffy algae (or moss) and made the atmosphere look somewhat greenish.

Rotorua

Rotorua is a town in New Zealand's north Island that is famous for its thermal grounds. There are lots of hot springs here and lots of places with thermal activities. A walk around the park, and you can see lots of steam (stinky though), some boiling water, lots of gas escaping and sometimes even what looks like boiling mud. There is a small place where the temperature is right for soaking tired legs.

For more information, visit their website:http://www.rotoruanz.com/

Taiwan's Night Market

Taiwan is famous for its night market. Here's a picture of Ximending right in the centre of the city!

Dawg

Just a picture of a dog here. Enjoy

Photo taken at SPCA Selangor

Bangkok by Night

Here's some photos of Bangkok by night. Taken from Lebua Hotel. That river is the Chao Phraya river.

Remembering those who fell in Kanchanaburi

A recent trip to Kanchanaburi was for a workshop, but we had time off one evening to go to the museum, the cemetery and the popular bridge (i.e. bridge over the River Kwai – also a movie).
During World War II, the Japanese invaded South East Asia and brought many POWs to Kanchanaburi to build a railroad that joins Thailand to Myanmar.

The museum had a lot of information on the building of this bridge and train line. Also a lot of focus on the sufferings of British, Australian and Dutch POWs (and a few Canadians and New Zealanders). In a smaller corner of this museum, they had the statistics of the actual number of POWs – guess what, most of those are from Malaysia! There was about 180,000 Asian POWs (most from Malaysia!) and more than half of those died in Kanchanaburi (as compared to 60,000 POWs from western countries, and about 15% died).
Anyway, this is still a very moving place to be.


At last, a small monument to remember at least the Chinese that fell on this place. 

Beauty in Nature

I went to Taman Negara some time ago. Besides looking for animals or doing the canopy walk, there are many more things around us that are naturally beautiful. One only has to open up your eyes and learn to see it.
Here are some pictures. Enjoy!


 

Dragonfly

Dragonflies are everywhere, especially near bodies of water – a pond, lake or river. Take a trip on one of Bangkok’s floating market and you’ll come across lots of dragonflies.
They’re one of the hardest to photograph because they move so fast and so small that you actually would do better with a macro lens. But with some help of the crop tool and after a million photos, I finally got a nice one. (well, could do better with the composition, but happy that this turned out pretty sharp).
Here it is.

Greenwich Meridian (0°)

Greenwich meridian is the start of how we calculate longitude. It may not sound important, but without that we won’t have time or your GPS would not work. This Greenwich is in London and I went there for a visit last month.

Its cool to see where the line begins. It’s marked on the floor (unfortunately there’s a stupid long queue just to take pictures of yourself standing on the line).

Anyway, its still a nice visit as there’s the planetarium, the nice view and nice cool buildings too.



 
 
 

And you can touch the oldest thing on earth! 

Is it day, is it night?

There’s something I like about this picture. First time really trying to play with camera settings to make the afternoon sun look very dark :)

Wonderful waterfall in Laos

When you go to Laos, particularly at Luang Prabang, you must go to the Kouang Si waterfalls. It would take some bargaining with the tuk-tuk driver, but its well worth spending half a day there particularly on a very hot day. Ok, I don’t have to say anything more, the pictures will convince you better.

Cool eh?