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Cameron Highlands Trip – Day 2

April 13, 2010

One of the places you must visit when you are at Cameron Highlands is the Boh’ Tea Centre. Getting there is not an easy task and I would really advice against driving cars which are really huge as you might have to squeeze through oncoming traffic on a horrendous narrow path. Also car pool if necessary and try to use a 4 wheel drive just to feel a little bit more at ease.

But once you drive through the horrible stretch of road (don’t forget to honk when you are approaching corners!), you reach the Boh Tea Centre which is surrounded by hills covered with tea leaf plantations. The sight itself was magnificent and you should be catching a couple of glimpses of the scenery on your way to the centre.

The moment you arrive at the parking lot, you get a view of the tea centre where you get to enjoy a nice cup of lovely tea as well as scones and strawberry jam.

Although the walk up there wasn’t exactly an easy one, ok, maybe I was just out of shape. But the climb is definitely bearable and the cool air up there does help a lot.

But once you reach the top, you get welcomed with this incredible view of the valley surrounded with tea plantations.

When I was up there, I ended up taking loads of photos there that I completely forgotten about my tea and scones. Yes, I ate a bit but forgot to take the photos

The houses below are where the workers who worked at the tea plantation lived.

A quick group shot of us while we were still at the top of the tea centre.

Besides just the Boh Tea Plantation, there is another one which you will definitely pass by when you are driving up to Cameron Highlands, and that is the Cameronian Valley.

Personally I liked the view from here a little better and you get to walk through the tea plantation and can take really awesome portrait photos here as well. Make sure that you have good shoes on or else you might slip on the mud.

Frankly I am very proud of Cameron Highlands and it is indeed a great place to chill out, relax with friends and enjoy the cool breeze. Can’t wait to plan my next trip there again and hopefully shoot more of the scenery as well as organize some portrait shoots there.

Also I will be posting up some portrait photos that were taken during the trip there as well in my next post

Tags: Boh Tea Centre, Cameron Highlands, Cameronian Valley, Landscape, Photography, Tea, Tea Leaves, Tea plantation
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Cameron Highlands Trip – Day 1

March 25, 2010

I actually had this post sitting in my draft post section in this blog for almost more than a week already and I totally forgot to post this up. Anyway about a month ago, I took a trip to Cameron Highlands. Now I haven’t been there since 1999, so it has been almost 11 years since I last been there, I totally can’t remember how it looks like.

Some images I took at a local Strawberry Farm which also had plenty of cactus for sale as well.

Then we headed to another strawberry farm with the main goal of eating strawberry and scones and we found some waffels as well.

Here is a fun fact, aside from the British army, Cameron Highlands has the 2nd most highest number of Range Rovers in the world. They even use it as taxis and shuttles to ferry tourists about.

If you do not know, vegetables are very very cheap in Cameron Highlands.

Unfortunately at this time, strawberries were not in season so they weren’t very very sweet.

Nevertheless we still managed to get some yummy strawberry themed food, such as strawberry strudels.

Strawberry juice.

And strawberry white coffee. Yes, you heard that correct. Strawberry white coffee!

We got all of that wonderful food (including the strawberry white coffee) at Strawberry Moments.

After a heavy load of food, we decided to walk about our apartment area and I found some flowers and scenery about.

The drive up to Camerons was quite a tiring one with the single lane going up and down the hill and when there is a slow driver or a truck on those lanes, it tends to get really boring and slow.

Tags: Cameron Highlands, Range Rovers, Strawberries, Tanah Rata, Travel Photography, Travels
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Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

January 27, 2010

I am sure many of you would have heard about this fantastic landmark situated in New York, off Manhattan Island. What a lot of people might not know about is Ellis Island. When I was traveling around in that region, there were many options to choose from and I always planned that I will head back to New York again in the future.

There are a couple of ways to actually see the Statue of Liberty, you can take a helicopter tour where the Statue would be extremely small. Of course that would cost you quite a fair bit but you get to enjoy the view of New York. If money is of a concern of you, then you can also take the Staten Island Ferry which is free! Only thing is that you need a 300mm lens to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty.

The last option, which was the option I took, was that I bought a City Pass (USD$79) that allows me to go to various tourist attractions around New York at a cheaper rate. The pass provided a tour which visits the Statue of Liberty as well as Ellis Island.

Statue of Liberty

Above were some of the shots that were taken from the ferry before docking on the island. I was amongst everyone else trying to get a view of the Statue and trust me, there were plenty of people pulling out their cameras and video cameras capturing the spectacular sight of a huge statue before us.

The first thing we did after we landed on the island was to get some lunch and walk around the park enjoying the cool New York breeze. It was a tad bit cold that day (I was wearing shorts at the time!) but it was still bearable thanks to my natural insulation

There is also a museum located at the back of the Statue of Liberty but note that the City Pass does not cover the cost of going into the museum nor does it allow you to enter the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately at that time we were there, they hadn’t open the entrance or the section which allowed visitors to climb all the way to the torch of the statue.

All we could do was to admire the statue from the base. Of course besides just the statue, there is a gift shop and a restaurant which serves fish and chips.

The park was also filled with mini statues of various guys, I think they were the architects who build the statue. I think.

After debarking from Liberty Island, the ferry wouldn’t head back to Manhattan Island but it brings everyone to Ellis Island. Now you might have heard about Ellis Island from one of the popular movies, Hitch, starring Will Smith. In the show, his first date with Sara Melas (played by Eva Mendes) was at Ellis Island. So it was pretty cool to actually walk around the huge museum.

There were many tours about including live shows where actors would act out the reenactment of the people who traveled from around the world to head to New York to find a better life.

Talking about the number of immigrants, it sort of also reminded me of the old show, Gangs of New York where there were plenty of Irish immigrants in New York at that time.

So if you are in the New York area, these are one of the must go to places.

Tags: City Pass, Elis Island, Ellis Island, Manhattan, New York, Nikon D700, Photography, Photos, Staten Island Ferry, Statue of Liberty, Travel Photography, Travels, USA
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Staying at the Sheraton Hotel in Langkawi

January 16, 2010

I was rather lucky to be able to go on two trips to Langkawi in 2009 and both of them were complementary. This time round, I stayed at the Sheraton and I was quite surprised by how nice it looked. Instead of flying using AirAsia, this time we decided on flying by Firefly which was a bit more convenient for me because it flys off from Subang Airport.

Because they were propeller planes and do not have jet engines, the flight takes longer as compared to Air Asia or MAS flights and the one thing that was quite unbearable for me was that our flight was the very first flight of the day and the airplane was extremely hot and stuffy inside. I was literally sweating bullets throughout the flight and it was the most uncomfortable flight.

Thank God the moment I arrived at Sheraton in Langkawi, the atmosphere was totally different. I was literally blown away by the service we received and the size of the chalet rooms we had.

The chalet’s were a little different than usual, it was located a bit of a distant away from the lobby so everytime you needed to go back to the lobby, you can either walk or call a buggy to pick you up. But of course, being a little bit further away from the lobby meant that you get a little bit more privacy and you also get larger rooms.

The view outside the chalet was quite nice as well.

Definitely one of the nicer hotels to be at in Langkawi. If you get the chance, I would definitely recommend staying in Sheraton hotel.

Tags: Firefly, Langkawi, Photography, Photos, Sheraton, Travel
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New York Trip – Part 1

December 7, 2009

I previously blogged about my trip to Chicago here and here. Actually I was on training for a week before spending the weekend in Chicago. Right after spending a couple of days in the windy city, I journeyed towards east together with my mate, Jamie. I learned a lot about flying in the US. First of all, when it is stated that you need to be at the airport an hour earlier before your flight, that really means you need to actually check-in at the counter an hour earlier. This doesn’t include the time it takes you to line up (it took us about 45minutes, so we kinda missed out flight).

Anyway, by the time we landed in New York, we both took a cab towards Manhattan Island only to be greeted by what some people might call a New York cab experience. We didn’t get conned but the experience was somewhat disheartening. The cab driver did get cut off but he didn’t have to wind down his window and started cursing non-stop for 15 minutes. He didn’t get a tip from me.

By the time we reached our hotel (we stayed at Sheraton Manhattan), there was a street fair going on.

NewYorkPart1 001 New York Trip Part 1

From all of the movies I have seen, I always had the mental image of how New York would look in either sephia or black and white.

The fair was in full force with plenty of vendors selling trinkets and souveniers as well as plenty of food.

NewYorkPart1 002 New York Trip Part 1

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This was my lunch, a mixed version of a kebab with plenty of filling and vegetables. It tasted fantastic, maybe because I was a little hungry at that time hence that could have been an added bonus factor.

NewYorkPart1 004 New York Trip Part 1

The corn dog was really calling out to me and they had like 1 foot sausages. Jamie could tell that I was drooling all over them!

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And what is New York without the guys handing out flyers or street baskers.

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Times Square was extremely packed. The queue to get theater tickets were extremely long. We wanted to catch the new play called “Shrek”. The hotel wanted to sell us tickets at USD$175 but if we spent about 2 hours queuing up, we could have bought it at a much cheaper price.

After walking about for a bit and enjoying the view of the city, the two of us felt sick and it probably was that we might have been too worned out. But with the current crisis of swine flu, we were a little paranoid and after checking into the hospital, we ended up all bandaged up as shown below.

NewYorkPart1 008 New York Trip Part 1

Ok, I was lying about the bandage thing.

Find out more in my next post

Tags: Food, Holiday, New York, Photography, Street, Travel
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