Dear Diary

My Trip to Penang and KL with My Family & Neetha

Reliving my 3 days 4 nights tour in M'sia seemed to be a perfect way of ending the year of 2008. everyone, regardless of age, seems to agree that this year has gone and passed too fast, and i probably would have said the same for this trip if not for the longing of my home and fatigue. haha.

Anw, in my previous entry, i mentioned that i would check if Neetha packed her brother in for the trip. well, i was partially correct! but before you guys open your eyes too wide, she actually "requested" her younger brother to carry her lugguage to my hse. so you should have seen the look of surprise as i just uploaded my previous entry and then see her brother standing outside my house. lol.

Surprisingly both of us were early and ready for the trip so we didnt have to rush! hahah a good start to everything =) after dinner and a short rest at home, we left for the grassland agency...nvr been there before..its very near balestier road but everything looked so M'sian-fied. hahaha. we were super early for check in, thanks to my ever-so-punctual parents. we waited abt 1 hr and so my device started clicking and flashing away.

- my parents waiting patiently for the bus, along with tens of others.

haha my family was wearing slightly more sporty outfits than neetha, with sneakers and all, and she had this huge fear that we would go trekking in m'sia. hahaha. she'd probably killed me if i told her we were. but we werent so my miserable life got pardoned. lol.

AND FINALLY! after what seemed like years, neetha and me hopped on board the bus. the speakers for the tv box to watching movies was a little lousy as neetha and i couldnt really hear anything coming out of the speakers which were positioned a little too high for us to hear. and funny thing was that there were no hole for ear phones plug-ins. ugh. so what happens when two girls have no tv to watch and a fully charged up camera??

*click*

*flash*

*one more time!*

*smile!*

*say cheese!*

okie this is a public blog so thats enough.

- as we passed by the immigration centre to m'sia, had a urge to snap down this sign.

These are my last two snapshots on the bus (below) not because my camera ran outta of batt, but my camera FROZE!!!

- haha i tried to ask my parents to take a more loving shot and my dad came up with this cheeky look. heh heh.

yesh..no exaggeration. apparently the bus was like a freezer that didnt have a control. and we only had a thin blankie for the entire night. ugh...plus neetha and i couldnt sleep AND the tv is not to our advantage with all the speakers' faults so we stayed up taking till about 3 am till we had to go for our toilet break. The toilets were one hell of an experience. There werent toilets! they were lizard dungeons! i remembered entering a cubicle, and just when i was about to close the door, a big fat grey lizard jumped out at me. i screamed and ran out of the toilet. Neetha saw me screamed and she followed me screaming out of the toilet. hahha. we end up going to another female toilet..dunno why there were 2 female toilets oso. so when we went in, there were 2 cubicles inside and i told neetha we will use each one. but neetha didnt dare..so i tried to be man a little and stepped in to show its gonna be alright, despite seeing something flying about beforehand. as i entered and then turned to looked at her, a 15-cm stick insect flew between the 2 of us and landed against the wall!!! hahah we both stared at each other and ran, screaming our heads off outta that toilet. in the end, we used the same cubicle my mum came out from at the same time!! haha. we were so exhausted by the time we reached back onto the bus we had no trouble sleeping till we reached our destination. totally K-O. lol.

The next morning, we alighted at a bus terminal in Penang and took a local bus down to the Shangri-la Hotel in town.

- i just had to take a picture of this pink thingy as requested by neetha cos i bumped continuously throughout the journey whenever i wanted to go in and sit or stand up. grrr....

- Us waiting at the Penang Bus Interchange (the mist is not due to the fog but rather due to the defrosting of my camera! its really very cold on the bus)

It was a very good experience actually - taking the local bus. luck was on our side. we managed to board a pretty decent bus, something that resembled the older kind of our SBS bus. The drivers though, had absolutely no similarity to the bus drivers we have in Singapore. They drove at devils' speed and raced with other buses along the road..as in, really race. it was kinda scary at the same time because the road had a fair amount of vehicles and though its really cool to sit on a bus that drives faster than motorcycles, its scary. but i suppose, the fast paced city of ours will probably appreciate such speed. hahha, until an accident occurs. Upon reaching the hotel, we werent allowed to check in till it was noon time. so we had to use the hotel's public toilet to wash up. nonetheless, we were grateful for clean toilets. After washing up and breakfast at a nearby coffee shop, we headed for the temples . While daddy went to make some offerings and prayers, mummy, neetha and me decided to walk arnd and took many beautiful shots of the temple.

- my mummy and me

- my daddy and me

We paid 2 ringgits each to go up to the pagoda to have a look. oh my gosh...the amt of things we saw is not just worth 2 ringgits each man...

At the Garden...

The Scenary...

Inside the Templa at the Pagoda...

Outside the temple...

- LOTSA TURTLES!!! Some were even aligator size...which was pretty freaky

- view of the temple from the cab

After lunch, we travelled to the second temple to have a look as well. managed to take quite a few pictures before my poor camera finally exhaust and dies off :(

Of course, temples werent the only tourist attraction spots in Penang! The FOOD is a big hit too! Woots! That very night, we went for dinner at a seafood outlet. Neetha and I MANAGED TO GO FOR THE SWIM I ALWAYS WANTED!!! hahah so we were super famished by then. and i managed to get convinced by neetha to go for a steam bath so we were super relaxed after that! hahha neetha even wanted to order a steam bath for her own home. i would like that too actually though i probably wont have the patience to sit in it. lols.

Ordered about 4 crabs, 1 plate of hokkien mee (they had more than 10 prawns in that plate!) and a plate of vegetables and it cost less than $70. Remembered to take a picture of it before we started gorging...ahahha

- this is the chinese wine steam crab

- this is the chilli crab

i forgot to take pictures of food of my favourite place which we went the next night! hahha.. cos i was too excited gorging and ordering food!! yum yum. that place isnt a cafe or restaurant but rather a narrow lane with many many food stalls crowded arnd it and with cars manouevring along the lane. its not really advisable for super hygenic people to eat but if you can stand it, the food is really good. we ordered abt 10 plates of item, including curry mee, clams, char kway tiao, stingray, calamari, satay, etc and the bill was less than $50 dollars. =) tempted? its located in penang, called new lane. hehe.

back at the hotel, i found the scenary outside of our room very beautiful. so decided to snap it down too! if you look carefully, you can actually see the horizontal line in which the sky joins with the sea =) so it makes up the fact that i didnt get to stay at a hotel near the beach this time

Breakfast for the next day....

- neetha's masterpiece

- my collection

We didnt bother taking much pictures after that in Penang as the rest of the time were spent shopping. hahha. there was a really big shopping mall that my mum brought us to and it was soooooo big. its bigger than vivocity. or wisma atria. and naturally, being me, being neetha, we got lost. a moment of frantic at that point. hahha thank god neetha managed to trace back our steps to the place we first entered the mall.

Random shots after that...

The Twin Towers in KL

At the Immigration at Singapore on the way home

Our Hotel Room

Aside from the hundreds of photos we took (of course we took more than these, haha) , we made a lot of funny videos...mostly of neetha and my crap..well mostly neetha. LOL. but its a little viewers' discretion so no uploading. haha. sleeping daily at 2 plus in the morning and waking up at 7 plus in the morning to a whole day of packed activities was no joke. but then again, its would seem such a pity to sleep so early. well, girl talk is always more impt, i guess. tee hee. the trip to M'sia was no doubt as exciting as i thought it would be...but i guess i left out the fatigue. by the end of the 3rd day, we were more or less, ready to go home, me with my parents - and neetha to her family. =)