Bangkok 1

Bangkok, Capital of Thailand, gave us many surprises as we took our 4 days 3 nights tour over the city during May, 2009. From the movies such as "Bangkok Dangerous", "Ong-Bak", "Ong-Bak II", and all sorts of Thai's movies, our impression about Bangkok- full with antiques building, wats (temples), Buddha statues, small streets, villagers' looking folks... We are right, partly, as we missed up the modern and contemporary part of Bangkok.

Suvarnabhumi Airport, contemporary and antique, commersial and religiously blended hub to the outside world, gives warm welcome to whoever step their foot on the land of Siam.

Upon reaching the Suvarnabhumi Airport, at 5 pm, we took a taxi to our hotel. Even we used expressway and toll paid, we still get knew to "Traffic Jam The Great" in Bangkok, which caused us 2 hours time to reach our hotel, for a 25 minutes journey. Much more terrible than the worst case we ever have in Malaysia. So, if you plan to visit Bangkok, make sure your flight arrive outside the rush hours (7-9 am, 5-7 pm), eluding the frustration that might kills your fine holiday mood. The traffic is less jam on Sunday or public holiday as well, as we experienced a very loose traffic on Labour Day (1st May 2009).

Photos taken from the taxi along the highway. Low shutter speed yet with still high clarity, thanks to the traffic jam.

Anyway, our emotional agitation caused by a long trap in traffic was comforted by the warm welcome from the hotel staffs. Salil Hotel at Sukhumvit Soi 8, with Air Asia rate of RM160 per night. We booked our hotel together with air tickets through Air Asia. That's our first time in booking hotel online, and Air Asia washed all our doubts away. We called the hotel and got our confirmation from the hotel in less than 3 days from the moment we clicked the "yes" button on the web.

What can we expect from a hotel with such rate in Sukhumvit Soi 8? Everything else except one of the best... But what we had there was one of the best hotel we ever stayed. It's small with friendly English speaking staffs, whose collectively refused any tips in any form from us. The room was clean and well designed, the food served in restaurant, although short in variety met our taste buds. The hotel is 700 - 800 meters away from Nana Skytrain Station (further than the description in some of the tourism webpage). But the 24 hours service shuttle cart solved our problem. The hotel is 25 minutes away from the airport (without traffic jam), with taxi, cost about 500 Baht (including expressway toll). Last but not least, equiped with DVD player, we can get DVD for free viewing from the lobby.

Salil Hotel at Sukumvit Soi 8. Far upper row from left to right shows staircase, walkway, and buffet breakfast. The room is clean and neat, with cooling air cond, hearty snacks (even we didn't take any), coffee making, fridge, 32 flat screen, and two elephants as door gift. The photo below shows the electric powered shutter cart use to carry the residents forth and back from the skytrain station.

Photo shows Nana Skytrain Station at night, around 8 pm.

Around 8:30 pm, we reached Paragon, one of the biggest shopping mall in Bangkok, located 3 BTS Skytrain stations away from Nana Station. We took our dinner and a short shopping there, and head straight back to Nana Station. Just below the station, a few hundred stalls of night market awaited. We did some surveys about the price, quality, and, get our bargaining skills polished.

Night market from the overhead skytrain station. Photo taken around 10 pm.

The next morning, we took BTS Skytrain and MRT to Hua Lampong. Then, we took a walk into Old Siam area (Siam is the old name of Thailand) through Thanon Yauwarrat. Along Thanon Yauwarrat, we visited famous China Town Market, with hundreds of meters of lanes, filled with thousands of hawkers and stalls, selling various type of stuffs, food, clothes, toys, kitchen appliances, stationaries, sport equipments,adornments, drawings, souvenirs, and many many more. We bought some stuffs with really good bargained price (we will never get it in our country).

The routes that we took in Old Siam: We went through Thanon Yauwarrat and Thanon Charoen Krung on foot (red), to the temples around the area with tut-tut (green), and went to Arun Wat with ferry (blue). Map taken from Thaiway Magazine. As you can notice from the map, Old Siam area is surrounded by water ways (indicated in blue colour), which once served as moat.

Photo on the upper left shows Hua Lampong Station, which lead to Thanon Yauwarrat and Thanon Charoen Krung. Other photos show scene at Thanon Yauwarrat.

We continued our journey to old part of Bangkok, or been called old Siam, visiting several temples, mostly on foot. We took tut-tut to visit the outskirt temples and ferries for Arun Wat.

One thing that we would like to comment on tut-tut- always go for the more "high-priced one" (such as 50 Baht and above, depends on the distance) to go to your destination without any interference. The "low-priced" tut-tut (such as 20 - 30 Baht per ride or even free-of-charge) might end up with bringing you "go-a-merry-ride" to shops with very expensive jewelleries and clothes before yours destination. We had been brought to visit two jewellery shops and one taylor shop on our ride, and can you belief that we were actually pay nothing for the whole day ride? Well, the drivers of the tut-tut, once we were on, requested our permission to stop at certain shops, and in return, they offered us free rides. We fulfilled their request, and, what else? Free ride we had.


Please follow us to the Temples in Bangkok.

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Kuala Terengganu

Kuala Terengganu is the State Capital of Terengganu. We visited there once together (Ling Shing went to KT several times from 2002 to 2007). We went to KT at 2004, for 4 days 3 nights trip, together with Ling Shing's family. We stayed in Grand Continental Hotel. The hotel is located at the middle of the city, facing South China Sea. The hotel was in good condition, the room and the bathroom was clean and tidy, we had no complain about the room service, and the breakfast, very nice as well.

Upon reaching KT, we took a city tour, by taxi, and most of the time, by feet. We visited China Town, Chinese Temple at the China Town, and took our dinner at the food court somewhere around the esplanade (besides the old bus station).

Great panorama from the window of our hotel's room, facing South China Sea.

Photo taken inside and outside Grand Continental Hotel.

We took a 1 day tour on the 2nd day at KT. 7 of us, in two Proton Waja provided by travelling company (under Cuti-cuti Malaysia Programme). The cars was good, driver cum tourist's guide, could speak in Malay and English languages. Both of them were polite, a little bit humorous, and proved very informative. They brought us to visit Kuala Ibai Mosque, Pulau Duyung, Batik Factory, University Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), and lastly KT Central Market. We took taxi from Central Market back to our hotel.

Kuala Ibai Mosque, a white beautiful mosque built in a lake, looks like it's floating (in Malay, we called it Masjid Terapung). Pulau Duyung, a small fisherman village with very old hand-making fishing boat industry. We stayed there for 2 hours, looking at few carpenters (or boat makers) skillfully carving the outline of a fishing boat.

Clockwise from upper left: Old KT Airport; main entrance of UMT; Ibai Mosque; Sultan Mizan Hall (UMT), during my brother's convocation at 2005.

The last day in KT, we go out with a rented car (RM135 per day). We went back to UMT, visiting my brother's faculty, his house, the central market again, steakhouse, the palace, night market, and finally, rest in exhaustion.

Night view of the sultan's palace.

KT Central Market was really big with variety of local products, from fresh sea products, dried fish, fruits, kitchen wares, batik, local food stalls and so on. You can easily spend a whole morning time there, just shop and shop, making hard decision over the choices you have there. We didn't bought a lot, just few local fish biscuits, longan (fruits), dried fish, a batik cloth (really cheap with it's quality) and some local kuih-muih (anyone can help me to translate kuih-muih?).

Now, KT is enriched with many fast food franchisers and mega malls. Streets are getting busier. So, visiting KT will be more convenient to all of us now. For more information about KT, log on to KT Official Tourism Site or Journey Malaysia website.

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Bukit Tinggi

Bukit Tinggi Resort (in Malay means high hill) is located in Bentong, Pahang State, about 2 hours drive from Kuala Lumpur, and around 30 minutes drive from Genting Highland (I think most of you are more familiar with that place). We know the resort can be accessed through special arrangement by travel agents or by taxi or charterred car. We are not sure about the availability of shutter bus service from KL to the resort.

Bukit Tinggi Resort is divided into few parts, namely the Forest Park, Japanese Garden, French Park "Colmar Tropicale", Rabbit Park and the Golf Resort. Again, we have to admit that golfing is out of our interest, so we visited all the gardens except the golf. We went to Bukit Tinggi twice, with friends in 2003 and with family in 2004 respectively. One thing that we want to mention, the resort was well landscaped and perfectly maintained (even became better in 2004).

Forest Park (lower right) and Japanese Garden. Photo taken with Ling Shing's family (2004).

Forest Park, a park filled with a lot of tropical plants, from high canopical trees, shrubs, parasitic plants, grass, to moss, with the chirping birds and buzzing insects, we like them very much. By the way, there was no mosquito in the garden (maybe caused by regular fogging). Japanese Garden, a place with good landscape of waterfalls, streams, ponds with Japanese Cod Fishes, bamboos... indisputably Japanese styled.

Photo taken at the entrance of Japanese Garden with Sarawakian friends.

French Park consists a row of French themed shops, offering French styled food and souvenirs. There was a hotel there, but we didn't stay overnight there. We found most of the stuffs in the French Park were attractive, except the workers, they were locals without knowing a single French word. The food at the French Park was very expensive (compared to KL), as well as the souvenirs. However, that park drew our attraction a lot.

The "main street" of French Park.

The entrance of French Park "Colmar Tropicale". Photo taken with Ling Shing's family.

The last park, the Rabbit Park, contained hundreds of different species of rabbits, tamed with no fear of human. It was a great park for family with kids, we saw most of the children enjoy playing, chasing, patting the rabbits.

Overall, we put a high recommendation over Bukit Tinggi- ideal for a whole day or a 2 days 1 night trip. Early departure is required for one day tour. Visit Forest Park, follow by Japanese Garden. Both of the parks will take you 2 to 3 hours of relaxing tour. Then, proceed to French Park for lunch and little bit of shopping. You can stay there until 3 pm before move to Rabbit Park. The park is situated near to the entrance. You can travel back home from there after the visit.

Rabbits at Rabbit Park.

The cool environment, fresh air, quite surrounding were what we liked the most. The least- the price for the food, of course. How about a 50% discount? Or, you can bring your own lunch box and picnic basket (outside food was allowed).

More information about Bukit Tinggi, please visit The official site and Malaysia Vacation guide website.


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