Public washroom at Cenang Beach Langkawi

The spot marked with an "X" is the location of the toilet/public washroom at Cenang beach. 

 

The Underwater World Langkawi is pinned in the map.

National Day Parade (NDP) Singapore 2015 on 1 Aug (Preview) and 9 Aug (Actual)

NDP 2015 ballot is out. For those who wants to go to the event, it is time to apply for ballot here at NDP.ORG.

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It is open to Singaporeans and Permanent Residents but higher balloting chance for Singaporeans, then PRs and last, to previous NDP attendees.
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Baby or toddler (regardless of age) needs ticket. For a family of four, e.g. couple and their 3 yo and 3 months old babies, they will need four tickets.
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Ballot for tickets can be made in either 2 tickets, 4 and 6 tickets selections. The higher the number of tickets applied, the less likely you will secure one.
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There are two places to attend to NDP celebration, e.g. The Padang and Marina floating platform.
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NDP 2015 will be held at The Padang or Marina Floating platform.

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Application for the ballot can be done at NDP website,  AXS/SAM machines, or via SMS. For SMS mode, refer to NDP site instruction. Each NRIC holder will be able to apply once. To increase the chance, I guess you can ask other family members to apply too. I don't think our family members will be so lucky to get tickets simultaneously. If that happens, I guess you can NDP Hotline: 1800 637 2015 to return the excess tickets so that other family units can have them instead.
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We are so sad that we will not be able to attend this year's NDP to mark also SG50. I was planning for a family of four with our daughter and son but the latter will only be 7 months and it will be difficult to have him there.
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I wonder if any families are planning to bring their infants there? I need to learn from them how to cope.
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This year, we will be seated in our cozy living room watching NDP live from TV and hearing the audible booming and crackling of fireworks later.
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Hopefully in near future we will be able to publish photos of NDP of our own :)

How I rubbed a nettle with my thumb and finger in Germany

For a gullible visitor to Germany like me, nettle (I didn't even know what the plant was called) looked like a mint. I am from the tropic and had never seen a nettle before. Here are two photos of a mint and one of a nettle for comparison.

Mint (wikipedia)

This is a korean mint (aka Agastache rugosa) www.wellgrowhorti.com

Nettle

When I visited the botanical garden in Singapore, and while I was there at the herbs garden (also available at Science Center and other parks), I would try to rub the leafy herb softly before savouring the aroma. The Korean mint is very aromatic, and several types of leafy herbs give out different aromas.

What a SURPRISE when I tried to rub a nettle with my thumb and finger. It was excruciatingly painful at first. My first thought was that a spider must had hidden under the leaf and sensing impending danger, it stung me multiple times. I retracted my fingers lightning quick and tried to suck out any poison. It was still painful and beginning to get numb. I thought I was poisoned. Still in pain, I tried to spot the spider up close (because it would be informative to doctors if I can describe the appearance of what stung me). I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw fine "needle-lets" (transparent needles/spikes as fine as hair) sticking out from the leaves of a plant I thought was a herb. Not just the leaves, but the stem and flowerlet (floret) are also covered by the needles! "What kind of a sick plant was this?", was my first thought. A plant that doesn't want to be eaten should warn predators by exhibiting large warning signs (e.g. thorns) instead of insidious and transparent needles! I was worried that I might be poisoned.

Transparent needles are everywhere on the nettle! What a crazy plant (or rather, crazy person trying to rub it).

I tried keying in many different key words to search on Google what was the plant that stung me. Using Google Image, I managed to pin point the culprit. NETTLE. I tried to search for the toxicology aspect of this plant and fortunately, I will only get a numbing and painful experience for a couple of days before I can hold on to a paper or book without the discomfort. FYI, nettle has been used as medicine to boost up immunity and other ailments (herbwisdom).

I only recovered after a week's time.

My favourite picnic food

Going to picnic or "berkelah" (in Malay) is a fun thing to do with family. In addition to the scenes and the activities, we get to enjoy home-made tasty food. Here is a list of my favourite food, fruits and drinks.

• Fried chicken or nuggets. For the ease of preparation, fried chicken and nuggets can be prepared by getting the ready to fry type at grocery shops. For home-made type in which you want to tweak the spices (like KFC), you can follow an example from "Triple Dipped Fried chicken" by AllRecipes.
• Char bee hoon (or fried rice vermicelli). There is a recipe for this dish, "Char bee hoon" by TheBondingTool. Sometimes, having a Maggie mee goreng (or fried Maggir noodle) is desired. A recipe for that can be found in "Maggi mee goreng (15 min, 5 ingredients)" by JewelPie.
• Egg and ham sandwich. It is considered tasty and yet easy to prepare. The easiest would be to mash boiled eggs and mix it with butter, mayoinnaise (with a little seasoning), and cucumber slices. There is a recipe for "delicious egg salad for sandwiches" by AllRecipes.
• Meat balls. I love fish balls and other meat balls. The way to prepare them is to deep fry them.

Different types of meat balls, e.g. shrimp, beef, pork, fish, mushroom-with-meat, and many other variety of preparation are available. Pics taken from www.best-food.com.tw. 

• Finger food, e.g. fried tofu, siew mai, char siew (either packed or home-cooked by RasaMalaysia), popiah (popiah recipe by RasaMalaysia), and other spicy fried food.
• Fruits. If weight is not a problem, then watermelon is the best fruit to bring along!
• Junk food and chips.
• Drinks such as isotonic drinks (e.g. 100plus or H-Two-O), plain water, lemonade (less sweetened to match the hot weather here), and ice block/chunks with ice picks.
  

Normally I wouldn't want to bring along anything that is too sweet such as cakes, puddings, etc. because of the hot weather and ants. The hot weather induces a stronger taste for spicy food rather than sweet (my own opinion). Also, normally I will have to compete with ants to the food (unless the picnic is on the beach).

Activities that we normally do while having a picnic would be to fish, fly a kite, catching grasshoppers or butterflies, look at water-strider, feed the birds bread, catch small fries with net, blow bubbles so that our kids can chase after them, take pics, dig for clams or small crabs (when on a beach), collect seashells, play with sand, build sand castle, etc.

If we do get to stay overnight on a beach, having a BBQ would be wonderful. In Singapore, it is easy to prepare the food (by ordering from suppliers, e.g. search "BBQ food Singapore delivery" in Google). In addition to the food supplied, adding a sweet corn and potatoes will be super.

Looking forward to our next picnic.

Singapore zoo

We traveled to Singapore zoo last year. It was a Saturday and we stopped at Woodland MRT station. We walked to the Woodland bus interchange (which is nearby) and searched for bus number 926. To our surprise, 926 bus was not operational, except on Sunday and Public holiday.

We had to proceed to nearest taxi stand. There were several people waited there. Few taxi stopped at the stand and most of them were selective with the destination offered. Some didn't want to go to the zoo (most probably due to the close distance from Woodland to the zoo?). At last, we got one that drove us to the zoo.

At the zoo, there were plenty of people. Singapore zoo seems to be a lively place to be and many families with young children were there. Admission fee for adults is sgd 32.00, children above 3 yo is sgd 21.00, children below 3 yo are admitted free, and for senior citizens it is sgd 14.00. Tickets can be bought online. NTUC members get to enjoy a 20% discounts, and sometimes, certain credit card holders get to enjoy discounts too.

The first thing we did before entering the zoo was to take lots of pictures. It's nearly impossible to get a picture taken without people in the background, haha... Next, we went to get the map to the zoo and followed some of the events taking place at specific times. We stopped by the Elephant show (i.e. "Elephant at work and play show") at 11.30 am and 3.30 pm. There was no place to sit because the whole place was packed with people. In the end, we just walked through. For the map to the zoo, you can get it from this link (in pdf).

Places we visited with our 2 yo child.

• Treetop trail with a wooden bridge and at the bottom awaiting us are big crocodiles. The place is beautiful and we took several pics.
• Via Tiger trek, we reached the confinement for the white tiger. Instead of seeing many, I was sad to see only one tiger and it was moving back and forth repeatedly indicating a level of stress (my opinion). I later found out that another female tiger had to be euthanized due to terminal illness (cancer). I hope there will be other tigers soon to keep the animal company.
• When we reached Elephant of Asia for the "Elephant at work and play show", we were surprised to see that all the available seats were gone and many people were standing to see this show. It was a hit and the elephants were superb. We couldn't stay for too long.
• Next, we reached Forest lodge and sat in Ah Meng restaurant to get lunch.
• After lunch, we visited the Frozen tundra. There was one polar bear. His name was Inuka and he was 23 yo, born and raised in Singapore. Similar to the white tiger, Inuka is alone. Fortunately, I am guessing he is close to the caretakers especially considering that he must have met them since very early in life. We loved the Frozen Tundra because the place was so cooling.
•  Next we took the tram to Rainforest Kidzworld. For sgd 5.00 per person, we get to unlimited ride around the zoo with ease. At the Kidzworld, there was a water park. Our kid loved the place and had fun playing with the water. However, the water there was rather murky. Our kid got ill with fever and mouth ulcers few days after the visit.
• Elephant rides were sold out. To prevent unduly exhaustion to animal, elephant rides are capped at certain numbers only.
• Orang utans near Ah Meng restaurant. During feeding time, caregivers will pass a long pole full of leaves to the orang utans on the trees.
• Fragile forest with mouse-deer, birds and insects.

There are many places that we did not visit and hope to do so next time.

Next visit, we will be bringing (or doing)

• Plenty of bottled water. There isn't drinking fountain in the zoo.
• Sun block. The weather is very hot and there is only few places with canopy to block the intense ray.
• Umbrella. If the weather forecast suggest rain, it will be a good idea to get an umbrella. However, as momento (or keepsake), we can get a raincoat with from the store.
• Consult the Singapore weather forecast with 3 hour to 3 days forecast (NEA).
• Take the direct bus (#927) from CCK MRT to the zoo.

The trek we took that day (highlighted violet) and the two places we hung out the longest (red circles; Frozen tundra and the Kidzworld)

 Loved our zoo.

Langkawi Cable Car

That's a place in Langkawi (near the Oriental Village). The whole place is known as Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park (and is available in Garmin GPS). Within that area, we could go up the mountain top via the cable car. There are two stops. We visited the sky dome, which is an indoor entertainment center. Then continued to the cable car. There are three stations for commercial photo shoots. We got one at the first station at RM 30. We shun the next two to save money. 

There are plenty of packages for cable car (or Skycab), e.g. Most basic cost RM35 for adult and RM25 for child (2 to 12 years old).

 

Pic. Different rates for different packages of SkyCab.

 

 

Pic. Ticketing counter and child is considered as 2 to 12 years old. Free entry for below 2 years old.

The hill top was cooler than the valley. I think at the bottom it fared 34 degree Celsius. The top was at 25 to 26 degree Celsius. It was windy and cooling that we were tempted to overstay there the whole day.

Going to the toilet costs RM 0.30 to RM 0.50. There is no tissue paper/toilet roll and you have to buy them from the counter before going to the washroom/toilet.

Drinks are not allowed to be carried during SkyCab and visitors will be to leave their drinks before traveling up the Skycab. You can keep your drinks in your bag in order to prevent them from being "confiscated". The rationale for disallowing drinks could be due to making sure visitors who needed drinks (afterwards) may patronize the shops that sell them at the stops. It's more of business sense rather than safety or other reasons.

The scenery at the top is beautiful. The ride up there is a little scary for me, and is considered the steepest cable car ride in Malaysia. The skybridge is still under maintenance and I was told that it will be ready next year 2015. Hopefully it will be open soon.

For adventurous visitors, they may opt for hiking along "animal tracks" and enjoying the trees, flora and fauna, and probably food for mosquitoes (remember to bring along repellents as there might be Aedes mosquitoes although I'm no expert to be certain).

After the cable car ride, we travelled by car to the nearest Telaga Tujuh Waterfall (or Seven Wells Waterfall). The climb was too far for my family and we ended up at the base of the waterfall. It was fun for kids. The pebbles were a little sharp for my liking, and kind of painful to walk on (I'm 74 kg). There were fishes in the stream and the water was cooling. There was no mosquito there, although during the walk to the waterfall, we encountered plenty of mosquitoes. I'm a B+ bloodtype and a magnet to mosquitoes.

There isn't much to do at the Oriental Village. We took plenty of photos. We fed the fishes in the man-made pond. There was a Japanese restaurant with air-conditioning and we had our lunch there (surprised that there wasn't any patron). There were plenty of shops selling souvenirs, clothing, hats, shades, snacks, etc. There was a horse ride but I opted not to take the ride because the horses looked exhausted. I dared not think about the well-being of these horses in the care of the staff there (I hope they are treated well). At the village, there is also a place where you can pat animals (we didn't visit that place).

Do note that there isn't sufficient parking bay for cars and you will have to park elsewhere which is near the bus parking bay. Before entering the Oriental Village, there is a Duck Tour which we did not try. For those who would prefer to travel under shelter and away from the scorching sun, I guess the duck tour is okay.

Related blogs

• What to expect upon landing Langkawi Intl Airport.
• Car rental while in Langkawi.
• The hotel we stayed while in Langkawi.
• We visited the largest Langkawi Underwater World.
• We visited the Cenang Beach nearby the Underwater World.
• We visited and enjoyed the hospitality at Mardi Agrotechnology Park in Langkawi (highly recommended and if you like durian, then wait for the season, e.g. from June to August)

Mardi Agrotechnology Park Langkawi

Our visit to Mardi Agrotechnology Park was made interesting and fun, mainly thank to our guide Ms. Marshuhada and her fellow driver who drove us to different parts of the station/stops around the plantation/orchard. Our guide gave wonderful explanation, helped us took plenty of interesting photos, and made grasshoppers and rings out of palm leaves. For those who are interested to learn how to fold a grasshopper out of palm leaf, visit Youtube entry (Palm Leaf grasshopper by Sanny Ang).

 

Pic. Entrance fee for Malaysian is RM 7 per head. There is a 30 min guided farm tour on an open truck that allowed sight seeing and picture taking. It is a convenient way to travel from one place to the next. The first stop was around plantation field filled with starfruits, dragon fruits, mango, and other trees. The station/stop allowed visitors to savor different types of fruits available. Some of the fruits are seasonal and depending on the month of our visit, we get to savor them, e.g. durian (king of fruits) are available from June to August.

 

 

Pic. Staircase to the counter. The place is also wheelchair friendly with sufficient alternative route catered for wheelchair or baby pram. 

Note for durian lovers, the durian season is from June to August. You can have "all you can eat" durian!

  

Related blogs

• What to expect upon landing Langkawi Intl Airport.
• Car rental while in Langkawi.
• The hotel we stayed while in Langkawi.
• We visited the largest Langkawi Underwater World.
• We visited the Cenang Beach nearby the Underwater World.
• We visited the Langkawi cable car and passed by the waterfall.

Cenang beach and activities

Cenang Beach or Pantai Cenang is a stretch of beach that is near to lots of interesting places to visit, eat and hangout. With a family with kid, our first stop to the area was Underwater World Langkawi. 

Fig. Cenang beach highlighted green. Underwater World Langkawi is pinned.

 

Pic. Smooth/fine sandy beach with lots of activities to try for adventurer. My daughter loved sitting on the beach and building her sand castle. The waves was intriguing to her. The sun was bright and never tires until it sets in the horizon (it's the West side).

 

There are coconut trees that served as shade, but not sufficient to cater for all beach goers. If anyone wants to hide under a shade, parasols are available for rent. Remember to bring sun block/tanning oil, sunglasses/shades, and plenty of water. Coconut drinks are available. A public toilet/shower is available.

Cenang beach is walkable from Underwater World. There are plenty of shops selling beach wears, toys/floats, sand castle tool kit, restaurants, shopping malls (e.g. Coco Valley Pte Ltd), Cenang Mall, and many more that we didn't get to visit.

I didn't try any of these but they are available at the beach:

1. Paragliding
2. Snookering
3. Water scooter rental
4. Sunbathing
5. Swim/dip
6. etc.

Related blogs

• What to expect upon landing Langkawi Intl Airport.
• Car rental while in Langkawi.
• The hotel we stayed while in Langkawi.
• We visited the largest Langkawi Underwater World.
• We visited and enjoyed the hospitality at Mardi Agrotechnology Park in Langkawi (highly recommended and if you like durian, then wait for the season, e.g. from June to August)
• We visited the Langkawi cable car and passed by the waterfall.