Island getaway Bintan 18-20 Jan 2011 (Part 2)

Day 2: Day out at the swimming pool, beach and Balinese massage.

Day 3: Breakfast, beach and finally home sweet home.

Island getaway Bintan 18-20 Jan 2011 (Part1)

1st overseas trip with dear was pretty enjoyable and relaxing, totally recharged now and all ready for the hectic semester ahead. Good weather, peaceful and quiet island (we almost had the whole swimming pool and beach to ourselves since it is the off peak and monsoon season -> no sea sports) with excellent and very friendly service stuff. Dear was rather paranoid about the fact that there are hardly any people in the resort, mostly foreigeners from Japan, Korea and some old caucasian couples. But I actually kind of appreciate the privacy, quietness and slow pace life though as I am not exactly a huge fan of crowds, just slacking and lazing around not doing much and completely lost track of time. Major urban detox!!

Day 1: Explore Nirwana resort (Nirwana resort centre, Beach club, Kelong), played bowling and air rifle, visited Pasar Oleh Oleh in the evening.

Hello 2011! Randomly browsed through some of the old photos posted on facebook and kassyn's blog, some of which I have never seen before. Among them my favourites have to be the pictures took in Macau (1st overseas trip together), Taiwan and the 21st birthdays. Laughed dumbly to myself when I saw some of these cute pictures and captions, definitely brought back fond memories of the funny events that happened. I have a poor memory and photos are the best reminders of events of my life. Picked out some of my favourite shots, check them out!


Macau

First impromptu overseas trip together with besties to Macau, HK and borders of China (Zhuhai) with a very packed itinery. Bad experience on abroad Tiger airways (almost burnt my ass, as me and nic was suspected to be siting near the engine). Freaking cold weather especially during the night when we were "counting down" near the fisherman wharf with the huge golden lady stature, most "happening" place in Macau indeed and in the end we welcomed 2009 with the Taiwanese instead. Getting around Macau wasn't easy as all the streets are named Rua de xxx, but the city map was really useful can block the chilly wind somemore, just that following its directions caused us to walk non-stop for hours till we reach a hospital. Some of the all time classic places that we visited includes Venetian, Red market and San deng jie in search for the lost mysterious Agnes B shop. They have a fantastic airport except the food served their had some extra special ingredient that tasted and smell like ammonia. Ageing is clearly seen in the Macau population especially in the morning at their cafes.

Shopping at Zhuhai was fun, everything is affordable and there is a wide range of stuff available there, also got "shui huo". Tried their highly recommended ma la steamboat and ended up really disgusted by the meatballs, the the scraping of the dried chilli stuck to the pot and the amount of chilli oil in it, totally horrific experience. Lesson learnt: Don't ever tried the local's tastebuds.

Hong Kong was fun, with lots of shopping outlets at tung chung, lady's street and my favourite xu liu shan with yummy mango desserts. Getting around HK is easy with the MTR.

Taiwan

We somehow got addicted to travelling and went on our 2nd trip to Taipei half a year later. Visiting places like Ximending, Shilin nightmarket (lots of bubble tea, Aiyu and jipa), fisherman wharf (Yu ren ma tou) where they had total defence practise where everyone had to stay indoors and the place where I got my wierd tan lines, Jiu fen, taipei 101 (aka beijing 101.. lol), memorial hall where we suddenly started singing theresa tang songs.

Its been a while since we all travelled together. Guys, time for some Kimchi and K-pop music.. Lets go ....But before that off to Bintan for 3 days 2 night (18-20 Jan) with CL before school reopen, final semester in NTU.. Yippy!! Please god bless us with good weather.