Jan 29, 2013

Monkey Forest @ Ubud, Bali

It's my first time to Bali for our honeymoon and the first destination is Ubud.

Ubud is a place famous for the hill paddy fields and rich in culture. Since honeymoon supposed to be chill and relax, we decided to just talk a stroll at Ubud town and stumbled into this Monkey Forest, one of the place full of monkeys. And beware of the monkeys here, they might look cute especially the babies but they are fierce and like to steal food from the tourists, actually anything that is dangling from the neck will attract their attention.

I am sharing here two of my favourite shots of the monkeys in the Monkey Forest, one baby with the Mohawk hair.



Jan 20, 2013

Llamas and Alpacas

I always thought llama is only available in Tibet. Don't ask me why, I seem to confuse llamas with yak or sheep or goat or any creature with the similiar feature.

And in Peru, apparently, llama and alpaca are the staple meat for the Peruvian. Their fur is similar to wool and is used to make beautiful scarves, sweaters and blankets. My tour guide told us the difference between the two, alpaca is the smaller version of llama. The description doesn't help much as I am still confuse between the two. Looking through my photos, it seemed like I took a lot of photos of these animals, well, since I have never seen them in Malaysia.

All the llamas and alpacas pictures were taken at different location in Peru. Everytime, Adri and I saw them, we scream and straightaway wanted to take a picture with them.  And only in Peru, they have THIS on the road.

such a cutie!

llamas or alpacas farm

feeding the cute alpaca (i think so)

photo bomb by the llama

the whole village came out and take picture with us!


Jan 18, 2013

Jan 17, 2013

Snow Capped Mountain

Back with another travel/photography related entry this time. I guess I will continue writing even though I might only have 2 readers.

I was looking through some of my old photos of my travel to Peru and Tibet and I realised although Swiss is the country famous for snow capped mountain, surprisingly Peru and Tibet have some of the more exotic ones comparing to Swiss. 

Snow mountain in Peru

Blamed it on my forgotten geography knowledge, I kind of forgot that part of the Andes mountain lies in Peru. When I was in Peru a few years back during winter, we were lucky that the good weather permitted us to see such stunning view during my two weeks stay. I can only imagine something like the above in paintings or CGI but yes, such view is actually real!


Snow mountain along the way to Tibet
 As Tibet is located at the heart of the Himalayas mountain, spotting snow capped mountains are quite a common sight along the road from Lhasa to Zhangmu. What we actually missed out during our trip was to see Everest upclose from the Everest Base Camp.


Snow mountain in Grindelwald
Switzerland is a country first famous for the snow capped mountain and second is still the snow capped mountain! Anyone who had never seen snow, dreamt of coming here for the view and not forgetting skiing during winter. This photo was captured 4 years back but the memory of standing right in front of this view in Grindelwald, at the moment was still surreal up until today. It almost, actually certainly feel that I was transported into Heidi, a story I used to love to read when I was young.

So which view do you love most? For me, I can't decide :)

Jan 5, 2013

Should I Continue?

Should I continue writing here? I have lost motivation to write on my travel adventure knowing that I would not have much chance to travel anymore. I think I kind of losing myself as a person, the person I used to know no longer resides in me anymore and sometimes I feel like a maid. Everyone dictates how I should live my life, have I lost the fire and the happy go lucky personality I used to have?

Jan 2, 2013

2012 in Review

2012 has passed, I wouldn't use the word flew by as I was struggling from the beginning till the end of the year. A lot of people say, dragon year will be a good year for prosperity and wealth, well at least for me it wasn't. There are many ups and downs throughout 2012, which probably the only good one is me being married.

Career wise, looking back at 2012, the year started off rather badly as I totally lost motivation for work or career advancement in my department. Got a very bad review for my first leading assignment and not forgetting my report was being photocopied as case study to every manager in the department. And because of that, my career took a huge plunge from the high flyer to the low profile. I thought I had a second chance when I almost nailed the transfer. Again, the opportunity was lost, not because I didn't do well but somehow somewhere someone intervene. As at 2013, I would not say I hate my job, but it's almost close to hatred and I have lost respect for what I do. I am no longer an auditor but a fault finder.


Love and relationship wise, 2012 is probably the best as I am married but it also signify a huge transition for me.  I am happy to have found and marry him and I know I married a good man. I know he can give me comfort, security and love but somehow in the tiny corner of my heart, I miss being single. I miss the freedom I used to have, the rush of excitement to just jet off to some foreign country for the weekend but above the rest I miss my dream house, my condo. I know to make a marriage works, it takes a lot of effort and I am trying my very best to be a good wife, daughter and daughter-in-law. And please, do not ask me when I am going to have kids. I just had my wedding barely two months and everyone asking me that. Please give me a break. I can't barely breathe or have enough sleep these days.

Emotions wise, it's probably one of the worst. It feels like my emotions are forever in a roller coaster ride, from being excited of being proposed to depression. Yes, as much as I didn't want to admit it, I had quite a severe depression during the middle of the year. I cried almost everyday for 2 months and had to use tonnes of concealer to conceal my swollen eyes. Not because of wedding preparation but other stuff that I didn't want to disclose here. Even at one point of time I contemplate of just crashing my car into the divider so that I can stay in hospital and not depressed over all these. I don't know how I get through these times, but luckily I didn't crash my car or else there will be a huge hole in my pocket now. 

On a happy note, I managed to travel quite a bit this year, to New York, Puerto Rico and Bali for honeymoon and not forgetting conquering Mount Kinabalu. Ran another 10km during the Adidas King of the Road. I guess much of the things that make me happy are through travelling, photography and running.

So what's in store for 2013?
I am longing for an adventure in Mongolia and more travel and photography opportunities but at the moment, I am just craving for more sleep and no housework.