Lan Ling Wang

If you read my blog, I am not much of a reviewer of movies and dramas except for the occasionally tvb drama. You see, I don't watch much of dramas except for tvb and maybe one or two Korean or Taiwanese drama.

But somehow, one fateful day I stumbled upon this chinese drama from China showing on AEC while channel surfing and one of my favourite Taiwanese actress was in it, Lin Yi Chen. I got stuck, addicted and somehow could not get over the drama and after watching that episode on tv and got myself mesmerized with all the good looking actors in it, seriously there are so many good looking actors in this drama called Lan Ling Wang, haha..yup I am that shallow, I watched a drama based on how good looking the actors and actresses are.

Googled for the whole series and start marathon from the start to the end with total of 46 episodes and phew..overall a good drama with good setting and acting. Oh yea, found out the main Chinese actor is called Feng Shao Feng and he acted in tvb Drive of Life before. No wonder he looked so familiar. Sad ending but at least it's fast paced and the first 20 episodes were really nice. And it's based on the real historical figure of this Prince Lan Ling who wore a mask whenever he went for battle and managed to defend the LuoYang city with 500 men against 100,000 men from the Zhou kingdom.

Now excuse me, I have to go dig for more of this genre dramas. Did not expect myself to fall in love with historical chinese drama, haha.

Day 3: Phi Phi Island Hopping @ Krabi (1 Sept 2014)

So today was the hubs birthday and I let him decide on which island hopping he wanted to hop on and he chose Phi Phi Island. As usual the transport picked us up from the hotel around 9 am and proceed to drop us at the jetty or more like a bunch of speedboats and long tail boats near to Noppharatara beach. We are going for 7 locations around Phi Phi Don and a few island, actually three island only.

Once we got into the speedboat, thank God I bought the motion sickness pill and swallow a few before the journey start. Or else, the whole journey I will spend vomiting and I don't think the other passengers will be happy about that. First stop was Bamboo island and we spent about 45 minutes here. Basically, the whole journey is touch and go island hopping. We didn't snorkeled the first half of the journey but only started after lunch which was a bad move by the guide. He dropped us not too far from the beach in Phi Phi Don and it was VERY choppy. I went down to the sea and only manage to stuck my head into the water for 5 seconds and that's it. I had enough as I kept having water going into my mouth and kept grabbing onto hubs. Since his birthday, I decided to just stay on the boat and let him enjoyed his snorkeling activities.

After we done with snorkeling, we went back to the hotel for a short swim and nap before dinner by the sea and then Ao Nang for the massage and shopping. Didn't shop there as much as Krabi night market as the deal was not that good. We ordered 5 seafood dishes and freak out when the food came as it seemed a lot but then again Mr. Hubs whacked everything clean on plate. Glad that we found the Ao Nang seafood restaurant and managed to see the sunset.

So basically that sums up how my hubs being spoilt to the max during the four day retreat. Day 4 was spent soaking at our pool, fully maximising the pool and the room and went for our last Banana + Nutella pancake.

Now I want my own birthday retreat!

Day 2: Sea Kayaking & Night Market at Krabi (31 August 2014)

 

Back from my retreat at Krabi, or more like spoiling my hubs to the max at Krabi. It's for his birthday treat which is suppose to be a surprise but since I need him to lock down his leave, gotta let him know earlier though the location remained secret till the final week.

Day 1 is just spent taking the flight into Krabi and lazying around the hotel area as we reached Krabi at 5pm. We checked into Small Hotel near Ao Nang beach with a pool accees room, another surprise I planned for him since I know how much he loves swimming. Never regret the decision although it's slightly more expensive but worth it.

So before the trip, I have been researching on activities in Krabi. As we had only two full days, I decided to go for sea kayaking or more like mangrove swamps kayaking and island hopping to Phi Phi Island. If you asked me, I will definately prefer kayak more than the island hopping.

We actually booked the trip via a local agent in Krabi and it costs us 3500 baht for one full day island hopping and half a day for kayaking. The reason for me not having a full day kayaking as we were in Krabi during the weekend and we decided to drop by the weekend night market at Krabi town.

So off we went for the kayaking trip on day 2 and we took the Ao Thalene route which we kayak a bit at the sea before entering the lagoon and into the mangrove swamps. We were very excited after sitting in the truck for 45 mins before reaching the destination. There were another 5 Malaysian girls in our group and we were joined by another French couple who resides in Malaysia as well. We were extremely lucky as before we flew off, I had checked the weather forecast and it's suppose to rain the weekend we were there.

Once we got into the kayak, we began pedalling, hubs behind and I was in front. But somehow we still manage to paddle to the wrong direction and went all over the place instead of following our guide. We crashed into the pier, almost crashed into a motorboat and stranded in the mud, all happened in the first 20 mins of our kayaking. Finally we managed to steer the kayak to the right direction and followed the tour guide. The first 15 minutes were just around the sea and once we entered the lagoon, we were stunned. It's a different environment altogether, and we just sat back and relax and let the current carried us into the swamps. After a while, we were drifted to the mangrove swamps but we did not need much energy to paddle. It was the best time for us relax and listen to the surroundings. I especially love the fact that they restrict motorboats from going in or more like nature restricted that as the water is quite shallow and muddy. After that, we paddle back to the pier and went back to the hotel.

At night we hailed a taxi or more like a truck that shuttle from Ao Nang to Krabi town which costs us only 50 baht per person, much cheaper than the tuk-tuk that offered 300baht per trip.

We love the night market very much as there were plenty of food and in the middle of the square, there are chairs and tables for the patrons to have thier dinner and entertainment. Hubs as usual went crazy over all the food and souvenir shopping while I went overboard with the sleeveless tees which cost 100 baht per piece.

After that, we took the same truck back to Ao Nang in front of the 7-11 shop which cost 60 baht per person at night.

Photobomb

I am sure many of us have heard or at least experience once photobomb incident before. I still remember when I was young and went to China, or more like Shenzen for travel, I got a lot of photobomb from tourists and somehow like to get into my view. And imagine there was no digital camera that time and after deveoping the photos, it's heart sick to see such photos being photobombed by so many people.

Nowadays it has become a normed for photobomb even during big ceremony events. The one that I remember very well was the photobomb by Benedict Cumberbatch during the Oscars this year. And who can forget the best photobomb of the year by Prince Harry during the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year. Epic!

source from parade.condenast

source from popdust.com

Come to think about it, I kind of accepting the norm of photobomb and sometimes it's quite funny when I looked back at photos that I had been photobomb, for example the time I had in New Zealand (photobomb by my tour guide in a very funny way while the 3 of us were so serious).

Another time would be in Peru when a llama suddenly came into the picture and not forgetting the time when a cat photobombing my pre wedding photos which later on we decide to include him/her in the photo. 

Bomb by a Llama in Peru

Bomb by my guide during my New Zealand trip

Bomb by the cat who decided to join in the photoshoot

A video of me Flying in the Air

Paragliding in Queenstown from JY Wong on Vimeo.

Details of my experience is here

Too Much of Murphy's Law

Yup..sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga.

I was in such a bad luck the last few days. My hand-phone k.o during my trip to Singapore and came back from the trip, my car tyre pancit. Sigh, and I have plans to go for swimming and need to be cancelled because I don't have a car to drive to work. And my swimming still sucks, not able to move at all and still rely on my papan apung.

Luckily my phone is back on after spending RM80 to fix it at one of the handphone shops in One City. Apparently, my phone needs to be re installed with the Samsung software of something. Must be playing too much of Snoopy and Smurf, haha.

Anyway, back to Singapore trip, the main purpose is to watched the Sound of Music musical which I know all the songs at the back of my heart. In fact, I like the musical very much and shockingly my brother who slept through most of the musical he went with his wife, was widely awake the whole time! And after I googled, only then I realised that the original version is the musical and not the movie. The movie is based on the musical and hence there is some different arrangement to the songs. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it very much, singing along to classics such as Do-Re-Mi, My Favourite Things, Edelweiss and of course The Sound of Music. I would rank this musical the second in my favourite list after Lion King. Seriously, nothing can beat Lion King. I have another one coming this December. Gonna bring my parents to watch Mamma Mia, which I quite enjoyed with all the classic ABBA songs. Bring back the Dancing Queen!!

Heian Shrine @ Kyoto

We saw from the white board in our hostels saying that the sakura flowers will be full bloom in Heian Shrine and this is the best time to view the flowers in their glory state. As we spend almost half a day in Philosopher's Path and Ginkakuji Temple and admiring all the pretty sakura flowers along the path, we barely had an hour in the shrine. It is free to walk around the shrine but we need to pay around 500 yen to enter the garden which was full of tourists. If you ask me, the garden is nice but nothing to shout about comparatively to Philosopher's Path and Hirano Shrine. Maybe because it was full of tourists and we did not take much nice photos in there and there's a cost to get into the garden. But it's worth going in for the willow cherry trees and the almost mirror lake view. And while we were there, there was some event going on for school children.

It's quite easy to get to the shrine from the Philosopher's Path as we just walk along the path until the end and went through some housing area.