Tawau, London and Manchester - Part 2: London, touch down & day 2

The Departing

So after Kuala Lumpur, where mom have to go for her routine check up, we departed to London from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in the morning.  It took 12 hours to reach London Heathrow airport, and because London is 7 hours behind Malaysia, we arrived at 4pm on the same day.

In the train

My sister came to meet us at the airport, and we all went to the hotel by train.  It is my first time sitting in a train in London, and I must say that I'm totally confused with how the ticketing system work until the last day of my trip, which I'll share more later.

The train that we took is an express train that will terminate at the Paddington station in London.  After we arrived and put down our luggage in the hotel, we went out to find a place to have our dinner.

Paddington

Fish & Chip

Anoter fish dish

Paddington at night

Now, we found a restaurant nearby to have our dinner.  I have fish & chip for my dinner, while my sis have a fish dish as well, whereas mom would have the soup of the day.  After the dinner, we went back to our hotel to rest, for it is a long day for us all.

Along the way I managed to snap some shot of this place, and I was trying to see if I could spot any pancake shop, you know, Paddington Pancake House?  Yet, I could not see any of that.


The Next D

After the morning breakfast, I went to visit London all by myself, while sis and mom would stay in the hotel to rest.  At first I thought of getting the hop-on-hop-off bus ticket for the sight seeing tour, but then I decided to walk instead with only a simple map & without GPS (I'm still living in the stone age, i-phone less and android-less & smart-less).

The first place that I went to is the Kengsinton Garden.  I was entering from the north, which is where the Italian Garden is located.  It's a nice place to walk around and to enjoy the nature.  There's a lot of things in the park itself.

Kengsinton Park - Italian Garden

Statue in the Italian Garden

Duckling in the Italian Garden

Kengsinton Garden

Kengsinton Garden

Another statue in Kengsinton Garden

Kengsinton Garden

There are monuments and statues in the garden itself, with some dedicated to Princess Diana (or mostly).  This is a place where people would come to take a walk, to jog, or to play with their pet.  As for cycling, it's quite restrictive here as some section of the park would disallow that.  There are stalls in the park that would sell drinks and snacks as well.

As I walked further, I arrived at the Albert Memorial and also the Albert Hall.  This place is further down south of Kengsinton Garden.

Albert Memorial

Albert Hall

Now, I have no idea who's Albert is, so please find on the Internet if you're interested to know.  I was very intrigued because the memorial and the hall are very nice to look at, particularly those small little details and the shape of the building itself.  I didn't go into the Albert Hall because it was not open yet when I reached there.  So I decided to explore other places instead.

As I walked towards the center of London, I noticed that most of the building in London are pretty antique (for me) and nice, with some blend of modern facilities.  I decided to walk to The Original Tour information center located near the Trafalgar Square to buy my ticket for the sight seeing hop-on-hop-off bus tour, but I got diverted from my objective along the way.  Reason was because I saw that Buckingham Palace was near by, so I decided to walk there instead.

I noticed that almost in every junctions, there will be a map that would let you know your current location, and also the nearby attractions as well.  This contributed to the reason why I got diverted from my main objective.

Memorial for the artillery soldiers

A gate, but I can't remember the name...

Police officers on horses

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

A sculpt statue (?) in front of Buckingham Palace

The guard from afar

There are a lot of things even walking along to Buckingham Palace, i.e. memorial statue to remember the soldiers that died fighting to protect the nation in World War II.  The further I walked, the more I realized that I'll need to stay in London for a longer time because there are just too many things to see.

While I was there in front of the Buckingham Palace, I could see a lot of people there.  At first I thought the British public sure have a lot of time to hang around there, but only noticed that most of them were tourists from other parts of Europe, oops.  I was not able to see the changing of guard because it was not scheduled on that day.

So next, I continued to walk down the road in front of the palace, which is also another path between the Green Park and the St James park.  There are a lot of gardens in London itself.  As I walk along the path, I came across some interesting place as well.

Buckingham Palace view from the opposite garden

Another guard

Another interesting building, but not sure what's the name

Group of horse guard/calvary

At the Household Calvary ground

Chest plate

Helmet

The horse guard in front of Household Calvary Museum

The Household Calvary

I was able to see a group of horse guard coming from behind, so I decided to follow to see what's going on.  They stopped at a ground where there's another group of horse guard lining up opposite the just arrived horse guard.  There was something going on there, but I decided instead to explore the building, and only found out that I was in front of the entrance to the Household Calvary Museum, so I decided to pay it a visit.

Although the museum section is small, but it's very informative and it has a lot of interesting info regarding the Calvary, i.e. the significant meaning behind the color of the stick, and also part of the uniform of the guard, i.e. the helmet, where visitors could have a try and to snap picture.

As I exited the museum and the Household Calvary building, I was not far away from the Trafalgar Square, so I've finally reached the place where I supposed to go first.  It took me a while to find the information centre, and after I purchased the ticket with a discounted price, I went to the point where the sight seeing bus tour would stop.

Trafalgar Square

I hopped off the bus at the St. Paul's Cathedral because that's the other place where I would like to visit.  St. Paul's Cathedral is a big church, where not only it is still a place for worship, but it's also open for public visit.  They do charge for entrance fee though.

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

The interesting thing to see in St Paul's Cathedral is the significant meaning of the building itself.  There are a lot of meanings in every structure inside the building, i.e. the meaning of the pictures above the ceiling, the reason for the internal layout, and the meaning of the arrangement of certain structures.  It is not allowed to take pictures inside the cathedral.

Next, I decided to hop on again to my next destination, the Tower Bridge (which many would mistaken it as the London Bridge).  I hopped off at the Tower Bridge stop, and took a walk at the surrounding area before going inside the Tower Bridge, which will require another entrance fee as well.

Around the area, one could see a very tall building called The Shard.  It is the tallest building in Europe.  It has some quite interesting fact about it.  If look carefully, there is a crane on top of the building,  which is purposely put there for a reason.

Around Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

View around Tower Bridge

View around Tower Bridge - The Shard

The Shard

Tower Bridge

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

As I walk along the river side, I managed to see the Tower Bridge to lift up the gate to give way for the boat.  Almost everyone around that area packed up the riverside just to snap the picture, and I'm one of them.

The Tower Bridge Exhibition Centre is opened for public to not only go up to the walkway of the bridge to have a nice view of London, but it has pictures of different bridges in the world with information of the structure of the bridge, and also information on why & how the Tower Bridge was built.  The best part is that the engine room of the bridge is also part of the exhibition as well.

Tower Bridge engine room

Tower Bridge engine room

Tower Bridge engine room

Tower Bridge engine room

Tower Bridge engine room

Inside the engine room, visitors will be able to see the engines and mechanism on how the bridge is lifted.  There's even some models that visitors could play with to understand how the mechanism work, which is brilliant.

After the Tower Bridge, my last stop is the Tower of London, where the crown jewels are located.  Although it is called the Tower of London, in actual fact it looks like a castle.

Tower of London

A tour guide in Tower of London

White Tower inside Tower of London

Armory on display inside Tower of London

I was just in time to catch up with the scheduled guide tour.  The tour guide is an officer who not only work at that place, but also staying there.  There are a lot of information that I could gather from the guided tour, esp. the history of events related to the place, which mostly are very dark and sad.  Managed to visit the interesting place inside the Tower of London, i.e. the crown jewels and also the White Tower.  However, I was not able to snap much pictures partly because I was tired and partly because my camera was running out of power due to me snapping too much pictures in Tower Bridge.


The Thought - Part II

Well, I must say that I'm very fascinated on how much that London could offer for a tourist.  There are so many things to see which I wished that I could have more time to stay and take my time to visit the places.  In a nutshell, the tour in London is an exposure for me to understand "British Engineering" and also "British Sense of Humour".  If I'm going to pick my favourite place, I'd choose Tower Bridge because I will never get bored with that place.


The Entrance Fee

Most of the places that I mentioned above would require entrance fee, which can be quite costly for foreigners like me.  However, there is another alternative, which is to purchase a London Pass that would give you access to most of the major attraction in London, which would save up quite a lot of money if you happened to visit a lot of them within a day.  The one that I had is a one day London Pass.  For more information, just search it on the Internet.

Tawau, London and Manchester - Part 1: Tawau

 After my longest holiday trip in 2007, I've finally have another chance to go on a holiday courtesy of my family.  This time, the journey will begin at my home town, Tawau, Sabah.  I won't be explaining so much about Tawau in detail as the related information can be found on the Internet; instead I'll be focusing more on food and some changes made since my last visit in 2010.  Now, don't expect too much from this write-up as I only spent 2 days 2 nights in Tawau.


The Place

And it shall begin from this place, where my family shops are located.  That orange color building is where the Hokkien Association is located.  The buildings are newly painted.

Further down the road is a building by itself, where the cinema is located.  It used to be called Empire Cinema, and it used to be closed for business.  It has been reopened for business few years ago.  It is also the place where the first KFC in Tawau is located.  In the past there used to be a lot of cinemas in Tawau, but they are slowly out of business, to the point where there are no cinema at all.

Now, speaking about the bus stop, it now has a shade and much more systematic (I guess).  There was no shade and not even the concrete pavement with parking marks last time.

The other side of the street is still the same.  Near the end of the shop lot (right side of the picture) is a shop that sells nice ABC (Ais/Air Batu Campur).

There are also shops that may look like in the picture above, separated between each other by a huge gap.  It used to be a row of shops, but because of a fire accident, some of the shops are burnt down, resulting in the later development of that place in such a shape.  The burnt shop location will look like the second picture above.


The Food

As for food, I've been craving for the wor-tip (a type of fried dumpling), the wet fried noodle, the raw fish slices, and a lot of other foods that I can't find in Kuala Lumpur.  So food is definitely one of the agenda when I was there.

Firstly, the wor-tip.  Not to say that wor-tip cannot be found in Kuala Lumpur, but just that I couldn't find a good one, and most of them would be sold in the form of snack like the dim-sum, i.e. RM 4.50 for 3 pieces only.  In comparison, the wor-tip in Tawau is much bigger, much meatier, and can be ordered in as much as you like, i.e. 5 pieces, 10 pieces or 15 pieces.  In average it is sold at RM 0.70 per piece.  It used to be only RM 0.40 per piece.  I usually have it for my supper during secondary school years, and every time my minimum consumption would be 15 pieces.

Then there's the wet fried noodle.  It looks like the Cantonese style fried noodle but it's actually not.  It is not possible to find this dish in Kuala Lumpur.  My secondary school teacher from Kuala Lumpur used to tell me that the first time she ordered the fried noodle, she didn't expect the noodle to be fried like this.  But since then, she loves this dish more than the one that she usually eat in Kuala Lumpur.

This is also the wet fried noodle.  However the difference is that the noodle is made by the cook.  In Tawau, most of the time the noodle used for the fried noodle dish is made by the cook themselves.  Fried noodle like this one or the one mentioned before is considered as a common dish in Tawau, just like how char kue tiaw is a common dish in Penang.

There are 2 types of fried dishes in Tawau, the wet fried or the dry fried.  The wet fried is the mentioned above, whereas the dry fried is the type that's similar to the fried dishes in Kuala Lumpur.  Both can be done for either noodle, bihoon/mihun, or kuey tiaw.

As for dessert, this is what I ate, ABC (Ais Batu Campur or Air Batu Campur), literally means ice blended (not the Starbucks type of drink).  The ingredient is usually chendol (the green jelly), jelly, black herbal jelly, red bean paste, and sometime sweet corn.  The one shown on the picture above is from the shop that I mentioned earlier, which made the best ABC because the ingredient esp. the chendol is freshly made everyday.  Sometime the shop won't serve the chendol if the owner do not make it that time.

This is what I have for supper, a plate of raw slices of fish meat.  In Chinese it is called Yu Sheng.  It is similar to the Yu Sheng that people would eat during Chinese New Year celebration, except that this one is served with only the meat.  It is not hard to find seafood here in Tawau, therefore it is a common sight to see such a dish being served in restaurants and hawker stalls.

Lastly this is a dish that made by my mother.  It is green pancake roll filled with brown colored sweet ingredient, which is made from brown sugar & some coconut shreds (I don't really know the term well).  I have this for my breakfast before my departure back to KL.


The Thought

It is great that I'm able to visit Tawau not during the festive season, esp. Chinese New Year because most of the shops would close for nearly a week.  There are some developments being done to Tawau, i.e. more street lights being installed to the road leading towards the outskirt, and some new commercial and residential area as well, and a sport stadium.

There's even a McDonald now in Tawau.  My sister told me that there was a long queue in the drive-in section because it was something new to the people in Tawau who have never seen a drive-in.

In the mid of the development though, I do hope that the uniqueness of Tawau would not fade away.  It might be cool to bring in new elements i.e. Starbucks into Tawau, which is a common thing in other parts of Malaysia, it would be great if the uniqueness of Tawau is preserved because that's the thing that would attract people to come.

San Jose - Great America Theme Park

On Saturday last week, I went to visit this theme park located near Down Town San Jose. This is one of the famous theme park in California. It has almost like 5 roller coasters, which all are different in terms of the seat and track: hanging in the air with your feet dangling in the air, standing, seating, a reverse track, and a very old wooden track. I couldn't take much pictures because my camera phone is short of power.

Here's some pictures of the front side of the theme park and the merchandise shop.




Then, together with my colleague from Malaysia, we tried this Extreme SkyFlyer stunt. Basically, one will have to wear the safety gear as shown in the following pictures.




Then, we will be guided to a platform where we will be hung to a rope. Then, we will be pulled to a higher point like shown in the following picture, which is about 10 stories high.



After that, we will be signaled to release the lock, then we will swing down at the speed of M X G (Mass X Gravity Acceleration). Here's some pictures of us hanging up there.