8D7N Trip to Coron - Day 1: Coron Town

Same time last year, hubs and I was at Coron, a small fishing village that can be found on the southeast of the Busuanga Island. The island are part of the Calamian Group of Islands in northern Palawan, the Phillipines. Made famous by the local Phillipines rather than outsiders, Coron main industries are fishing and tourism, mainly for its beautiful aquatic views and popular diving locations of sunken Japanese warships which makes Coron Island listed in Forbes Traveler Magazine’s top 10 best scuba diving sites in the world.

The whole trip was initiated when we saw pictures from a friend's friend, who has just return from the trip. Seeing all the amazing photos and being a sucker for beautiful island with crystal clear water, we just have to set our foots there to experience it all ourselves. With that, the whole planning started!

With a little headstart information from the friend's friend, the whole planning was pretty much hassle-free and along with the most powerful source: Internet browsing and a Lonely Planet chapter of Palawan, we managed to get our trip planned out easily.

Our journey started from Penang-LCCT with Air Asia, then on Cebu Pacific Air from LCCT-Manila-Coron. It was a painstaking journey with so many hours wasted on transit, yet all those went away by the time we reached Coron. We touched down at Busuanga Airport and the only transport to Coron town is by van for the price of PHP150 per person per way. As we did not pre-book any accomodation for our night stay, the first thing we did upon reaching Coron town was to hunt for one. First stop was Krystal Lodge, to check on any available rooms as well as the price. To our surprise, we fell in love with the place. We took Cottage #11, the furthest and largest cottage standing above the sea with a great bargain for 5 nights.

After a little unpacking and rest, out we went to explore the small peaceful little town on rented motorcycle. The day ended with sampling of local foods from the streets, exploring night market and dinner at Kawayanan Grill which we ordered Danggit Fish that cames with yummy seagrapes seaweed, Pork Belly Sisig, Seafood Sisig and Lobsters: all those for PHP1335 (~RM100).

Flying with Cebu Pacific Air

 Busuanga Airport

 Krystal Lodge #11

 Krystal Lodge #11 - an area to our own for the magnificient view

 Magnificient view of Coron from our cottage

 A tour around Coron town

Busy little town

Street foods

 More street foods

 Our favourite dinner place

Failed Once Again...

I have failed once again to maintain this blog. This round my record of inactivity: 15 months (something that I'm not proud of).

Work has been weighing me down over the past one year. With 10 to 12 hours of work daily, all I wanted was to do NOTHING at the end of the day. A total shutdown and simply be a couch potato. Well, now that I have switched to another job role, I hope things will get slightly better and I will have the time for blogging again *smirk*.

Getting away and exploring new places was one of the activity that relaxes me. So being busy does not stop hubs and I from completing our annual travel trips. Of the few places that we went over the past one year, one destination captured my heart. Coron, Phillipines: a place that is so magnificient that I intentionally left my heart there. *smile*

I'll try to capture all the great experiences in my next post on Coron, Phillipines.

Penang: Hidden Gem

I love Penang; that is something that I will not deny. Penang has great foods and I love good tasty foods. Penang has a handful of shopping complexes, which is good enough for an average spender like me. Penang has beaches surrounding it, though the water is not the crystal clear type that I would love to have. Penang is a metropolitan with a million over population yet Penang still have its greens with plenty of hiking trails for one to get away from the bustling city.

Recently, hubs and I went on to a new hiking trail at Sungai Ara area. We walked the scenic trail for at least 1.5 hours before we stumble upon this hidden gem. The place is still partially under construction; the swimming pool is in completion soon. I wonder whether this place will turned out to be a hidden getaways place for rentals.

Another trip to UK: Visit to Cardiff, Wales

The busy week quickly went by and obvious enough, I was looking forward to my extended trip to visit Cardiff, Wales. I left for Cardiff early Saturday morning for an overnight trip before I was due back to home on Sunday night.

I didn’t do much really. The trip was more of slow and easy after the long busy week. My first stop was Cardiff Castle located right in the middle of Cardiff Central and just walking distance from the hotel I stayed. I got myself a guided tour ticket for some background history of the castle. The interior was not really what I was expecting for a castle. Everything looked too ‘new’ from the paint to sculptures, but perhaps the place was really well taken care of. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the brief history from our lady guide. I took another an hour or so to explore the surrounding area of the castle before I head on to next destination – Cardiff Market, a Victorian indoor market which offers variety of fresh produce, cooked food, various delicacies and durable goods. Then I went on to Mermaids Quay, just 20 minutes walk from city center for a glimpse of the Harbor with sunset view. The place was crowded with most people celebrating for whatever occasion they are celebrating on. I sat by one ice-cream shop enjoying the view of the Harbor. Despite the busy crowds around, somehow I enjoyed my own peaceful evening along with a scoop of Rum & Raisins ice-cream on a chilly evening.

Clock tower

The wall surrounding Cardiff Castle

Sunny day in Cardiff

Cardiff Castle

The Norman Keep

Stalls at Cardiff Market

Mermaid's Quay

Cardiff Bay

Merry-Go-Round

Pierhead Building

 Wales Millenium Center, an art center

Wales Millenium Center - an artistic structure

A companion

Next morning came easily as I practically slept through the night till almost 10 in the morning. Thank goodness I packed my luggage before I went on to bed previous night. It was my last day in this stranger city. My train is scheduled to leave Cardiff at 4 o’clock in the evening to London Paddington then to Heathrow Airport for 10 o’clock night flight home. So, I still have plenty of time for some final stroll and shopping too.

Every Sunday morning from 10am to 2pm, farmers, butchers and cheese makers gathered together in the shadow of the Millennium Stadium for the Riverside Farmers’ Market by the River Taff. I figured this is something I would not want to miss, especially when I wanted to bring some fresh cheese home. I tried on a fresh baked Blueberries Broche for only £1 and yummy! As I savor on the yummy treat, I took a stroll along Bute Park that is now filled with colorful tulips. A look at my watch, I realized I had to move on. I went for a little souvenir shopping then stopped at Jamie’s Italian for lunch. Time finally chased up. I had to leave for home, sad but eager to reunite back with my loved ones at home. Well, the unfortunate occurred though *smile*

Bute Park - mini stonehenge with Cardiff Castel at the backdrop

Bute Park

Coffee in the park

Bright colored tulips

Aren't them all pretty?

Another Trip to UK: A disastrous one

I returned to the same place I was same time last year. Although I knew this week long trip will be pretty hectic in schedule, but never crossed my mind that this was my worst experience ever!

It was a rough start. When the flight from home were cancelled and moved to the next available flight, this had caused the connecting flight to London to depart, sadly without me. The first point of disappointment when I was told that upon arrival to Kuala Lumpur, a staff will be available immediately to assist. Sadly, no one was there waiting. Worst when it took the airline staff 2 hours to get things sorted out and finally arranged my transfer for night lodging and booked me to the next morning flight. The nearest hotel they got me on was an hour away from KLIA as all nearby hotels were fully booked, no thanks to F1 race. I only managed to get some 3-hours sleep but still pleased to board the plane and practically slept the whole journey through. I was glad to arrived London although much later that I should be if the first flight would have waited for me.

Journey home was worst. I missed the flight home! I was at Cardiff for the weekend. The first train I boarded from Cardiff was cancelled after an hour due to a technical issue. When the next train arrived, we were told to get on that train but to our unfortunate, even this train was stuck for an hour due to the signaling damage caused by vandalism. Just when I wanted to get off for a taxi, the train attendant announced that the train will depart within the next 10 minutes. True enough, the train moved but not for long though. It just stopped middle of nowhere waiting for the signaling to continue. An hour in the middle of nowhere with no other way for any passenger to get in or even out, gosh we are practically all trapped! Resulted of that, my original 4.15pm train finally reached Paddington station 30 minutes before my flight, which obvious enough I will never make it for the flight. Still I took my chances and hop on Heathrow Express which cost me GBP 18, but that does not help much anymore. I was way too late for the flight. A normal 2.5 hours journey from Cardiff to Paddington now took me 5 hours had cost me a bomb - miss of flight, a night spent in the Airport, a new ticket back home (which thankfully the airline allowed for a ticket re-issue and only charged me for GBP45 as penalty, pheewwww!) and late for work! Boy, what an awful experience (lesson).

Albeit the rough journeys, everything else was lovely. The weather was perfect, greens are sprouting, flowers of all sorts were in full blooms and the people here are friendly as always.

 

*next post on trip to Cardiff

Jalan-Jalan Cari Makan Trip: Ipoh

This was a long overdue post of one of our makan (eating) trip to Ipoh. Both hubby and I went down to Ipoh for a 2D1N trip mainly to purchase one of the home decoration for our home but a trip would not be complete without savoring good F-O-O-D wouldn't it? 

So we did what we know best....hunt for something special to eat! Guess what we had in that two very days?

It started with dinner as we arrived Ipoh pretty late, so we went for a little early dinner at Kedai Makanan Rasa Lain in Bercham. We ordered their home-made fish balls, claypot crab tanghoon that is huge enough even for 4 pax and salted egg prawns. 

The Hall of Fame

 Claypot Crab with Tanghoon

 Claypot Crab with Tanghoon

 Salted Egg Prawns

 Home-made Fish Balls

 The aftermath

Breakfast of the following day would be none of other than timsum at Foh San Dim Sum Ipoh. These are just some of the many dishes we had and also not forgetting to try on the special Double Layer Milk dessert and Mango Pudding.

We left back home slightly after lunch hours. As we are still full from the heavy breakfast, we stopped by at JJ-Cakes for some yummy swiss rolls to go.

On the way home, we en-route to Serdang to try on Fried Porridge at Sin Aik Kee Restaurant. We were a little too early when we arrived. The shop has just start to prepare so we took a stroll around the lake.

 

Just when the shop opened for business, we were those first few tables already having our dinner. We ordered the fried Porridge of course. But those who knew us well would know that a single dish would never be enough for us, so we add on 2 more side dish - Kerabu Mango and Cockles.

Fried Porridge

 Cockles

 Kerabu Mango

And that's the end of our Makan Trip!!

 Beautiful Sunset to accompany home