The Tip of Borneo...

This is the Tip of Borneo, located at the Northernmost tip of Sabah. Apparently, the local government didn't know about this place until fairly recently.

And when they realised the enormous potential financial gains from an remote, untouched, tourist spot, they decided to build some sort of monument and to erect a flag to remind people that this is, in fact, Malaysia.

And this ball-shaped thing here is the Nip of Borneo...

The thing is, the local government forgot to include shops, malls, hotels and other stuff to reap the benefits of such a tourist spot, which is GOOD!!! I hate it when you go to some nice holiday destination and end up being bugged to death by people selling glass paperweights with little crabs stuck inside them.

And here are a couple of tourists from the mainland, still charmed by the quaintness of it all.

And this here is the tip itself! Head north from here, and you'll end up in Taiwan or something...

And to spice things up a bit, there are a small collection of funky rock formations by the shoreline.

One thing nice about TTOB (The Tip of Borneo), is the really nice, empty beach next to it. So far, nobody's thought of corrupting the area with some tasteless beach resort. The water's really clean too - can use to brush your teeth!!!

Wanton acts of violence...
Adrian: "Kick!"

Michelle: "Aaargh!"

Yes, this is the Tip of Borneo. Visit it now. It's a 3-hour drive from Kota Kinabalu but I'm sure that any Sabahan with a 4x4 (i.e. all of them) would know how to get there - and would happily drive you there too!

Sabahans are nice.

Belum Temenggor National Park

Holy Cow...


Didn't realise how busy I've been - haven't updated this blog for over half a month! And to make matters worse, I've not even finished uploading all my Japan trip photos and I've already gone on another two.

This is the first one.

It was a trip organised by Sony Malaysia, Click! magazine, the Malaysia Nature Society and the education ministry. I won't go into details, but let's just say it's a rare opportunity.

Temengggor Lake

Temenggor Lake is an artificial lake created after the Temenggor dam was erected in the late 1970's, flooding the area with water from various rivers in Perak. This resulted in a huge lake that's over 100km square, over a hundred tiny 'new' islands, the destruction of countless flora (such as the raffelsia) and the displacement of people and animals.

An ex-tree poking out of the water.

The good news, though, is that the whole area is now a protected forest reserve. Which is good because there are a countless number of animal and plant species - some of which are native only to Temenggor forest. Such as one particular species of Malayan tiger, of which the exact name has eluded me.

There are an estimated 600 tigers left in peninsular Malaysia, compared to over 3,000 in the 1950s. With conservation efforts in place, it is hoped that the Malayan Tiger population will grow.

Me and Calvin Goh directly above the former Kampung Temenggor. (Pic courtesy of Mr. Allan from Click!)

The local guides claim that you can take a dive into the lake and see the old buildings - mosques, houses and schools - of Temenggor village, one of the villages and settlements that were flooded by the lake.

Of particular interest are the Orang Asli (natives) in the area, who had to adapt to island life all of the sudden.

Me at a Temiang Orang Asli settlement

The Orang Asli here are of the Temiang race. I don't know much about them, other than the fact that they didn't seem very pleased to see us - mostly because we forgot to bring gifts.

It's not that they're materialistic or anything - rather, it's a custom to bring gifts when visiting someone. So yes, we were being rather rude, which prompted some people in the group to sacrifice boxes of cigarettes, sweets and some money.

Middle-aged orang asli woman

The Orang Asli have really beautiful facial features, even with age.

Tough-looking hunter taking a break from polishing his blowpipe. Ok... that sounds wrong

If this dude looks strong, it's because he is. He claims to habitually hunt all manner of wildlife for food and he can hit a target over 240 feet away with his blowpipe. So no, he's not the sort of person you'd want to piss off. Ever.

The wall of an orang asli house. It's made of something.

View of the islands from the lake. That's haze, by the way...


The trip to the settlement was part of a tour of the lake, which offered a fantastic view. Malaysia is truly one of the most beautiful countries in the world - it's a shame most of us don't bother looking.


Pulau Pendidikan - a fairly long drop if you miss a step. The living quarters are at the top of this cliff.


We stayed at one of the many islands - Pulau Pendidikan. It's basically a facility made by the government to conduct talks and to educate the public on wildlife conservation. Nothing much to shout about, although the cook is fantastic - he makes some of the best grilled fish and mutton I've ever tasted!

Sunset at the jetty

The view here is fantastic, although the sunset on the day before was even better - looking just like the rising sun of Japan. Problem is, I missed it - walked down to the jetty without my camera. It would've taken 5 minutes to hike up the hill again, retrieve my camera and get back down, and the sunset would've been over by then. At least I saw it with my own eyes, which is the whole point, really... :)

Jungle ants/termites carrying bits of wood/stones to some other location. No, I haven't got a clue what they're doing.

While Temenggor is literally packed with all manner of exotic wildlife, Pulau Pendidikan itself is relatively fauna free. It's a small island, so there's no way an elephant or tiger would survive, although there are flying foxes, gibbons and ants.

Dead photographers: buoyant

Generally, I had a great time - thanks to the fantastic company of the Click! guys. It's always nice to spend some time with like-minded people who share a common hobby.

For more information about Belum Temenggor:

Link to Belum Tours

This is Japan... again (Part 2)

Woke up really early one morning to go to Tsukiji fish market. Now, this was a rather big thing for me because I've been thwarted on the past couple of attempts to get there. The first time, it was raining. And on the second time, it was ALSO raining AND I didn't have enough sleep.

Anyway, I finally made it!

Tsukiji fish market, from the outside.

If you're wondering what all the excitement's about, Tsukiji fish market is one of the biggest in the world, with deep-sea trawlers coming in as early as 3am. By 5am, it's jam packed with housewifes and restaurant owners bidding on fresh tuna and other seafood.


Unfortunately, I only got there about 6:30am. By then, it was a lot calmer.

A little quiet...

The sheer variety and amount of seafood here is fantastic. But the stars of the show are the huge frozen tuna, unloaded fresh from the trawlers. I always knew that tuna were big, but I never expected them to be dolphin sized.

HUGE!

Of course, the REAL reason why I was at Tsukiji was because it had the freshest sushi in the whole of Tokyo. And it was about time for breakfast. My travel book recommended this place called Sushi Dai.

That's it - the one with the green sign and a queue of people

I had to wait about 20 minutes to get in. It's a really small restaurant - only enough room for about 12 people or so. However, it was definitely worth the wait :)

Tiny...


They've got a relatively small menu. I chose the "middle sized" set, which was awesome.

The dude who made my breakfast!

I'm lost for words in describing how fantastic the sushi was. It was SOOOO fresh, I could probably eat a bucket of it and not be sick. The way the fresh tuna and other strange looking squirmy things tantalise your tastebuds is priceless.

Well, actuall it costs 3000yen (approx. RM90), but it's worth every bloody yen. Mmmm...

Maybe I'll post some more sushi pics later... ^_^

This is Japan... again

Been back for about a week now but have been too busy at work to write anything.

Basically, Tokyo was a blast. Not that a great deal happened but it was nice being able to wander around and do whatever I wanted without worrying too much about time.

I stayed at this wonderful ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) called Ryokan Shigetsu, located at the quaint district of Asakusa in Tokyo. The rooms cost only about 250 Ringgit a night (single room) with an attached bath, nice tatami mat floors and a fluffy futon to sleep on. I forgot to take pictures of the outside but this is what my room looked like:



The ryokan even has a public bath with a nice view of the nearby pagoda (see the website!!!). Unfortunately, the water was WAAAAAY too hot - just five seconds in it and I was starting to doubt my ability to procreate after.

Considering that it was the middle of summer (temperatures reaching 32 degrees Celsius, with high humidity), it was a little pointless to have a boiling hot bath anyway.

There are actually two public bathrooms - a bigger one with huge windows that give you a view of the city (the baths are on the 6th floor) and a small one with only a small slit near the ceiling.

But what's rather dodgy is that people in the neighbouring tall buildings can actually look right into the larger bathroom at night.

Which is why the Ryokan swaps the male and female baths, so that the girls get the bigger bath in the morning (with a nice view) while they get the smaller, more private one at night.

The problem, of course, was that when I walked into the big bathroom one morning (which had been a 'male' one the night before), I hadn't realised that they swapped the male/female signs at the doors (wasn't wearing my glasses). Thank God no women decided to have early morning baths that morning... -_-" (free show!)

I highly recommend this Ryokan, especially for the whole Japaneseness of it. It's also really convenient, being only a 3 minute walk from the Asakusa Tokyo Metro station.

They also serve darn good breakfast in the morning, although you have to order it the night before (it's about 30 Ringgit). The other problem is that all the rooms are cleaned between 10am and 3pm, which means that you have to vacate your room.

The ryokan is located right next to the Asakusa Kannon Temple and the shopping district.

This is the famous giant lantern at the entrance to the shopping district. It's normally crowded but I took this shot at 5:30am.



The shopping district itself is full of stores selling souvenirs, food and traditional Japanese stuff like fans, kimonos, tea sets, swords, etc. It also stretches across into the neighbourhood, with a huge collection of restaurants and other souvenir shops. Oddly enough, I ended up eating at McDonalds here pretty often (it's cheaper than most restaurants here).

Asakusa is perhaps the closest link to olden Tokyo, with old aunties (and the occasional young woman) trotting around in their latest summer kimonos.


Compared to the rest of Tokyo, Asakusa is a relatively nice, quiet place. Almost like a small town. This photo's actually been altered - the sky is untouched, but i increased the brightness of the foreground for a better look.

During my stay, I had to pay a visit to the neighbourhood coin laundry (the Ryokan didn't offer such a service). Summer was so hot that I had gone through all of my shirts halfway through the trip (I sweat. A lot). Had the opportunity to mingle with some old uncles and aunties, which was great fun. Really.


In fact, the only problem with Asakusa is that everything closes so darn early. By 7pm, half of the stores in the shopping district have closed. By 9pm, it's a ghost town.

Nice place to stay, though. I'll be back with more pics and updates!

This is Japan...

Ah, Tokyo. Unlike my previous trip to Japan, I actually had a day to walk around on my own this time.

Basically I visited a shrine, went shopping for camera stuff at Shinjuku, ate some cheap udon, returned to the hotel, went to another shrine, went back to Shinjuku for more shopping and ate more cheap udon (at the same restaurant, no less).

Yes, it was a blast. Well, sort of. The problem was that it was raining every day I was there - and the sky was always white/dark gray, which meant it was hard to get some nice photographs. Plus, it's really hard holding an umbrella in the rain while trying to operate a Nikon D70.

Here are some pictures to tell the tale (in chronological order, of course).

This is the entrance to the Meiji Shrine

Started off the day at the Meiji Shrine with some Singaporean journalists. Unfortunately, I was the "tour guide" and got everyone to get off on the wrong station (which was about 5km away). Eventually we got to this gate (via taxi), which is about half a km to the shrine itself...

The long gravel pathways surrounding the Meiji shrine are covered by big, beautiful trees. It feels magical, especially since it was rather misty that day.

A Shinto priest at the Meiji shrine

The Meiji shrine is quite popular with tourists, as evident on these prayer blocks - notice the number of prayers in English.

Me standing in front of the Meiji shrine

After that, I said goodbye to the Singaporean journalists and PR lady (since they had to fly home early) and I headed for Shinjuku (otherwise known as "that place in Tokyo where you buy cameras... and Japanese porn")

I made it a point to find a whole bunch of camera accessories that I couldn't find in Malaysia. Not that they're expensive or anything - they're just not imported into the country. Plus, it's kinda like an RPG, wandering around the labyrinth of stores and alleys of Shinjuku looking for obscure stuff for my camera.

I tried this place first:
Bic Camera - a super huge electronics store in Shinjuku with shitloads of stuff. You can spend hours there. They even had MacBooks on sale the day after it was launched in the USA!

Note: And just to clear up some confusion, some major electronics chains in Japan tend to have names ending with the word 'Camera' even though they sell other stuff like PCs, videogames, toys, televisions, home appliances and so on.

Here, I got myself a new ultra-portable tripod (you can never have too many tripods...):
A Velbon P-Max. Weighs only 800g and costs about RM180 (40% off). It's small, but fairly stable and has Velbon's twist-locking telescopic feet.

I also got myself a Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version, but more on that later... ^_^

Unfortunately, the camera section in Bic Camera wasn't well stocked. Or rather, it's probably better stocked than all of the camera shops in Malaysia put together (they've even got equipment for developing your own film!). I mean, they had an entire BUCKET of Nikon DK-21m magnifying eyepieces for the Nikon D70 (something which took two months to arrive when ordered from Nikon Malaysia).

But they haven't got certain harder-to-get accessories, such as colour gels for my flash (if you don't know what a colour gel is, you probably don't need one).

For obscure stuff like that, I had to go here:
Yodobashi Camera!!!

Unlike Bic Camera (which is housed in a huge department store), the Shinjuku outlet of Yodobashi Camera is made up of several shoplots joined together, spanning entire blocks and going up about six storeys high. This is quite confusing as, when you're walking around the alleys, you'll see several stores marked "Yodobashi Camera' and all of them seem to sell the same stuff.

However, the building pictured here is their specialty camera 'section'. The first floor has mostly cheap pocket cameras, the second floor mostly DSLRs (and a huge array of lenses and - *yes!* - colour gels and filters), the third floor with expensive medium-format cameras and lighting equipment, the fourth floor just tripods and other accessories and the fifth floor is just for bags. I think there was another floor somewhere in the middle that specialises in film, but I can't remember... -_-

They sell really cool stuff here, such as a portable camouflaged tent that's tall enough to house a tripod, a camera, a big zoom lens and a photographer in it (it's meant for nature photography, apparently).

Here, I got some diffusers for my flash, the colour gels and some neat plastic-bag case that lets me use my D70 in the rain. Yodobashi Camera ROCKS! (Note, you might remember me mentioning something about the Osaka outlet during my previous visit to Japan).

After that, it was about 2:30pm and time for lunch:
Affordable niku udon (meat udon), with a little salmon onigiri (rice thingy)

And then, I had to rush back to the hotel to drop off my things and take orders for more Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version toys from certain people at home. (More on this later... ^_^):

Boarding the subway at Shinjuku station (O-Edo line)

And then, I went off to the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Yup, this is the one which honours some of Japan's WWII class-A war criminals.

The Yasukuni shrine - this is where the controversy is centered

The fallen samurai who guards the gates of Yasukuni. I think...

It's also the one that Japanese PM Koizumi's been visiting annually - much to the dismay of China, which is apparently still officially bitter about the Japanese invasion of World War 2 more than 60 years ago. On a rather ironic note, they seem to have officially forgotten about Tiananmen Square 1989.

Politics aside, the first thing you'll notice about Yasukuni is that there aren't any tourists there. There are no signs in English leading to the place either (you can walk right past it and not know what it is). There's a supposedly fantastic war museum next to the shrine but I missed it - it closed at 5:30pm and I had only arrived 10 minutes later.

More prayers at Yasukuni - notice that there aren't any English ones by tourists.

At the grounds of the shrine

Having had my fill of history and old wooden buildings, I headed back to Shinjuku to buy more Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG Version toys.

Shinjuku at night (from the bridge next to Bic Camera)

HG, of course, stands for "Hard Gay"

Razor Ramon Sumitani (aka Hard Gay)

We've been watching this guy's comedy show (subtitled) in the office recently. We like. A lot.

And this is a Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu HG version:
Note: The hat and sunglasses were purchased separately :)

If you're not entirely sure who Hard Gay is and why I'm so enamoured by some silly child's toy, take a look at the videos below.

Click on the links below for the Hard Gay TOMY videos:

Part 1 on YouTube

Part 2 on YouTube

FWOOOOoooo...!!!

After that, it was back to the hotel and into bed. After a nice hot bath, of course.

The view of Tokyo Tower from my hotel room

And that was my day out in Tokyo. Really wished I had more time. I like Tokyo. It's mad.