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We finally saw the aurora borealis that we dreamed of seeing!!

It was one of the things I wanted to see all my life, and I am lucky enough to have seen it at the age of 25! Woohoo. So what is aurora borealis??

According to Wikipedia ‘ It is the natural light display in the sky particularly in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere’

When we arrived in Iceland, it was raining for the first few days, and we thought, ok, you gotta be really lucky to see the northern lights. In fact, the sky has gotta be clear, no clouds, no rain, right month, right place, and the right time! And on our 4th day, we sense hope. There was no rain, clouds were clear, it was cold enough, and so we booked on the tour!

The bus drove us to the outskirts of iceland, an hour away from city centre, to a pitched black, flat land, and we waited patiently. At 10pm, we saw the lights slowly coming out in the sky, dissapearing, and reappearing. There is a reason why they also call it the dancing lights, because the shapes of the lights changes every few seconds.

It is the most beautiful natural phenomena Iv ever seen!!

So the 6 days holidays in Iceland, was one of the best holidays I have been to so far. Iv taken so many awesome pictures, now I need to frame them up or maybe get them printed on foulmouthshirts custom t-shirts to show off my iceland trip! Hehe.

Iceland is known as the Ice and Fire country, and that is so true, everywhere we went, it was either covered in Ashes from the past eruptions of the volcanoes, or Ice. It is truly different from other countries I visited.

Also, in Iceland you can get a chance to see Aurora Borealis, a.k.a the northern lights, and we were lucky enough to see it! The feeling when you see it is undescribable. You got to see this at least once in your life time!

The staple food for icelanders are mainly fish and lamb. It is because of their weather, and their soil, other meats have to be imported. So, if you are planning on eating Beef, or Chicken, be ready to pay a bomb for it!

So back to my holiday in Iceland, in the last 6 days in Iceland, all we had was fish, fish, and fish, occasionally we had Lamb. Oh not to forget, we also had the chance to try minke whale!!

Having said that, there are a huge variety of fishes available, and most of them are caught fresh from the sea daily. We had so much fish in the last few days that I think, Iv had enough for the entire year! Lol.

If you are not a fish eater, you can still have lamb, or pay a higher price for others. Their icelandic hotdogs are delicious too! It comes with fried onions, raw onions, and sauces of your choice, and its yum!!

Hey ho! We are finally in Iceland!

We got on a taxi, and went straight to our accomodation, we really looked forward to see it, this place has great reviews on trip advisor, so we wonder whether it will live up to our expectations. When we saw the place, oh boy, we were really impressed! 

Don’t you think its really creative?? I think the owner/designer is really smart. However, one down side is, the bathroom has a transparent sliding door!!! Lols. We had to improvise and find a way to cover it. Fun times.

Since my family came over for 2 weeks, I manage to take some time off to visit a few places, and here are some of the best shots taken on nice sunny days ~ Enjoy…

I finally visited Dartmoor this time with my family.

Dartmoor is a famous national park in Devon, that is a must visit if you love nature ~ animals, tors, rivers etc.

I stayed here for almost 2 years, and I never visited this place, mainly because it is not easy to get to without a car. I took advantage of my dad when he was here, to drive us to Haytor for a day. We managed to see a handfull of ponies, each of them stood closely to their mothers, we also saw cows and sheeps and goats all along Haytor.

The only dissapointed was we did not see all the places as planned, as we started our journey late, I hope to visit clapper bridge and the river dart next time around!

FInally back from our 3 days visit to Dorset ~ Bournemouth, Poole, Weymouth, Portland, Wareham.

Weather on 1st 2 days were horrible, wet, windy and cold. So on the 1st day, we did some shopping indoor, looked for netbook computers for my cousin, and also looked at iphone 4 for myself!! 2nd day we went visiting all the places mentioned eventhough it was tipping it down.

3rd day was a good day, but it was the day we were heading back to Torquay! Urgh. How I hate British weather. So unpredictable, especially in summer? It’s insane..

Anyway, despite the weather, we still had a great time, and managed to see a few great attractions ~ The Blue pool, Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door, Corfe Castle, and also went to see the place where Sailing for olympics is gonna take place in Portland.

We also went to The famous Crab House Cafe for the 2nd time!! Muahaha ~ Yums..

Since my family came over, I had to take some of my annual leave to join them for travelling. But there is only so many days I can take!! So I had to miss out on some trips, and one of them is the trip to bath and bristol.

I did not bother about bath since I lived there for 4 years, but I wanted to visit the suspension bridge in Bristol, and visit cheddar gorge and see the white horse in westbury! Urgh, how frustrating.

All I got was some photos taken by my sister. I guess I will have to organize another trip with my friends instead… What a shame eh. Have you been to those places mentioned?

I can’t believe I havn’t actually been to Malacca before when I was younger! It was my 1st trip there when I went back for holidays few weeks back *Shameful* 

So a friend of ours drove there, we stopped by at seremban for breakfast then carried on the journey, it took us about 2 hours to get there. Malacca is really hot, much hotter compared to KL, so be sure to apply sunblock!!

Malacca is also famous for their food especially their chicken rice balls, baba and nyonya assam laksa and the satay celup – Capitol in particular. Others worth mentioning are the freshly made pineapple tarts and durian puffs (craving now as I write T.T) ~ Yum!

When you go to Malacca, you can’t miss their night market at Jonker Street, it is really lively and they do sell a variety of food, fashion, crafty stuff, and also odd things like utility knives too! There are several pubs and night cafes along the streets as well. But be sure to visit only during the weekends, friday saturday and sunday from 6pm till late midnight, other nights are just dead.

If you can’t stand the heat, there is a mall in the centre of Malacca called the Pahlawan mall, you can just stay indoor with air cond, and pamper yourself with a cup of tea and a slice of Mille Crepe Cake at Nadeja cafe, the cakes are actually made from many layers of crepe with  huge variety of flavours that you can choose from. Do check out my individual post on my food blog.

Overall I’d stay 2 full days would be sufficient to have a taste of Malacca.

So when I was back in Malaysia for 3 weeks, my family and I visited Malaysia’s food heaven – Penang Island. We managed to book rooms at Park Royal hotel, for 50% (a promotion they were doing at that moment) so instead of Rm900+, we only paid Rm 400+ a room, a standard sized room, with a king sized bed that could fit 3 people, the bed was really comfortable and firm, good enough for the bad backs, talking about that, a good bed is as important as taking calcium supplements.

The bathroom was pretty clean too, air cond was very powerful, ok for the young ones, but too cold for the elderly despite adjusting it to 28 degrees! Oh and we didn’t get a seaview room, because it isn’t worth paying another few hundred just for that, after all we spent most of our time by the pool, and on the beach! The weather was good when we visited, slightly windy, so it was just right for parasailing, and some water sports!

This hotel is located right smack in batu ferringhi tourist area, where a huge variety of restaurants and hawker food can be found, both western that caters to tourist from all over the world, or hawker food that is more suitable for the locals like ourselves. There is a night market just right in front of the hotel, all along ferringhi.