馬來西亞 神秘巨蛇 納布

在部落格之间溜走时，意外看见这个标题，身为大马公民，在这土地行走呼吸了24载，也在砂劳越待了要五年了，今天才知道，原来在砂劳越有个这么的一个当地传说，神秘巨蛇，纳布 (Nabau).

根据当地古老传说，当地曾经有种叫纳布的神秘巨蛇，长达30米，拥有龙状脑袋和7个鼻孔。最近，有洪水监控人员乘坐直飞机巡查婆罗洲勒河时，据称在空中拍摄到了一条正在河中游泳的30米巨蛇。

当然，这两张图引起一些在争执，争得无非就是这两张图的真实性，哈哈。不过就我看来，就合成的啦，照片很不自然呢。

当地居民却都坚称纳布是真的存在，因为两张照片都是在婆罗洲勒河不同地点拍到的，他们呢相信纳布回来了。

“本月初，古生物學家曾在哥倫比亞東北部發現了迄今已知最長巨蛇的化石，這種生活在5500萬年前的巨蛇身長在12.8米至13.7 米之間，相當于一輛公共汽車那麼長。這種巨蛇在恐龍滅絕後的1000萬年時間內曾稱雄南美洲熱帶叢林，並且是這一時期最大的陸地捕食者，它以捕食鱷魚和巨 龜為食，能一口吞下一頭母牛那麼大的動物。” 摘引《这里》

如果纳布是真实的，那么它可是比5500万年前的巨蛇至少还要长有一倍呢！

一条长达30米的巨蛇，光是想想就有毛骨悚然，更不用提到这蛇，是只有一条呢，还是两条呢，还是（数算中）。。。

相爱不到老

身边不乏一些令人感到惋惜的感情。
长达数载的感情，有时就是遗憾的以分手挂上句号。

是不是相爱的太早了呢？
十四五岁就发芽的爱情，
七八年后，青春正盛之时，
却发现，自己原本拥有的爱情，
正逐渐凋谢。

原本羡煞旁人的爱情，随着，
自己慢慢长大，
视野渐渐扩展，
悄悄的枯萎了。

爱情的全盛期，就是结婚最佳时机，
但是偏偏，过早开花的爱情，
在当事人刚踏出社会的那一刻开始，
早过了全盛期，慢慢的，
爱情，变成感情，
依赖，成了习惯。

最后，两个人达成协议，
和平分手，开始另一段爱情之旅。
不出两三年，却可以共成连理了。
因为时间，地点，人物，
天时地利人和，自然的就会步入人生第二阶段。

恋爱和婚姻不同，
恋爱需要爱情的养分，
婚姻不只需要爱情的养分，更需要感情的经营。

相爱能不能到老？
是真的需要一种缘分。

吳彤 羅憶詩 - 相愛不到老

September's Wedding

Last year, 4th of September, 2010, I was at JB with some of the Uni friends to attend a wedding ceremony.

This year, 4th of September, 2011, I was at Selangor, again, with some of the Uni friends, to attend another wedding ceremony.

We were at Selangor to witness the process where a boy turned into a man, to begin the second stage of his life. And he is Chiam Jia Wei, commonly known as Chiam among us who from Unimas. 

It was more than just a wedding ceremony to us who attended the wedding. We met Chiam's friends, all his groomsmen, and some of them were very nice to us. When we reached at Klang KTM train station on 3rd of September, two of Chiam's friends, Guo Sheng, and Zhi Xing came to pick us (me, waiyee, yilin and sweetnee) to the hotel. And due to that ride, the four of us got to know the two of them a little bit, compared to the rest of the groomsmen. Practically, they were our drivers, picking us from the station to hotel, then from hotel to Chiam's house. 

At the same night, we went to Chiam's house to join the family dinner fest before the wedding. There we met some of the members of the groomsmen, and there were supposed to be 9 of them, and 7 of them showed up. Surprisingly, 7 of the groomsmen were Chiam's friends since primary school. From the way they spoke to each others, we knew they were really close to each others. The other 2 were from Chiam's friends from Form 6. 

There was this guy, Steven, the leader of the groomsmen, he is incredible in human networking. He talked to us like we knew each other for a long time, but that was the first time we met. The first thing he said to me was, "I saw u before, from facebook", i was just smiling, and later i was seriously suspicious about that, haha. We were dying laughing when Chiam brought his colleague to our table, and Steven said, "Hi, it had been awhile, my name is Steven". We thought he knew Chiam colleague, even Chiam and his colleague himself wondered for a second, "if he/i knew him before". Turned out, that was their first met, but Steven is the kind of guy good with ice breaking, breaks the walls between two strangers instantly. But he also full with craps!!!

Go Go Go!!!

As u can see from the picture above, the theme for the groomsmen was t-shirt and short pant, with sport shoes. Actually, they were wearing t-shirt printed with ANGRY BIRD, ya, angry bird was their theme, kind of funny looking at them put the t-shirt on, hahaha. I will skipped all the games they deal with, for my own sake, in the future!

Chiam was busy with his wedding, and Steven took over the responsible of taking care of us. One thing he used to say the most when we were there, three days was, "No worry, I had perfectly arranged everything!". He knew we dont have any transport to follow the Grooms team to the bride's house on the second day, he immediately said we could drive his car, and follow the team at the back, and he wasnt just saying so, because i was driving his car following the team on the second day! 

Seriously, the four of us, were like the most precious guests, haha, like Steven said, he had arranged everything well and fine, and he was the one responsible of taking us during Chiam's wedding day, and day after that. 

During the dinner, I got to know another groomsman, Yong Tat, who is working as an associate relationship manager at RHB Premier Banking, investment, he told me, haha. We didnt talk during the morning and afternoon, but during that dinner, he was sitting just two seats next to me, and he was very quiet and alone if compared to rest of the groomsmen we met. As for me, the girls were talking to themselves, taking pictures, i was quiet and alone as well, so i made the first step, that's rare! Then he told me that he moved to Klang year 2000, and didnt really remain in touch with the geng, until one or two years ago. That's why we can feel a gap between him and the rest of the groomsmen, excludes Steven, he was close to Steven, compared to the rest, haha. But Steven closes to everyone, that's what he good with, haha.

Taking pictures become a must during any wedding dinner, that is what i found out all these years, haha. We stayed at the restaurant for almost an hour just to take pictures, chatting, after the dinner. Well, after the dinner, all of us will be going to our own position, and that might be the last chance to take pictures, chat in real person with these newly met friends for the four of us. But everything will come to an end eventually, when the curtain closes, we back to where we belong.

That wasnt just a wedding ceremony to us, but it was a new and old friends gathering, quoted from Waiyee, haha. 

Here by, I would like to thank the new friends who were being so kind to us when we were there for three days. Thank you.

And Chiam, happily ever after! And thanks for the invitation and u have a batch of good good friends!

The groomsmen with the lovely couple

We with the couple

Yong Tat(left) and Steven(right)

Chiam's Form 6 friends

Zhi Xing with his gf

me and Guo Sheng, i found out he looks so so so familiar to me!!! But still unable to think why so..

And here we come with the last big surprise!!! We found Stephanie Sun Yan Zi.

She is Chiam second sister! But she does look alike!

Lake Toba, Medan, 30/5-2/6 2011

During the Chinese New Year break, I had a little gathering with some of my best friends during secondary school. We were classmates since Form 3, year 2001.Well, PuiSee and I were good friends back then, I barely talked to Melisa nor ZhiFang, not until Form 4. Funny thing was, we were classmates ever since, from Form 3 - 5, then another two years spent on Form 6.

And if u know math, this year is the our first 10 years anniversary. So we thought of planning and going some where, to have little trip, among ourselves. Sadly to tell, we never been to a single trip before, even we know each other for 10 years now. Initially, PuiSee suggested to go Beijing, China, she said we got to visit to the China Great Wall, one of the seven wonders in the world once in our lifetime. ZhiFang and I both are easy going people, as long as it is a school holidays, (ZhiFang is a primary teacher) and as for me, a bit shame to say that, I am still a student, so I have the time. That's made it down to Melisa, the busiest person among us. And she was fine with it, so we set our trip on June school break.

We made the decision instantly, and we decided to go by very coming June, so guess what, we couldnt get a cheap flight to Beijing. So the plan changed, from Beijing, to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and u know what, we missed the promotion flight to Ho Chi Minh!!! Few days later, there was another promotion, and PuiSee and I decided to go to Medan, Indonesia. Seriously, I dont know there is a place called Medan until that day, haha. The other two were fine with the decision, as long as we able to get on the plane, and get ourselves out from Malaysia, haha.

I did some researches before going to Medan, well, I was forced to, because they let me in charge of the trip, planner! God I hate that so much. Need to come out with a budget control some more, that was a very hard time for me. And guess what was troubled me the most? I bought the wrong ticket from Kuching to KL, we were supposed to fly to Medan on morning of 30st May, but I bought the same day ticket, evening time, to fly from Kuching to KL. I am an idiot! That wasnt the worst, after knowing I purchased the wrong ticket, I checked with AirAsian again, luckily I was able to get RM25.00 ticket, excluded the taxes to KL on 25th of May, I thought I could go back home first then headed to KL later. And damn it, I forget I had a training to attend, from 22nd to 28th of May. Jezz, I felt like killing myself already, but what to do, I repurchased another ticket on 28th, night flight. Luckily I was still able to get a flight with RM 25.00, else...sigh

Medan isnt a very interesting location to me, but I found out there is one spot in Medan worth to travel to, the Lake Toba. I searched for the information, and Melisa also helped to send me some links. It isnt the place interested me, but the views, from the photos, wah, incredible nice!

I spent two nights at KL, then finally the four of us got on to the plane, started our first trip ever, woohoo....

Medan is actually only 1 hour distance from KL. Well, Medan airport, very much smaller compare to all the airports I had been to, but only restricted to local airport. haha. The first thing when we got out from the airport, wasnt taking pictures, but checking with the taxi service, we checked before, from Medan to Lake Toba, it takes 5 hours. So we dont want to waste the time, got ourselves a taxi, Toyota Avanza, costed us Rp 600k.

The traffic, a complete nightmare, trust me!

We stopped some where for our lunch. They served the lunch like a buffet style, but smaller and less variety. They served, and charged only those we ate. It was around Rp 50k. Well, if u like hot and spicy, then u gonna love the food in Medan.

We stopped and took few pictures before we reached the Parapat town to get a boat to the Samosir island which is surrounded by the Lake Toba. The weather was nice, bright sun but cold, because it is a highland i think. Once we approached the boat, always someone approached us to recommend himself as our tour guide, and we decided to go by our own, budget constraint. The boat fee is Rp 7k.

After around 1 hour spent on the boat, we finally reached the Samosir Island. There are a lot of cottages, and we booked a room with Samosir Cottage. We took the family room, 2 rooms, 2 king size begs, tv, fringe, bath room, no hot water because it was broken! Rp 350k per night. We chose Samosir Cottage because from the posts I read, people chose Samosir Island, but only for Malaysian. The rooms are big, but too bad the hot water supplier broken. It was so so so cold to take shower in cold water under such a weather.

After setting down all the luggage, we went for a walk, to see how's the people living there. But we were actually still in the tourist zone, so we saw lot of souvenir shops, restaurants, and cottages, but not many local people. By the way, the people living at Samosir Island is known as Batak, just like Iban and Bidayuh in Sarawak. So, the food in Lake Toba, non-halal. We were hungry, so we simply went into one small restaurant., Orari Restaurant. The food price around Rp 12k to Rp 20k per dish. 

Well, I forget what was the name of the food, but kind of obvious those were fried beehoon, fried noodles, then pork with homemade sauce, and the middle one, something like the pohpiah we used to eat in Malaysia.

Here stated the amount we spent for the first day, roughly, I lost the bill i kept, sweat

Taxi - 600k

Lunch - 52k

Boat - 28k (7k pp)

Cottage - 700k (2 nights)

Dinner - 70-80k

The next day, taking shower without hot water in the morning was miserable. We all knew that today we were going to ride on motor, and went around the island, so sun block was a must. I applied the sun block on my legs and arms, and thought applied on my face later after the breakfast. The cottage provided two set breakfast, either fried noodles or fried rice, but there were four of us, so we made extra order, egg waffle and bacon toast. I liked the egg waffle lots! haha.

We got real excited when we saw the motorbikes, couldnt wait to start the journey. Too excited, caused me left something I wished to do before, yupe, the sunblock!!!

On the very beginning of the journey, we were seriously excited, few minutes on the ride, then stopped for few minutes to take pictures, haha. 

When the sun was approaching the center of the sky, we started to worry, because, we even finished 1/3 of the journey!!! We stopped and asked the people around, when they showed us where we were on the map, seriously, we started to worry if we able to get back to the cottage before dark. Either turned back or went on. We decided to went on, and we started to speed! I doubted the motors were modified, because no matter how fast I went, it showed on 60km/h, which based on my experience, it should be 80km/h at least!

Even we wanna to speed up our journey, the road condition started to change, from a smooth blacktop to stone crushed road. God, we couldnt even speed to 40km/h. At that moment, I knew we were all not in a very good mood! And we actually passing by the villages on the island. I believe that is what we used to rural area. People here lives a simple life, though the kids kept saying "money, money, money", I believe they are all friendly and kind hearted.

After almost 2 hours speeding, we finally reached the town with the hot spring, which is located on the middle of the map. We were a bit relieved as we knew we might be able to get back to the cottage by time. Speaking of the hot spring, disappointed. The hot spring was created because of the volcano. And I rather call it a hot stream, but it is a stream. The people takes that as a business opportunity, they stored the hot spring in a little pool, and the visitors have to pay for the entry. There are three-five this kind of hot spring provided shops. We just rode through, and stopped to take the pictures, then be gone!

In the rest of the journey, we were still speeding up, because when we got into the town, it is blacktop road again, hoorey. We didnt stop for taking pictures anymore, but the one sitting behind, for instance, ZhiFang and PuiSee tried to capture the nice scene while we were speeding, haha. Stil lot of quality pictures taken.

It had been a long long day!!! We were so tired and body sore!! Too bad there was no massage service, haha. We went for dinner, and they said wanna tried the BBQ fish, so we ordered one. Honestly, it was just ok. The fish was however fresh, as we saw the owner caught one in front of us, haha. 

And yupe, we didnt take our lunch, I dont have the urge, because of the long riding, haha. We skipped our lunch, even though we could have our lunch when we were in the hot spring town. And of course, we didnt apply lot of sunblock, we were all burnt!!!

We had our own little activity during the nights. We watched the local drama, , got to say, not bad actually, but I found myself so hard to understand Bahasa Indonesia, and of course, no subtitle! And I brought manjong cards,  and we had small punishment for those who lost the game, beer!!! 2 nights, total, 3 bottle, and 4 cans. Crazy us.

Dinner - around 50-60k

Motor - unable to recall... But it was cheaper than the people offered me before I got on the boat. And we rented the motorbikes from the Samosir Cottage as well, they actually rented from the villagers, so the motorbike condition is quite not bad.

The third day, again started with the cold water, and we need to prepare ourselves to check out and got back to Medan town. While we were having our breakfast, another couple from Malaysia sat next to us, and seeing  4 of us seriously burnt asking if we were on ride yesterday, and the guy talked to us, he himself also burnt. We talked for awhile, then we got to say, the world is small, coz the guy also from Sitiawan, in fact, senior from our secondary school, the very senior of course, haha. He was on vocation with his couple, and they were the crazy one as they were going for another island riding, for proper visiting, salute! One thing he mentioned about us, he said when he saw the way we started the engine of the motor day before, then he knew this group of four surely anak kampung!!! Because we were very get used with the motor, haha. We almost missed the time of the boat, and when we were in hungry, we forgot to pay for the breakfast bill!!! I paid only when I returned the room key, the worker showed me the bill, that was embarrassing.  

We actually booked a van back to Medan through Samosir Cottage, and booked the hotel rooms at Medan as well. The hotel at Medan town is ok, but the driver, errmmm, no, unacceptable to me. He was splitting all way back from Parapat to Medan. And because he needed to split, so he let the windows open, and didnt turn on the air condition. At Parapat, it was ok because the weather was nice, and cold. But not all the way to Medan! Not to mention when the traffic got crowded, and lot of dust! However, one benefit of having the van service through Samosir Cottage is that the driver will bring you around to visit to another visiting venues. And of course, some of the venues required entrance fees, which they will charge us more because they need to pay the driver the fees of bringing people to visit these venues. And the driver we got, kind of asshole, he charged us quite a lot, but what to do? He told us if we wanna to go to visit the waterfall, which was supposed to be included in the service, according to the manager of the Samosir Cottage, we needs to pay another 100k\150k because it was a bit far from where we were at that moment. We managed to cut it to 80k, and just 1 or 2 minutes we made the deal, we were at the waterfall park. What the H***??!!

Backed to Medan town, we went to the shopping mall twice, the first night we stayed at Medan, and the second day, before we heading to the airport. The mall isnt any special, just that we prefer to find a place with air cond to have our dinner and lunch. I was very surprise when I saw the people smoking indoor! Due to that, the air cond, wasnt much help!!!

The first two food shown in the picture above were Baso, the local cuisine. It was just ok to us but PuiSee liked it alot, haha. 

Van - 600k

Rooms at Medan - 350k each (x2, the disadvantage of having the cottage to book the rooms for us because they actually forbid us to share the room, and they will fine us because they knew exact how many people we have! But save the troubles.)

Dinner - Roughly 100k (downtown, shopping mall some more)

At the airport, we bought, layer cake!!! But got to say, the cake really nice, should give it a try, wasnt too expensive, I forgot the price though, we paid in RM if i not mistaken. Our flight backed to Malaysia was delayed for almost an hour. That's so bored at the airport, especially when the airport was so so so small.

Thanks to the delay, me and ZhiFang unable to get the bus back to Sitiawan from the airport. Luckily PuiSee and her boyfriend dropped us at Puduraya bus station, and it was 10pm already, and we havent eat our dinner yet!!! We bought 10.30pm bus backed to Sitiawan, so unable to have dinner with PuiSee and her boyfriend. We said our goodbye with Melisa at the airport, to PuiSee at the bus station, and I said goodbye to ZhiFang when we reached Sitiawan by 2.30am!

How much did we spend? PuiSee only changed RM400, Melisa and ZhiFang RM500, and me RM600. Each of us able to remain some balances after all, if dont feel like buying souvenirs, then RM400 should be enough.Like what we did, we did not save much for the budget for accommodations, not a high class hotel of course, but at least everyone of us had our own single bed to sleep every night. If you able to find a way to sneak in the hotel, and shared a double room with four person, then definitely saved a certain amount.

Finally finishing this blog, wanna write it immediately after the trip, but I was unable to get the pictures, not even single one! Because I didnt use my camera, and my memory card is still with Melisa, because hers was full when we were riding around the island. This raya holiday break, PuiSee, ZhiFang and I gathered for lunch two days ago, and finally we have the complete set of the pictures as ZhiFang took the pictures from Melisa while Melisa backed to Sitiawan. 

That was a great trip, looking forward for the next trip, guess should be Beijing or Taiwan!!hahaha...

More pictures, my facebook account, only for friends though, haha.