Cruising Our Way to Penang & Phuket

Posted on 19 Feb 2023 by OnColouredPens

I first heard of a cruise ship when I was in elementary school, we had one neighbour who was working in a cruise ship. But I never really knew what was a cruise ship back then, until I saw the movie Titanic.

Fast forward to March 2017, we had the chance to onboard a cruise ship. My husbands good friend was working in a cruise ship and it happened that they were in Singapore, he invited us over for a ship tour. That was my first encounter of a huge ship. I was… lost for words. It was so huge that I was scared. Good thing at that time we only toured around, never really “travelled/ cruise”. After the ship tour, I told myself… I am not going to try cruising in that huge ship, it was scary!

Six years later, here I am on-board my first cruise! Together with my husband and our friends, we on-boarded the Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas. It was… an experience on another level. In this vacation, this is the first time that I didn’t really care about taking photos (lots of photos), I still have few to share though. I was there to experience the life in a cruise and I did it!

Day One

We departed Singapore on Feb. 2. First thing we did when we on-boarded was to have lunch, then proceed to tour around. Food photos deserve a separate post. 🙂

Day Two

The ship was scheduled to arrived in Penang, Malaysia at around 2:30pm. While waiting for the ship to dock, we busied ourselves in the different activities that the ship offers. Abby and I went to attend a morning dance exercise then we went for Bingo (which we never won). Right after the Bingo we went straight to lunch and waited for the ship to dock at Penang. We never booked any excursion in Penang, we planned to just walk around the port or took a hop-on-hop-off bus. However, when we were looking for the bus stop, the rain started to pour. 😦 We weren’t able to reach the bus stop for hop-on-hop-off, instead of running back to the ship, we decided to just relax in the nearby hawker centre. The moment the rain stopped, we decided to just go back to the ship and call it a day.

Day Three

Day 3 was the day I am most excited. We reached Phuket Thailand in the morning and I was able to witness the sunrise! We booked an excursion for Phang Nga Bay. It took a 2 hour bus ride to reach the province of Phnag Nga then we need to take a long-tailed boat to see the Phang Nga National Park. It was a very good and fun experience. Our guide pointed the famous James Bond Island, and being me, don’t have a good photo of that island. After the tour we had lunch at a Muslim Fishing Village, then proceed back to the mainland province. Before going back to Phuket, we went to visited a Buddhist Temple, rest for a while then continue with the long bus ride to Phuket. When we reached Phuket, we decided to walk around the famous Pattaya Beach for a while before going back to the ship.

Phuket is one of my dream destination, me being there even for a few hours made my heart full. Will I be going back to Phuket? Definitely! I wanted to experience more of Phuket, someday.

Day Four

Day 4 was cruising day back to Singapore. Everyone was tired but happy. We had a blast of course since it was our last day cruising. We never planned anything on this day, the guys were at the casino while us ladies was just roaming around the ship, eating our hearts out.

Back in Singapore

And just like that, our 4 day cruise is over. My tummy was full. My heart was full. My memory bank was fuller! It was an experience I will truly remember forever. Food and shows will be posted separately. I need to gather my thoughts again, especially for the shows. I don’t know if I can find the right words to describe them.

To my husband, thank you for sponsoring this trip, without your generosity, I won’t be able to experience this. hehehehe… To Neng and Jomz, thank you for being good travel buddies and thank you for taking videos and photos for us! To Ate Ana, Kuya Jimmy and Abby, thank you for encouraging us 4 to experience this cruise ship! It was so worth it! Till our next trip again. Hoping we will be complete by then.

Random Thoughts, Travel

Photo Dump: Taiwan Trip (Day 3-4)

Posted on 5 Jan 202024 Mar 2022 by OnColouredPens

It is 5 Jan 2020 today, here I am sitting in our dining table, thinking of what to have for lunch, when to post my super duper long over due Taiwan trip photos. By the way, Happy New Year!!!

So yeah, back to our business, ill be dumping our day 3 and 4 photos finally! As what I have mentioned from my previous post “this will be a photo dump with limited informations to nothing”.

Day 3: We travelled all the way to Taichung City to visit Houli Flower Farm. We left from Taipe as early as 7:00am so we could take an early train going to Fengyuan

Random Thoughts, Travel

Photo Dump: Taiwan Trip (Day 1-2)

Posted on 3 Nov 201916 Feb 2020 by OnColouredPens

Our trip to Taiwan happened almost a year now, yet my photos are still stuck in my gallery, screaming at me when am I going to post them. I keep on telling myself I’ll sit down one day and sort out my photos, but it didn’t happened, until today.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember everything what we did in Taiwan, so this will be a photo dump with limited informations to nothing.

Day 1: When we arrived in Taoyuan Airport the weather was a bit gloomy, as I remember. We took the subway going to our AirBnB in Da’an District. After we settled in, we decided to head out right away not to waste time. First stop was to have our late lunch and went straight to see Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall and Taipie101. When we arrived in our destination it was already raining, good thing I have an umbrella with me so I was okay to walk around. What I did not expect was the breeze of the wind, it was cold! For a person like me who grew up in a tropical country, this kind of weather is not in my vocabulary! hahaha… but nevertheless, it was worth it.

Day 2: We book a guided group tour going Yehliu Geopark, Jiufen and Shifen.

We were so amazed at Yehliu Geopark, the rock formations we all amazing. Juifen on the other hand was so crowded, I don’t have much photos while we were there, again coz It was so crowded… spell weekend! But the food was amazing, I had a great time. But the highlight for this day was at Shifen, I was able to tick one item from my bucket list which is to release a sky lantern, it finally happened!

When were finally back to Taipie we decided to go straight to their night market, Shilin Market. I wanted to experience Taiwan’s night market, and boi! I was not disappointed, the array of street food is massive! The foodie in me was so happy. Too bad we don’t have photos while we were in the market, our phone and camera batteries died at the same time.

Day 3 and 4 photos to follow… I have yet to finish sorting them out… tehehehehe…

Food, Random Thoughts, Travel

I Visited Singapore!

Posted on 2 Dec 201824 Mar 2022 by OnColouredPens

I went back to Singapore shorter than expected! Yes people, I was Singapore last week, I was there for a good 3 days. Short but sweet. Short but fruitful. Short but worth it.

Before flying to Singapore, the husband and I went and explore Taiwan, which I will be ~~blogging~~ posting real soon.

The reason why I was in Singapore is that, the husband got a new job and I have to help him look for a new place and settle down, which happens quiet fast, thankfully!

Aside from looking for a place to stay and meet with my officemates for lunch, the only thing I did was eat… eat.. eat.., okay I also did laundry (in the hostel) and sleep. But most of the time I was eating! You can’t blame me though, I miss Singapore food! Before flying back to SG I already knew what will be my first meal, which didn’t happened coz the shop was still closed when went for it, but luckily I had it on my second meal. Im sharing with you the food I had while I was in the Lion City, enjoy, while I’ll be in the corner staring at our wall while thinking of having laksa for lunch. 🙂

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It’s not even half of the food I wanna eat again, but these are my favourite ones, so I have to have them first. Once Im back I’ll indulge myself once again with my favourite Singaporean food. 😀

Travel

Photo Diary: Trekking and Elephant Care

Posted on 7 Mar 20189 Mar 2018 by OnColouredPens

Finally Im posting the highlight of our Thailand trip, trekking and mahout program!

On our 2nd day in Chiang Mai we signed up for a Trekking and Mahout Program, which means I have the chance ti interact with the gentle giant elephants!!!

I’ve mentioned in my Ayutthaya post that we met a fellow Kababayan travellers, one of them convinced me to try this elephant thingy in Chiang Mai. This idea stuck in my head, but I was not really keen in trying it. But when we reached Chiang Mai, and saw the brochures it suddenly hit me that I want to met the elephants. Thank you Ejay for giving me this idea.

Again our lovely host helped us in booking the program, since I don’t want to ride on the elephants we choose the program which only allows you to interact, feed and take a bath with the elephants. The program also includes 1 hour trekking, trek to a cave, visit a non-touristic waterfall (you will be given 30 mins to swim), LUNCH 😉 and then interact with the elephants.

The place which we went to has only 3 elephants, Mama Phant, Papa Phant and the star of the family Baby Phant, his name is Bubu and he is a 3 years old elephant. Since they only have 3 elephants in the sanctuary they don’t have much guests which is very okay for me, at least the elephant wouldn’t be stress out. 🙂

I have so much to talk about this experience, but the words doesn’t come out from my head, so instead of pulling my hair and try to write, ill just share a looootttt of photos. 🙂

Meeting Bubu and his parents is surely the highlight of this trip. Almost every day I checked my phone and look at the photos I took with them. Bubu has given so much happiness on that day that I was there, If ever I’ll be given the chance to go back to Chiang Mai, I will surely visit him again.

For those who wants to meet Bubu and his family and the other rescued elephants, please visit https://www.joiningelephantsanctuary.com/.