My Very First Blog

Three people sent in entries for my "Why I Love To Visit Guilin" Contest. (aka Contest #3)

Yes, only three miserable people! But it's OK, three is better than two! Haha.

Anyway, I would like you, my readers to vote which of the three posts you like best!

Your votes will determine 50% of the results. The other 50% will come from me. I will give points to each of the post and add to your votes to find the winner of this contest!

Simply leave a comment on which post you like best and you will be entered into a lucky draw and one lucky voter will win a prize!!

Voting closes on 3rd December 2010 at 12am sharp.

Visit the three blogs below.....

Contestant#1 : Ghosty Nana

Contestant#2 : Kopi Soh

Contestant#3 : Caroline Ng

Now leave a comment and tell me which Contestant you vote for. Thank you!

Note 1: All 3 contestants above are not allowed to vote.
Note 2: You can only vote ONCE.

I know some of you are waiting to read about my Bangkok trip, but I just need to blog a little about KLIA first.

You see, most of the time I fly with AirAsia and therefore I usually go to LCCT and not KLIA.

This time I flew with Thai Airways so I had to go to KLIA. If you have read my previous post, you would know that I took the KLIA Ekspres from KL Sentral. It was still early when my friend and I reached KLIA so we went to have our breakfast.



We had the usual coffee and toasted bread with butter and kaya. I did not like the way they made the toasted bread but since we would be having meals on the plane, I did not bother about it too much.



After breakfast, we went to check in our luggage and since there was still a lot of time, we walked around the Main Terminal of the airport.



This is near the place where I took pictures of the numerous plane models which I blogged about in a previous post.



We found out that the Aerotrain service which transport passengers from the Main Terminal building to the Satellite building and back, was closed for maintenance and modification work. It would remain closed until March 15 next year.



During this shutdown period, shuttle buses were provided as alternative. We went up a shuttle bus.



We reached the Satellite building in about 10 minutes which was of course slower than the 4 minutes it would have taken us if we were to use the Aerotrain.

We still had a lot of time in our hands so we walked around the Satellite building.

There were many shops in KLIA. One of them is Harrods.



Stepping into Harrods, I saw this!



Yes, it's me Panda!! Haha!! I checked the price tag. Can't remember the exact price now but it is definitely above RM100 which I thought was too expensive! Oh well....



I spotted this restaurant and couldn't help thinking how easy it was to create a name for a restaurant by simply inserting an extra "O" to the word "NOODLES"!



KLIA is known as an airport in the forest. It was in fact designed with the concept of "an airport in the forest" and "forest in the airport".



I have heard that you can visit the forest in KLIA but I never had the chance to do that. So when my friend introduced me to this KLIA Jungle Boardwalk, I was delighted!



I wonder why they use the word "Boardwalk". Kind of reminds me of the Monopoly board game! Haha!

The entrance to the Jungle Boardwalk was quite unique.



Once we got past that, we found ourselves in the jungle, sort of!



Lush greeneries and tall trees surrounded us. And of course, the jungle would be incomplete without a waterfall.



We took some time to enjoy the waterfall and snap some pictures.



This is the view of the entrance we came in earlier from where I stood near the waterfall.



After walking through the jungle, we reached the exit on the other side and walked out. This is the view of the exit from outside the jungle.



Soon it was time to board the plane.



I took a few more pictures as we walked to the departure hall. Below is the Aerotrain tracks currently closed for maintenance.



Would you rather walk or stand on the moving platform?



Having traveled most of the time with budget airline AirAsia, I was looking forward to fly with Thai Airways!

Believe it or not, I have never taken the KLIA Ekspres before in my life! As such, during my recent trip to Bangkok, I decided to give it a try.

For the uninitiated, KLIA Ekspres is a premium, non-stop high-speed train service linking Kuala Lumpur Sentral (KL Sentral) and Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). It shares the line with KLIA Transit, which stops at 3 stations along the way.

My friend and I reached KL Sentral early in the morning and made our way to KL City Air Terminal (KL CAT) within the KL Sentral building to purchase the tickets. The tickets cost RM35 per person one way.

After getting the tickets, we walked through the turnstiles, down the escalator and reached the platform.



A train was already there but even if we missed it, there would be a train departing every 15 minutes during peak hours or 20 minutes during non-peak hours. There were no crowds at all which I liked a lot!



KLIA Ekspres is operated by Express Rail Link Sdn Bhd (ERL). You can see the company's logo on the train below.



Stepping inside, I could see the interior was clean and spacious.



I can say we almost had the whole train to ourselves as there were just a small number of passengers. The seats were comfortable and they even have TV screens!



Since this was my first time on the train, I decided to check out the toilet!



It was not bad but I did not use it.



Like a child, I had some fun pressing on the red button to open and close the door. I mean, how often do you see a toilet door slide open or close at the push of a button? Haha!



Of course, once the door is closed, do not forget to lock the door as anyone outside the toilet can still open it by simply pushing a button located outside. This must have happened a lot of times in the past as can be seen by a reminder notice being placed there!

The train ride was smooth and comfortable. I enjoyed sitting by the window and watching the views outside.



I even took a couple of photos.



At one point, we passed by Putrajaya. Can you spot the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) in the picture below?



Before long, we reached KLIA. I timed the ride. It took us exactly 28 minutes to reach KLIA. Very efficient indeed!

The good thing about KLIA Ekspres is that it stops inside the KLIA building which is pretty convenient.

Walking inside KLIA, I saw this - a panda bear!!



What is a panda doing in an airport? Stay tuned for the answer in my next post coming right up!

Yes!! I now own AirAsia!!

No, not the airline company.

But their A320 Airbus!

The toy version, that is. Haha!!



No, I did not buy this plane on board the AirAsia flight.

By the way, I have never bought any souvenirs or gift items from AirAsia before. Have you?

Besides, this toy plane of mine is much more solid and heavier than the ones sold by AirAsia.



I bought it all the way from Bangkok! Yes, in one of those souvenir outlets in MBK Shopping Mall.

My purchase was actually inspired by what I saw at KLIA before my flight to Bangkok.



A display of some of the planes from various international airlines.

This is the Boeing 747-400 from our very own MAS (Malaysia Airlines).



And this is Airbus A380 from China Southern Airlines.



Vietnam Airlines has its Boeing 767-300 displayed here too.



Qatar Airways' plane is also on display though I am not sure which model is this plane. I am not really well versed in planes. Do you think it is a Boeing or an Airbus?



Etihad Airways from United Arab Emirates has its Airbus 332 here as well.



And of course, our very own budget airline AirAsia with its Airbus A320.



There were many smaller models displayed in glass cabinets.



So why did I choose to buy this AirAsia plane when the shop in Bangkok also sells other planes from other airlines?



I had almost wanted to buy the Thai Airways plane since I traveled with this airline for my trip to Bangkok, but decided against it.

I could have bought the MAS plane too but somehow, I ended up buying AirAsia.

Maybe because I have been traveling mostly with AirAsia and it had indeed made air travel more affordable for everyone!

Before I went for my holiday in Bangkok, I scheduled two posts with contests for my readers. Altogether I created 5 contests.

Out of the 5 contests, 3 already have clear cut winners. Unfortunately for the other 2, I do not have the winners yet, but more about this later.

Let me name the winners for the following contests.

For the "Guess The Name of The Hotel I Stayed in Bangkok" Contest, congratulations to Twilight! He hit it right on the spot with Dusit Thani Hotel! Located at Rama IV Road in Bangkok, this is a 5-star luxury hotel.

For the "First Commenter" Contest (aka Contest #1), congratulations to SK for being the first to comment on that post!

For the "Top Commenter" Contest (aka Contest #2), congratulations to my travel partner Jam for leaving the most number of comments!

All 3 winners will receive souvenirs I bought from Bangkok in their mailbox soon! Thank you for participating!

Now for the remaining two contests, there is only one person joining "Write A Short Post" Contest (aka Contest #3) and no one answered all the 5 questions correctly in "Answer The Questions" Contest (aka Contest #4)!

For Contest #3, I have decided to extend the deadline to 26th November 2010 to enable more people to participate. All you need to do is write a short post on your blog about why you would love to visit Guilin (if you have not visited before) or why you love Guilin (if you have visited before) and link back to My 10 Days In Guilin post.

I'm planning a bigger prize for this so if you want to win this, don't miss this opportunity! Remember to leave your link and comment on my blog to inform me that you have written the post!

For Contest #4, SK, Jam and Twilight all tied with 4 out of 5 questions answered correctly. Since no one answered ALL 5 questions correctly, the search for the winner is still out in the open. There is no deadline to this contest as the first person to answer all 5 questions correctly is deemed the winner, so all you readers out there (including the above 3 contestants) still have a good chance to win!

Again, the 5 questions are :

Question 1: Where did I and my travel partners stay on our 4th night in Guilin?
Question 2: Where during my trip did I see live crabs being fried alive?
Question 3: How many horses I saw during my Li River Cruise?
Question 4: On which day of my Guilin trip I met with an accident?
Question 5: Did I and my travel partners pay the tour company in the end?

Hint : Clues are found in my Guilin travel posts.

Join in the contests and have fun!!

In my next post, I shall blog about my Bangkok trip so stay tuned!

I love Jay Chou's songs. One of my favourites is Hua Hai (Ocean Of Flowers).

Have you heard of this song? Watch this music video!



Taken from his 2008 album "Capricorn", Hua Hai has a very nice melody and I was inspired to play the song on my piano.

So one fine afternoon, I was in the right mood and decided to try this song on the piano. It so happened that someone had given me the piano score of this song earlier and so I did not have much difficulty figuring out the chords and all.

But as usual, I never ever play a song following the written score strictly. The only type of music where I played exactly what was written on the score is classical music. For all other types of music, I always improvise and add my own decorations and melodies. In my opinion, that's the way it should be to keep the song fresh.

Now this is not the first time I play a Jay Chou song. I had played another one of his songs before in an earlier post. The song is called Cai Hong and you can listen to it at my blog post HERE.

This time however, I found that I could not stop playing and actually did not know how to end the song! So my playing turned out to be a little bit longer than usual, lasting almost 7 minutes! (The original song was only about 4 minutes long)



If you are interested to know, I started improvising the melody from the 4th minute onwards. Well, I hope you will enjoy my piano version of this beautiful song albeit a bit long!