On the road : Teluk Intan & Pangkor

Sometime last December, I visited the quaint little town of Teluk Intan (Wikipedia)

Located right in the middle of town, this unique leaning tower that was completed in 1885 started to tilt a few years after its completion due to an underground stream.

An hour of scenic drive with Florence to Lumut + 30 mins of ferry ride and we are on Pangkor island.

Riding through Pangkor town on a rented bike which costs only 30 bucks for the whole day.

Ram, Jam, Slam on it and it still moves. This thing is like a tank!

The calm seas surrounding the island

Fishermen going about their routine

View from beneath one of the fisherman's wooden home

Florence & I at Teluk Dalam Resort's beach.
 

RECHARGE weekend

It's another round of RECHARGE gigs by JTi ...this time I'm touring down south.

Amped & Revamped, they're hosting a group of world-class acts global performers which promises a whole new level of experience this time around.

Sunset view from my room at Holiday Inn Melaka while awaiting night falls.


Spotted this just as I was heading out of the hotel around midnite........

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The Eye On Malaysia; Previously in Titiwangsa, KL has been shifted to one corner beside the sea here in Melaka..... wonder what sorta 'view' of Malaysia would one get to see from here.

Anyway, arriving at the venue just 10 minutes drive away at the Melaka Raya area. . . .

Pure Bar is already pumpin' with music and clubbers' when we arrive

The real RECHARGE room

DJ Sid Vicious on the deck, letting off his beats






Clubbers in this historical city are sure one happening lot as they're still queing for entry when it's already nearing 2am!


Party people gettin on down wit the music.

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Early next morning, we cabut down to the ZONE in JB.

Around 5 clubs are housed in this place so just imagine the crowd

LUSH ; the venue at JB

Welcoming guests into its main room is this:

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The uber-cool mist projection at the entrance

A gathering of JB clubbers

Sid Vicious sweating his !#$% off in such hot venue

Kylie Chapman - the emcee....speaks super fluent canto making guys and uncles go all crazy over her.
There was even one uncle who approach her with flowers and a teddy bear when we were on our drinks.





CK & gang






Sid's evil twin & sidekick




JB gals




One of the masterminds backed with a great team behind events like these; Calvin Khoo

Bringing it all LIVE to you in 8 Exciting Locations with 1 Definitive Experience.

See you at BLANC (Heritage Row) tomorrow nite (Oct,30th) for another round of

RECHARGE

Vietnam : Tour NO Duty...

My first experience in a foreign land where English is considered invalid....
English = Leave it in hotel, Sign Language Required.

Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City.

It's such a relief to know that my Vietnam friends could converse quite well in English.

The city is buzzing with bikes and never-ending honkings...

Being really nice host, they so kindly obliged to my request on going around town endlessly covering every street and letting me press on the horn for fun sake! *LOL

And off we go the very next morning to eat fur... ('Pho') a.k.a Beef noodles

Here's riding with my chauffeur, Bryan, joining the crazy traffic going places around the city throughout the day.

First stop is the Notre Dame ...... built in the 1800's by the French.

Located right in the middle of the city's Central District 1, this church is still being used and it's also a common place for wedding photo shoots. I was told that there's on average, 2 weddings every weekend!

Just right beside, is a park in the middle of the city where everyone hangs-out.........to drink coffee =.="

Seriously, I was being offered coffee for breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, tea-time, dinner and supper!
It's just something interesting in Viets that coffee is a MUST HAVE.

Here's us at the park

My Vietnam buddies




Youth Centre

Vietnamese teens gather here at nite and over the weekends for their extra-curricular activities. I was in there checking out some bands and while walking past a classroom, I overheard an English tutor 'lecturing' some students and he went like "U must let heart english SPEAK.. heart let out SPEAK engrishh" ....OMG!

Anyway, just a few blocks away was another tourist attraction

Ho Chi Minh's General Post Office



The interior of the post office with it's retro 1940's architecture and unique half-pipe roof design. Reasonably priced souvenirs are sold in here.





If there's any place that one shouldn't miss while touring HCM, its gotta be this:

Ngon Restaurant

Featuring the Best & Finest Vietnam cuisines. It's a MUST visit for every tourist and dine-in is only possible with reservations.





At the other part of town is this ice-cream parlour which serves ice-cream in all uniquely-delicious ways possible.

As seen in this pix, I was having this dessert served with fresh fruits IN a coconut. Not sure if there's any of this in KL, but lemme know if u've had any around town =)

Will be checking out more on the interiors and Hanoi on my next trip to Vietnam.

There's only so much for now, more pix in my Facebook album (click!)

A Weekend Down South

Headed down south to the most notorious city last weekend for a short getaway.

Thanks to CK, it's all paid for! We checked into Thistle, Johor Bahru; which was formerly Hyatt.

One can expect lots from the service and deco if it's something from Thistle, and they sure do know how to impress their guests.

Classy-simplicity is what I would label this hotel .

Lobby@Thistle

The next day, a friend took me out galavanting JB City and later, I went to check out the most happening place on a Saturday afternoon.

Well, though some say it's City Square, but I'd say it's City Harvest Outreach JB that's happenin' !

Joining Jon and his friends there, the service was simply amazing as it has all the excellence traits from the City Harvest family.

Empowering message by Ps.Chee Kiang

Cell members of JB-4





Later that nite, I was made a VIP guest of a Freedom event, which Calvin and his team put together at Disc0very, Holiday Inn Plaza

DJ Soul T from Australia spinning tunes from the genre of Hard-Trance

Some dancer also from Down Under which costs a whopping $20k



Though I'm not really into clubbing, what's coming up next really impressed me.

See those lines that is being 'drawn' across the board?

It's something new in the lighting arena called, Mapped Projection.


Controlled via software, the projection areas were mapped before hand and thus the image accuracy

Happy clubbers showing off their dance moves



The man behind it all, my long-time buddy, band mate, school mate, church mate, Calvin.

The brains behind events like these, Calvin, who works for JTI is responsible in the marketing sector of things.





Managed to take our first ever public bus ride from Larkin Bus Station into Singapore the next day, we ended up having brunch in Paragon Mall at Orchard.

Some dim sum and siew-loong-pau

Don't let this pix fool you, the food SUCKS! I can only taste nothing but flour in that bite.



Anyway, we headed to Swee Lee Music; The MOST important place in our itinerary this weekend.

I would call this place the Toys 'R' Us for every musician.

Check out all the synthesizers and stage piano's

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Calvin's a happy man after splurging over $1.4k on the stomp box and case which comes with power adaptors and other necessary input/outputs.



We then met up with Josie, another long time friend who is now working for SIA

Josie took us to this nice Jap restaurant at Raffles City Mall for dinner.

Only here that they serve..well...food that actually HAS some flavor to it.



As usual, Josie's talk of a short-walk became like an hour on foot around the city.


Seen here is the Singapore F1 race track along Nicoll Highway






The annual Vertical Marathon is held in the building on the left:

Very true!




We walked and walked till we end up at Clarke Quay

More on Clarke Quay's happenings when we're back here to celebrate our birthdays in October!