Japan: Autumn - October 2015

My third time going to Japan. For somebody who doesn't like Japanese food and didn't really enjoy her previous tours to Japan, I sure ended there quite a lot! The good news is I came back from this trip with a better appreciation of Japan and don't mind going there again :)

This time round I went with friends. We decided to go on a budget trip. Total costs for 15 days (14 nights) was just around RM4.3k inclusive of tickets to Disneyland, Disneysea, Tokyo Tower and all other attractions. Cheap right? How do we keep the costs down? We flied Air Asia, brought almost all food from Malaysia, stay at cheap accommodation and buy public transportation passes. I think the main reason why I like this trip is because I get to eat Malaysian food :P Previous trips because I followed group tours I had to eat Japanese food :(

You need to be very fit if you wish to take their mass transit system. It is normal to walk around 10 km a day. Even if you just want to change train lines within the same station, you need to walk very far unlike in London. The places that you wish to visit are also mostly far from the stations. So if you are the type who only walk to your car, better join a tour instead of going to Japan yourself :P Another reason why I like this trip is because I get to experience their public transportation. It was so much fun. Really! You came back also healthier :)

 

Our itinerary was as follows:
29 October 2015     Kuala Lumpur - Tokyo
30 October 2015     Tokyo
31 October 2015     Tokyo
1 November 2015   Tokyo - Kawaguchiko - Tokyo
2 November 2015   Tokyo
3 November 2015   Tokyo
4 November 2015   Tokyo - Nagoya
5 November 2015   Nagoya
6 November 2015   Nagoya
7 November 2015   Nagoya - Osaka
8 November 2015   Osaka
9 November 2015   Osaka
10 November 2015 Osaka - Kyoto - Osaka
11 November 2015 Osaka - Kyoto - Osaka
12 November 2015 Osaka - Kuala Lumpur

We visited Disneyland and Disneysea. I am not really a fan of theme parks (but as always I sure ended up there quite often!) but for these two parks their night fireworks and laser shows made me like theme parks a bit :) So if you go there and like me don't really like to queue for rides, you must stay for the night shows. They are spectacular :)

We went to Lake Kawaguchi to take a look at Fuji Mountain. The day was grey but we were lucky to still be able to view the top part of the mountain while we were cruising on the lake :) Lake Kawaguchi is actually quite big. Make sure you do a research on where is the best place to see autumn leaves and Mount Fuji. We went to a wrong place so we did not get to see so many autumn leaves :( Another thing, if you wish to ride on a scenic train in Kyoto make sure when you board the train it is still daylight. Truly a waste of money if you board at night.

My favourite in this trip is the visit to Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium. First time I get so close to dolphins, belugas, penguins and killer whales :) Do check out the pictures at #mks20151106. They are all super duper cute!

I've uploaded 837 photos on Instagram. You can access them here:
http://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travels

Hashtag specific for this trip:
#mks2015Japan

Njoy!!

Indonesia: Summer - May 2015

 

This is my second trip to Medan-Lake Toba-Berastagi area. The first time I went there was in 1995 with my university friends. Normally when I went to visit the same city, I can appreciate their development over the years but somehow when I went to Lake Toba I personally think that the area was better looking back in 1995. The water was cleaner and greener. The area also felt more magical. Now, it just felt tired. It is no longer thriving with visitors.

President Joko Widodo recently announced that they have plans to revive the area. His first order was to dismantle all the fish cages that pollutes the lake. I hope he will succeed. It is such a waste not to optimise the tourism potential of the largest volcanic lake in the world.

This trip marked my flying with Air Asia after boycotting the airline for so long. The last time I flew Air Asia was in 2008. This was also my first trip flying via our new airport KLIA2. I was quite impressed with KLIA2, I did not expect that our new airport is so huge with many restaurants and retail outlets. The Air Asia flight was however delayed. Why am I not surprised?

For this trip I went with a group of friends, so it was great fun to reunite with old friends and make new friends even though everything else was lousy. We bought our own plane tickets and the hire a local tour for the ground arrangement. Our tour operator over promised but under delivered. The reason why I decided to join the trip was due to the visit to Batu Kapur Hot Spring, unfortunately that and a few others in the itinerary were conveniently forgotten due to lack of planning and time constraint.

The transport provided from Kualanamu Airport to Lake Toba was horrendous. They squeezed all twelve of us (with our bags!!) into a van for a five hours drive in a hot weather. The aircon was not strong enough for the weather. During the trip my friend's Delsey luggage was damaged due terrible stacking of the bags during the long journey.

Out of the three hotels, two was fortunately okay. One was very dated. Since this is a full board ground arrangement, the food provided was quite tasty but the portions were very stingy. Our last dinner, the restaurant's cleanliness was questionable. I was strucked with diarrhea for the first time during overseas travel. Luckily it was mild so by the time I reached home I was almost recovered. My stomach is usually very tough after going through a few boarding school and colleges :P I suspect it was the spicy sambal or the soursop drink that caused my downfall. Serve me right for eating uncooked dish and drink iced drinks at dodgy places!

For this trip the total damage was RM820. Air Asia flights (RM245), Man Togie ground arrangement (RM375) and shopping (RM200). Lessons learnt from this trip are cheap trips not necessarily value for money and I truly don't like to go on a shopping trip. So tiring.

Our itinerary:

28 May 2015  Kuala Lumpur - Kuala Namu - Lake Toba

29 May 2015  Lake Toba - Berastagi

30 May 2015  Berastagi - Medan

31 May 2015  Medan - Kuala Namu - Kuala Lumpur

I've uploaded 92 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy !!

Taiwan: Summer - April 2015

 

The first time I went to Taiwan was in 1997. I remember it well cause it coincided with Lady Diana's death.  I remember watching television in my hotel room, while typhoon raging outside listening to the tragic story. It was my country independence day too - 31 August.

Now after close to 18 years later, I figured it is time to revisit the country. Furthermore my visit back in 1997 was only to Taipei. This time round I got to move around a bit :)

Our itinerary was:
28 April 2015  Kuala Lumpur - Taoyuan
29 April 2015  Taoyuan - Taichung - Nantou
30 April 2015  Nantou - Yilan
1 May 2015     Yilan - Yangmingshan - Taipei
2 May 2015     Taipei - Yehliu - Taipei
3 May 2015     Taoyuan - Kuala Lumpur

Surprisingly I found the present day Taiwan less vibrant than before. The roads were quite empty. When I went there in the 90s, there were so many youngsters on motorbikes. The locals call them them suicycles (suicide motorcycles) but now so few of them on the road.

Sadly except for Yehliu Geopark (highly recommended), I found Taiwan so boring. The buildings are dated and messy. So uninspiring. Even the iconic Taipei 101 lacks energy. But one thing good about Taiwan according to the local guide is its low crime rate. The city is very clean too :) The immigration officers are friendlier too compared to the 90s :P

The tour was organised by Poto Travels & Tours and the price per person was RM3759. It was a full board tour. Since we followed Muslim tours, can't really comment about their authentic local food. Their halal restaurants are quite limited. The food that were served to us was mostly palatable.

I just want to put on record that I was quite disappointed with Poto for this trip. Their itinerary stated that there is an opportunity to pluck fruits from the trees at the leisure farm. The reality was you can't even spy any fruits on the trees! How misleading!

 

I've uploaded 225 pictures for your viewing pleasure. You can view the pictures at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy!!

Malta & Tunisia: Spring - March 2015

I've been wanting to visit Tunisia for quite some time after I heard people say that Tunisia is a very beautiful country. Unfortunately I went there with high expectations but came home disappointed. I agree that their natural landscapes are quite pretty but I found that their tourists industry is not up to par. Their so called 4 or 5 star hotels do not deserve the rating. Their service people are not friendly and some are downright rude. The food served at the hotels' buffets either tasteless or tastes weird. Their desserts may sometime look pretty but don't expect too much in the taste department :(

There were so many things that went wrong in this tour:

First, Tunisair Express for flight to Tunis from Malta overbooked their seats, so the 3 of us (out of 15) had to go on a roundabout flights Malta-Djerba (Air Malta) Djerba-Tunis (Tunisair Express) instead. We were scheduled to reach Tunis at 1.40pm but the 3 of us ended up reaching Tunis at 6.30pm. The Tunisair Express plane was so old that I felt like kissing the ground after we landed safely!

My fellow travellers that made it on the original flight were not spared the "drama" either, out of 12, 8 lost their check-in luggages! The luggages were left in Malta. They only got back their luggages four days later.

Second, my brand new travel luggage was a casualty in this trip. I don't know what they did but 2 (out of 4) of the wheels were almost ripped off the bag! Their airport baggage handling either in Djerba or Tunis or maybe both were simply deplorable. If I'm not mistaken, one other tour member's bag was also impacted.

Third, not all places mentioned in the itinerary was covered. Too much time was given for shopping and so little time was given for the most important place of visit, Roman amphitheatre at El-Jem. Imagine being given 1 hour to tour the place and do your prayer at the nearby mosque.

Fourth, we had a lousy Malaysian tour manager. Instead of taking care of us his customers, he behaved like a tourist himself. I think he shopped and took pictures more than the rest of us. We were in transit for seven hours in Istanbul and he didn't even bother to tell us where and when to meet up after we had our morning prayers. So we ended up loitering and waiting for him to eventually showed up.  He didn't even know that we can claim some meal vouchers from the airlines and neither does he knows that he can't bring liquid in bottles more than 100ml on the plane. A weird behaviour for a so called world traveller if you ask me.

Fifth, if you are not a great bargainer and are used to fixed pricing environment, be very careful when you buy stuff there. Their traders will not bat an eye when they fleece you. Imagine I bought the same silver (so they claimed) bracelet for TND10 at one place (the original price they quoted was TND20). Then thirty steps later, another shopkeeper offered it for TND5. A few days later when I went to their bazaar, another shopkeeper offered the same bracelet two for TND5. A few minutes later, one of the fellow tourists told me that she bought the same bracelet for TND2 each!

The saving grace for me is that this tour is combined with Malta. Malta is a bonus country for me. Never expected to set foot on it. It is not even in my travel list but I am so glad that I was given the opportunity to visit the country. My first impression of Malta (form the air) is "white and dense". The buildings are typical Arabs squarish houses. Nothing impressive. But after visiting for three days, I find that I like Malta a lot. It is a very cosy country. Quite expensive since their pricing is in Euro. I like what they served for breakfast, a lot of desserts and they tastes heavenly :) Our local Malta tour guide was also very sweet. When she found out that we love putting lemons in our dish, she gave us lemons from her own backyard :)

This tour (25 March - 6 April 2015) was organised by Safir Go Travel. The price per person on twin sharing basis was RM10600. Frankly I'm not impressed with the service provided by this company, so I doubt that I will be joining them in the future.

Our itinerary was as follows:
25 March 2015     Kuala Lumpur - Istanbul

26 March 2015     Istanbul - Malta

27 March 2015     Malta

28 March 2015     Malta - Gozo Island

29 March 2015     Malta - Tunis

30 March 2015     Tunis - Kairouan

31 March 2015     Kairouan - Gafsa - Tozeur

1 April 2015         Tozeur - Chebika - Temirza - Douz

2 April 2015         Douz - Matmata - Gabes - Sfax - El-Jem - Monatsir

3 April 2015         Monatsir - Sousse - Nabeul - Tunis

4 April 2015         Tunis

5 April 2015         Tunis - Istanbul - Kuala Lumpur

6 April 2015         Kuala Lumpur 

 

I've uploaded 450 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

 

Njoy!!

South Africa & Mauritius: Spring - October 2014

 

This trip can be said as one of the best holidays that I ever had. It was not that the countries were the most beautiful places that I have ever visited, it was just that the tour members were so much fun and sporting, the weather was great and the food awesome.

 

We flew via Air Mauritius (my first time) and I was quite happy with the service. Their planes were new and comfortable. The inflight meals from Kuala Lumpur to Mauritius and from Mauritius to Johannesburg were quite delicious. Unfortunately the return journey meals (Cape Town - Mauritius - Kuala Lumpur) were not so impressive.

 

I love that we have a stopover at Mauritius en route to South Africa and back (courtesy of Air Mauritius). It made the holidays more enjoyable and the journey less tedious. Not to mentioned that Mauritius offers one of the best Indian meals that I have ever tasted. The curry and masala were so hot that I can feel smoke coming out of my ears. It didn't stop me from eating though ;p 

 

 

Personally I wouldn't make a trip to Mauritius by itself (all the more reason I appreciate the opportunity offered by Air Mauritius). Yes their beaches were beautiful, their clear clean water was a delight and their food great but I can have that nearer to home (and a lot cheaper too!) at Redang Island and Bali. In fact when I was there it felt like I was in Bali, even the souvenirs seemed alike! 

 

 

One of the main reasons why I want to visit South Africa is because I want to experience the wilderness of safari and the exciting game drive. Unfortunately this tour brought us to a private park with very limited numbers of animals. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. Maybe this is an excuse for me to go and visit Kenya or Tanzania next ;) The accommodation at the game lodge was very nice and cosy though.

 

Our visit of merely one night to Johannesburg was too short. Not enough time was allotted for us to enjoy the attractions offered by the Gold Reef City. No city tour and not even a visit to the World Cup 2010 Soccer City stadium! If only the tour extend the stay at Johannesburg for another night and includes a day tour to the capital city of South Africa, Pretoria then the tour will be more value for money and satisfying.

We stayed at Cape Town for three nights. It is a nice clean city with modern buildings. Nothing particularly exciting except for the unique Table Mountain. We were lucky when we visited the mountain the weather was quite good. The clouds were underneath instead of surrounding the top of the mountain, so we get to see a nice view of Cape Town.

 

The Malay Quarters were colourful. Again, nothing particularly exciting there. We ate a few meals at a Malay restaurant there. There was a South African version of roti canai (quite nice) but overall the food was uninspiring.

 

What I like at Cape Town was the visits to Seals Island and Boulders Beach to view the seals and penguins respectively. It was worth the visits cause there were so many seals and penguins around! At a town close to Cape Town, you can even see whales if you sit at their beach. No need to chase them like in Australia!

 

Seafood meals at Cape Town were also very nice. Love the simple lobster lunch that we had at Fish Hoek Galley. I was also impressed with the buffet breakfast at our Cape Town hotel. They offer waffle on demand, fresh juice counter and the muffins were awesome! A great incentive to wake up early ;)

 

 

This tour (16-25 October 2014) was organised by Poto Travel and Tours at RM8488 per person on a twin sharing basis (full board). There were ten of us in the group who started as strangers and ended up as friends. Even though I didn't find the tour as terribly exciting, I wouldn't miss it for the great happy memories we had as a group :)

 

Our itinerary was as follows:

16 October 2014     Kuala Lumpur - Mauritius

17 October 2014     Mauritius - Johannesburg

18 October 2014     Johannesburg - George - Oudtshoorn

19 October 2014     Oudtshoorn - Garden Route Game Lodge

20 October 2014     Garden Route Game Lodge - Cape Town

21 October 2014     Cape Town

22 October 2014     Cape Town

23 October 2014     Cape Town - Mauritius

24 October 2014     Mauritius - Kuala Lumpur

25 October 2014     Kuala Lumpur

 

You can view the pictures of my holiday here. I've uploaded 633 photos for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

 

Njoy!!

New Zealand: Autumn - March 2014

 

I've been planning to go to New Zealand since 2003 but somehow other countries got in a way ;) Finally in late 2013, I managed to get cheap plane tickets to Auckland on my favourite airline. You can read the story here: Malaysia Airlines. The original plan was for the four of us to go on a three weeks self-drive adventure. Unfortunately two months before our scheduled departure date, a tragedy struck which resulted in two of our group members cancelling their trip.

 

If you know me personally then you will know that I rarely drive long distance (my car mileage is only 8.4k km after 4 years!). With the two members unable to go I lost my alternate driver so I ended up driving from North Island to the southern most South Island covering over 3000 km within 17 days! Truly an adventure for me most especially driving from Lake Taupo to Napier. The route was like a roller coaster and snake combined! The journey to the Crown Range (the highest paved road in New Zealand) was quite a suspense too. I was worried that our small rental car, Toyota Yaris cannot climb the high altitude. I actually smelt smoke just before we reached the place!

 

 

Our trip was from 26 March to 18 April 2014. Total damage for both of us was RM18.7k. Plane tickets (includes domestic flight from Christchurch to Auckland) RM5.7k. Accommodation (22 nights) RM6.9k. Transport in New Zealand (car rental, ferry, petrol and airport bus) RM5k. Food and other miscellaneous items RM1.1k. Since we were interested in nature, we didn't spend a lot of money on adventure stuff that New Zealand is famous for. If you wish to join that, I suggest you add a few thousand ringgits more to your budget. It is quite pricey most especially when your own currency is only worth one third of theirs :(

 

 

Our itinerary was as follows. On hindsight if I want to tweak the itinerary, maybe I will stay two nights at Dunedin and only one night at Kaikoura.

 

26 March        Kuala Lumpur to Auckland

27 March        Auckland

28 March        Auckland - Rotorua

29 March        Rotorua

30 March        Rotorua - Lake Taupo - Napier

31 March        Napier - Wellington

1 April            Wellington

2 April            Wellington - Picton - Kaikoura

3 April            Kaikoura

4 April            Kaikoura - Geraldine

5 April            Geraldine - Lake Tekapo - Mount Cook - Twizel

6 April            Twizel - Wanaka

7 April            Wanaka - Arrowtown - Queenstown

8 April            Queenstown

9 April            Queenstown - Te Anau

10 April          Te Anau - Milford Sound - Te Anau

11 April          Te Anau - Bluff - Invercargill

12 April          Invercargill - Dunedin

13 April          Dunedin - Christchurch

14 April          Christchurch

15 April          Christchurch - Auckland

16 April          Auckland

17 April          Auckland

18 April          Auckland - Kuala Lumpur

 

The weather during our trip was quite marvellous. A combination of light rain and sunny days. The temperature was great too. Not too hot and neither too cold. My only disappointment was the leaves were not colourful enough even though we aimed our trip nearer to the middle of autumn.

 

My favourites during the trip were Mount Cook, Wellington and Queenstown. I was quite disappointed with Milford Sound and Te Anau Glow Worm Caves after reading such rave reviews from other travellers. Dunedin was a surprise though. Didn't expect that the city to be quite huge!

 

 

I normally drive quite slow and most of the highways in New Zealand are only two lanes so my favourite signboard during the trip was "Passing Lane Ahead". Thankfully all the drivers (even tourists) were very patient and followed the speed limit. During the trip we saw only one accident and it was at Auckland's six lanes highway. I guess slow driving does prevent accidents :)

 

All in all it was a good adventure. New Zealand is a tourists heaven most especially to English speaking visitors. Their tourism industry is so well managed. Our online bookings of car rental and accommodation were perfect. The roads are very well maintained. During our trip we frequently encountered road maintenance crews hard at work :) So if you plan to do a self drive holiday, don't hesitate. If I, an unadventurous lady can do it, I think almost everybody else can too!

 

 

It took me close to 6 months to process all the scenery photos. Serve me right for being camera trigger happy. You can end up with a lot of pictures if you are not careful. Took roughly around 2.7k photos (4 cameras) and after painstakingly going through one by one (4 separate files), I managed to reduce them to 1,404. I hope I've learnt my lesson and not make the same mistake during my next trip!

 

You may access the photos at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy!!

Japan: Winter - December 2013

 

Truth to tell I don't really like going for holidays during winter. I think it is so depressing when 5 p.m. feels like 8 p.m. However, since I like playing with snow I don't really have any choice do I? Unless of course you go to the fake snow house which I'm pretty sure I will like less than winter ;)

 

We went to Japan via China Airlines. This is the first time that I flew via this airline. The flights from Kuala Lumpur to Sapporo were quite pleasant. The meals on board were quite tasty. The flight attendants were polite and pretty. The inflight entertainment was satisfactory even though the selection of movies are quite limited. We had a short transit of two hours at Taipei International Airport. 

 

The flights from Sapporo to Kuala Lumpur were less enjoyable however with bland food served and the flight attendants were nowhere in sight. I know you can call them by pushing the button at your chair but I ended up walking to the back of the plane a few times to ask for some warm water. I don't know whether it is just me but I found that the flights home were extra dry and sucked the moisture out of me somehow :(

 

When we reached Sapporo International Airport we were quite alarmed when we saw that there was not even a speck of snow on the ground. I'm sure the Sapporo residents were quite happy with the sun shinning but for us who specifically flew to Japan to experience snow it was a bit disappointing. Luckily our disappointment was very short lived. The same night it was snowing and when we woke up the next morning the world was a winter wonderland :)

 

You can read my experience with show in my other posting here:

Snow Here Snow There Snow Everywhere!

 

 

For this trip (12-18 December 2013) we joined a Muslim tour organised by Ramza Travel & Tours Agency Sdn Bhd. The tour price was RM6700 per person (twin sharing). The Japanese local agent Zero Planning was very good. They made sure that we have an area to perform our prayers and even provide prayer mats and attire for the women. This is the first time that I went to a non-Muslim countries that have qiblah direction at the hotel rooms. Zero Planning also bought new cutleries for us. They even have a small prayer room and ablution area at their new office in Sapporo. Amazing and well done!

 

During our six nights there we stayed at three onsen hotels and two normal hotels. Frankly I would rather stay at normal hotels throughout since almost all tour members did not actually go to the onsen anyway. Note: Onsen is a hot spring or a resort that has developed around a hot spring. One of the local's favourite activities most especially during winter is dipping themselves in the therapeutic hot spring. The activity requires the participants to be totally naked.

 

I think it is quite safe to generalise that almost all Muslim women will not go to a public onsen wearing just their birthday suit. They may however go to a private one. So maybe this fact is something that Zero Planning might consider when they arrange bookings for hotels in the future for Muslim tours. If they insist on onsen hotels, make sure there is a private onsen available and let the tour participants know in advance how much is the cost for a private session. Alternatively just stay at a normal hotel close to shopping areas ;) 

 

I never really like Japanese food so I found that the food throughout the trip were quite bland. It was quite weird to eat rice for breakfast initially but at the end of the trip I quite like it. Love their breakfast dish of fried huge anchovy and fish :)

Since they are a green tea drinking society and I am the sweet tea kind of person I couldn't even enjoy their hot drinks. Their coffee was also extremely bitter that I have to put a lot of milk and sugar just to neutralise its bitterness.

Despite everything I do enjoy the trip because I get to experience many kind of snow and snowing styles. Shopping there was also quite a pleasure most especially for the shopaholics. Too bad I've already repented. My motto now is "Live Life Simply". So no more lugging stuff from overseas for me ;p

Will I come back to visit Japan in near future? Highly unlikely as this was my second trip to Japan already. The first time was to visit Tokyo during sakura season. A beautiful season in Japan.

I've uploaded 407 photos of the trip for your viewing pleasure. You can access them at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/mkhasha.n.travels/. Go to the photo albums.

Njoy!!