Singapore Trip

The iconic Merlion @ Merlion Park adjacent to One Fullerton

Have I been to Singapore? YES!

Like finally after so many years. I've been wanting to visit the neighbouring country for such a long time, merely because I watch Singaporean production when I was younger, and heard a lot about the country through my friends.

The only reason why I didn't get to go would be the currency. Their currency rate is about RM2.58 = SGD1, which is slightly not affordable for us. This is also why my family never thought of bringing us over.

Maxwell Food Centre @ the heart of China Town
(Located at Kadayanallur Street Road in the Raffles Place District)

Due to the lack of sleep the night before in order to catch the morning flight, we decided to change the original plan of visiting the Gardens of the Bay to visiting Clarke Quay. Dinner was settled in Maxwell Food Centre, which is one of my go-to destination. My tour guide (who has been in Singapore for more than 7 times) went to queue for the famous Chicken Rice and waited for almost 30 minutes for a plate of chicken rice.

To be honest, I cannot tell if this is the famous stall, but there is this saying amongst the friends, "whenever you see a queue, follow and you will never go wrong". But in my opinion, the plate of chicken rice to me was just normal, not sure about Ivan (my personal tour guide).

Clarke Quay is quite a nice place, it somehow reminds me of Darling Harbour in Sydney. Stroll along the riverside you can see a lot of restaurants and drinking place. There are a lot of people especially couples who sits around the riverside and talk whole night.

I wouldn't mind drinking at one of the pubs if I am earning their currency, the environment and ambience is just awesome. Just choose a perfect corner, order a drink and begin to people watch, quite cool don't you think? Maybe one day :)

Sun Setting @ Gardens by the Bay / Marina Bay Sands

Second day was mainly travelling around the city. To keep the entry short, in the morning for brunch we went to Ikkousha Hakata Ramen restaurant for their awesome Ramen located at Tanjong Pagar. After meal, we headed for coffee at The Plain somewhere nearby. Headed to Bugis Street (another to-go destination), explored China Town, coffee again and finally to the Gardens by the Bay.

It did quite a lot of walking, but I still feel fat anyhow from all the food, desserts and coffees I had throughout the trip. Had my camera with me the whole day, beside taking photographs of the scenery, I too shot some random shots of people around, either walking around, or taking selfie/ussie.

One of my best shot would be the one shown below, the panoramic view of the city from the Marina Bay. It was a compilation of 3 shots with the help of Photoshop. Don't know what you think about this but personally I find it awesome!

Panoramic view of the city via Marina Bay

Third day was kinda normal, places covered are mainly the other malls you normally hear from your peers i.e. Suntec City Mall, Vivo City and eventually we went to the Universal Studio Singapore because Ivan wants to trade his Hard Rock Lapel Pins.

It was a long queue if we were to take the train back to Vivo City from the USS, so we decided to walk back. It's quite a long distance to walk bank, but it's good to walk no? Plus, I managed to get another sun set shot, with the view of the cable car. Looks kinda nice as well ;) (self praising)

But seriously, don't you think that the view is awesome?

Final day was spent well in the Orchard Road, however it begin raining heavily at around lunch time and I felt kind of grateful that it did not rain for the past few days when I was travelling around. I would say this is good despite the blazing hot sun and I feel very happy about it.

Overall trip is fine, but it can be better. To be honest, I never plan to visit this country again because of the currency, it simply doesn't worth it. But let's see how, we cannot foresee the future right? Who knows what will happen soon. 

Phone Screen Wallpaper

Lately I've been travelling around, took some good shots via my phone, edited it and thought it suits as my phone wallpaper. The third photo (on the right) is my current wallpaper.

This is random. Just thought of sharing and showing off, while keeping the blog updated :)

Trust Issue

Table top décor which was shot in one random hotel in KL 

And I was away for 2 months again =.= (as expected right? meh!)

Anyways, was kinda frustrated with people making use of one and another for personal selfish purpose. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that I've never done it before. Well, no one is perfect, but when you know that this person is obviously - and I highlight "obviously" - making use of your trust, that action tends to make me feel nausea.

I know what you want, and if you want to sweet talk your way there, just go ahead. I'm gonna act as thou I've fallen into your sweet trap, and secretly plot my agenda, wait for the perfect timing and deliver you the deadly hit!

Just kidding, I'm not that bad alright? XD

Okay, gonna hit the sack now. Good night!

Trip to Cambodia

Angkor Wat @ Cambodia

I finally get to visit Cambodia last month! It was actually an invitation by a friend as he won a pair of air ticket to Phnom Penh, if it's not because of him, I don't think I will make any planning to visit this heritage spot any time soon. Lucky me for his wining, I get to explore one of the many to-go attractions spots in my list.

You're right! Angkor Wat is located in Siem Reap, so for us to get to Angkor Wat, we need to travel from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap first.

This was a 4 days 3 nights trip, for us to travel from PP to SR we can choose 3 different method to travel - by flight, by ferry or by bus. Optimally, by flight would be the best as it saves time and probably the safest way to travel, however it's also the most expensive option as it cost us up to $100 (USD) per trip per pax.

We finally decided to travel by bus thinking it is going to be a 5-7 hours trip which may be still bearable, and that's when our second nightmare began. 

Our nightmares:

1. Got introduced by the local to take their local bus to SR. Thinking of experiencing something local, we didn't mind trying our luck. It cost us $26 for a one-way trip for the 2 of us, which we eventually feels it doesn't really worth it.
2. Mr Google told us that it only take us 5-7hours to reach SR from PP but it took us up to 9 hours to arrive. Imagine sitting in a squeezy and confined area, going through bumpy ride without dinner, only arrived SR at about 9pm. The horror!

First night ended with roadside stall, never realized a bowl of normal beehoon soup can taste so good!

First day was wasted in the bus, but it was indeed fun catching up with my friend (aside from sleeping during the ride to SR). Early morning on the second day about 5-ish we were already standing in front of Angkor Wat, planning to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately, dawn broke over the temple upon our arrival, and it was quite cloudy then, hence we did not see the sun.

Angkor Archaeological Park covers quite a huge area, and you simply cannot walk from one temple to the other if you're planning to stay there for a day. For us, we've had engaged a tuk-tuk driver for a day which cost us about $20.

I'm not going into details on the temples that we've visited, you ought to visit all the temples and you will discover all its similarities and differences. To me, I found a lot of similarities from one and another - without know its actual story behind the structure. So if you want to know the history about each and every temple (i.e. which temple was built first, the reason of building the second temple, etc.) it's best to engage a local tour guide to do the explaining.

If you have a creative eye and is able to capture the soul of a building/structure/scenery/people through different angle/perspective, then you may enjoy your trip here too. I admit my eyes is not that creative and I cannot see things differently, so all my shots seems quite dull.

Two thing I need to tell you:

1. There are quite a fair bit of locals who will approach you in the temple, encouraging you to pray to the Buddha statue nearby for good luck, for your friends and family, and they will pass you joss sticks during the process. In return, you need to pay for it, and they will tell you it's meant for the monks. DO NOT trust them, unless you're feeling generous. Otherwise just avoid eye contact with them.
2. Young children/local adult will come surrounding you in group or "attack" you individually, hoping you will buy their magnet, post card, drinking water and many others. It's up to you who you wanna buy from, but please beware that once you purchase from one person, normally the others will come and try their luck. If you're good with your earlier purchase, you may reject them politely, otherwise, go through a different route to avoid them.

To be honest, I really wish I can write an awesome blog post about my trip. But I don't think I can remember much details to share everything. All I can say is that Angkor Wat is an awesome place, which I wish I can stay much longer and have someone to explain to me on the history of these temples. 1 day is definitely not enough.

Food wise is good, their amok (Cambodian soup) and their stir fried dishes are quite tasty. Safety wise, I personally think it's alright, I don't feel as scared walking in the city with my bags and valuables at night, as compare to KL. Accommodation wise, I believe there are quite a few reasonable guest houses around which you can find, I will opt to stay in a guest house in the future if I get another chance to visit SR again.

Due to the long bus ride, we didn't get to enjoy PP much. However, I will make sure I visit Cambodia again, and this time I will try to have enough time to visit all the places around.

New Layout

I wonder if any noticed I've changed my blog layout?

Personally, I prefer the latest update, it looks clean and less cluttered.

I have more space to play with, the photo size can also be as large as possible.

 What say you?

Before & After comparison

Why Hanson?

If you have my phone number and we are connected through Whatsapp, you'd have noticed that my screen name is Hanson instead of my name. Some may get confused with this, my client even called me Hanson after a few rounds receiving my text.

Now you wonder, why Hanson?

Well, there is actually a story behind this screen name, and it happened 4 years ago when I was studying in Australia. Back then I have a course mate, whom I think he is from Spain, quite good looking and tall, the typical handsome man girls like. His name is Javier.

Javier has a very friendly personality. He has lots of ideas and he is quite creative when it comes to his assignments - I know because I attended the same film production class with him then. For those who don't know the actual pronunciation might have read his name as Jar-v-yer, twice by now. But nope, you're wrong. You know how Spanish people pronounce J with a H sound? So the proper pronunciation should be Har-v-yer (don't even know if I'm 'spelling' it right right now).

Anyway, back to Javier. So one day, my friend whom is a total stranger to Javier happened to sit next to him when we were on our bus ride to town. I don't even know what or how exactly it happen, they began talking to each and other and introduced themselves. So she finally got to know him and was so impressed by him. I wonder how much she knows about him in within a 20 minute bus ride but she was just mad and almost gone crazy for him.

So she was telling us about him - his name, where he's from and the correct way to pronounce his name... and from that day on wards, she has decided to call me Jason - not the normal pronunciation Jay-son, but Hay-son.

I thought it was quite interesting and thought of using it as my screen name for Whatsapp, but Hayson/Heyson looks very weird so decided to use something more general and I thought of the name Hanson. So from that day onwards, I renamed my Whatsapp as Hanson and never change ever since.

Yeap. This is the end of the story. So now, if you like to call me Hanson, I will also react to it. I have too many names for different social media anyway. Just a way to satisfied my 'multiple personality disorder' craves perhaps.

I wonder?

I somehow logged into my blog account and the urge of blogging suddenly came back for a while. Yes, for a good 30 second. Seriously, I wonder who still blogs these days? But in actual fact, there are still people who are passionate about blogging - they usually blog about their daily life, or do some products comparison or events attended? Whatever.

I wonder if my hands full of reader are still passionate about reading blogs, or at least still interested to read mine? Since the last post was posted about 2 years ago, I doubt anyone will bother coming back right?

Whatever. I might continue blogging, or maybe not, it depends. I still dont know what I can blog about, perhaps my life or complaints about my daily work and shits? Let's see what inspires me next.

Okay, time to sleep. Good night!