Balance

Monday (10 August 2009)

Paddy Fields

Seberang Perai
8.30am: Head out from Tong Wei’s place towards Sungai Petani. Not much jam along the highway, thankfully.

Sungai Petani
Exit out from the highway into Sg Petani and immediately started to look out for signs to Muzium Lembah Bujang. It wasn’t hard to find and after touring a few main roads in Sg Petani, I’ve finally found the roadsigns to the Muzium.

Lembah Bujang
10.15am: Reached the muzium which is surprisingly located on a hilltop. I was actually thinking that the muzium would be at a ‘ground level’ location. The authorities relocated all the temples (Candi) found in the surrounding lands and reconstruct them at the muzium. There were in total 4 temple grounds.

Candi Lembah Bujang

Once I had enough of temples, I head back to Sungai Petani for lunch.

Sungai Petani
While driving through Sungai Petani earlier in search of Lembah Bujang, I kept noticing an ad or direction pointing to a certain Radix Fried Chicken. I’m curious as I have not heard of this food chain outlet before. Found one outlet and proceeded to survey the place. The menu is quite or should I say VERY similar to KFC, but with different names of course. It also supposed to have WIFI too. Great! I can upload my photos while I take a break for my lunch.
But alas, the WIFI wasn’t working and I didn’t get to upload anything at all. I then stopped by a shopping complex nearby to use the loo and check out the local stores. Got away from the mall as soon as I can, because although the mall looks new with trendy shops, but I was the only person walking around. I hate to be pulled in by every shop assistant around.

Alor Setar
My journey continues up north to Alor Setar. Drove into the town and immediate saw the distinctive Alor Setar Tower.

Alor Setar Tower

Made some turns here and there and I came to Pekan Rabu! It was supposed to be special in the old days to open only on Wednesdays, but now it is commercialized to open everyday. Okay, stopped to have a look, but I got place to park the car so I got back in and headed to the Tower.

Pekan Rabu

Figured out that I don’t want to spend my hours stuck in Alor Setar jam and proceeded to Jitra. Now comes the challenging part. After going up north, it is time to head to Pengkalan Hulu, where I would need to go down south to Gurun(via North South Expressway), turn east to Sik, head south-eat to Baling and north-east to Pengkalan Hulu.

Gurun - Baling
The entire journey from Gurun to Pengkalan Hulu would be on trunk and kampung roads. I made a mistake where I’ve missed a turning at Sik and eventually heading up north to Pedu Lake. Once I realised my mistake, I had gone by about 20kms! And so I head back the other direction back to Sik to find the correct junction to Baling.

Baling View

I remember from my history lessons that Baling was quite an important town. But there were no such signs anywhere. Now that I reread the history books, I figured out that the government might have suppressed the Communist ideology until the extend of forgetting this town as part of our history.

Pengkalan Hulu
From Baling to Pengkalan Hulu, the journey is about 15km on trunk road. At Pengkalan Hulu, I have a decision to make to either go up to the border to Betong or head back down to Gerik. Realising that I didn’t bring my passport an a huge billboard ad calling ‘Remember Your Loved Ones, Don’t Bring Back AIDS’, I head south to Gerik. I estimated that I couldn’t go anywhere further than Gerik and decided that this would be my last stop for the day before the sun goes down.

Gerik
5.30pm - Reached Gerik town. Scouted around the town for necessities…
Motel, check.
Hawker Food, check.
Cybercafe, check.
and best of all, Cantonese speaking Chinese majority, check!

Checked into a not-too-shabby motel run by a Chinese family (so I’m quite sure I would be hearing people banging in the room next door. Not sure if Gerik of all places would have such ’services’ too.)
Had a dinner of fried noodles and orange juices at a combined price of just RM4.50. Went back to the room to charge my laptop and handphone, regretting that I didnt bring along my camera charger (I really thought I packed it along …).
Prepped the pictures and blog text before heading to the cybercafe to go upload online.  Apparently there’s a 12.00 midnight curfew for businesses here and can only surf for less than 3 hours here. So I went back to the motel room to plan for tomorrow’s journey.

Saturday Evening (8 August 2009)
2.30pm - Last minute shopping for a pair of sneakers.
4.00pm - Sent the car to the Peugeot Service Center to have its first service check up.
5.00pm - Last minute packing of bags. Damn … remembered to take every charger except my camera charger!
6.00pm - Drove the car back to Ipoh after that.

Sunday (9 August 2009)
After having some vegetarian breakfast with the family, start my journey up north.
First stop, straight to Georgetown. It’s been a long while since I’ve been to Penang.

Welcome To Penang

I dont even remember the Penang Bridge. I thought the Komtar building was metalic in color but how weird it looked like to me in real life. It looks like a highrise apartment with its yellow coated paint.
Wanted to stop by Fort Cornwallis to have some photoshoot. Just as I step out from the car it started to rain! Bad luck…
Got back into the car and drive on. No longer than 10 mins, the rain stopped. What the hell …

Backdrop - Mainland Malaysia

Next plan, take a drive up Gurney Drive. It’s a different experience driving in the day when there’s not much traffic and people at all. But at least I got to see the actual buildings standing there.

Driving Along Gurney Drive

Then continued on my journey to Batu Feringhi. So many hotels & high rise condos along the beach line that there is rarely a sight of beach from the road.

Hard Rock Hotel Batu Feringhi - Still Under Construction

Stopped at Teluk Bahang to have some laksa Penang for lunch. I hope I don’t get diarrhea because I can never stand strong spices. After a short lunch break, head back to the mainland.

Teluk Bahang

Met up with Tong Wei in his Seberang Perai’s home. Dinner with him and his wife and a jug of beer later, watched Chelsea beat Man United. Well, it was a tiring day … and it was more like watching a football match til I fell asleep. Only found out about the score the next morning.

Thanks to him for his hospitality and his sharings. Since his wife is almost due, need to think of a gift for his first newborn pula …