Epilogue: About 3 more weeks to go before I can get my long needed release from the shackles of boredom. In the meantime, it’s time to cultivate some mushrooms! Bored to death.
The SISTAHs namely SzeSze, YenPheng, SheiHan, XinMi, MingWei, ChiaMin, Lawrence and I went for our very own 3 days 4 nights graduation trip around the Northern Peninsular States (Perak, Kedah and Perlis) before all of us part from each other and our beloved USM. Because AhPheng has post her own written account about our graduation trip, I won’t be writing much in this post but instead will contain mostly pictorial account corresponding to AhPheng’s take with extra bits from myself here and there. So without further a due, let’s starts the pic dump!
9 April 2010 (Friday) – Pre-Trip Meriendita El Fin de Semestre and first night in Taiping.
This Meriendita (Tea Party in Spanish) El Fin de Semestre (the end of semester) is meant for two different batch of students, one is the 3rd year HBT307 Simultaneous Interpreting class and 2nd year HBT 214 Sight Translation class.
Our beloved Dr. Noraini Ibrahim-Gonzalez. She called we bunch of 3rd years as her first child! (because we are the first batch of student that she taught in her teaching life) Awww~~~
Kuih…err…tak tau nama.
Karipap.
Each of us are having a piece.
Aha! This is the thing that Ms Chuah brought back from Suomi to all of us: Salmiakki or licorice candies!
It’s black and it usually shaped as diamond. The taste? Er…salty. Feels almost like eating coagulated soy sauce whatever that means. The taste can be quite unsavoury for the uninitiated but after a few tries it taste fine even though it’s not a thing that you want to pop into your mouth non stop.
Cheers for all of us! We start off with Chilean drinking salute (Arriba, Abajo, A Centro , Al dentro!), before we moved on to Spanish (need to say a few words before cheering Salud!) and last one, the very Chinese Malaysian cheers of yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmsssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnggggggg!!!!!!!! lol we scream our heart out for this drinking salute.
Anyway,lets move on to the real trip itself.
Remember to replenish the water in your body for long distance driving!
Drop by to Saujana first to let ChiaMin pack her stuff.
Driver of the day: AhBui!
Me as a pretty useless co-driver.
And fellow passengers, YenPheng and ChiaMin!
Crossing Penang Bridge heading towards mainland…
And we moved closer and closer to Taiping, rain cloud started to form.
Taiping, here we come!
Looks like someone’s sleepy after long distance driving.
Yay railway track!
And here we are, a peek of Taiping Lake in late evening.
Dinner gang. From left XinMi, SzeSze aka the hostess for our trip in Taiping, Lawrence…
…YenPheng, SheiHan, ChiaMin and MingWei. After we had our quick dinner, we moved on to our very first stop of our graduation trip.
Taiping Zoo for it’s Night Safari. It is known as the best zoo in Malaysia, beating even the National Zoo at KL!
For the Night Safari, we need to take the in-park tourist tram-thing to go around the park and take a peek at the animals. While waiting for the train to be ready, obligatory camwhore ensues. Here’s the people seated in front, XM, SS, SH, CM and LW.
lol YP and MW sempat lagi posing and enter my camwhore pic!
As for the ride around the park itself, there are plenty of things to see…if it is in the day. The truth is that there’s no way we can see all animal under such dimmed lighting especially smaller animals. Luckily for us though, the larger animal are still very much visible at night such as my favorite Afrika Savanna Zone which has Zebra, Ostriches and Giraffes as well as elephant in their own enclosure. Here’s a rather crappy shot of the elephant eating in the dark. These pachyderms are pretty smart when they step on the large pieces of leafs and rip it off into smaller pieces using its trunk.
Central pavillion, the last stop for our in-park ride.
Small group pic at the signboard.
Yet another crappy night shot. See those white spot thing on the tree branches. All those are actually migratory birds, taking opportunity of the open space in Taiping Zoo to take a rest at night! Pretty nice to look at!
At the signboard located at the entrance/exit is a promotional booklet about the British Colonial Heritage building in Taiping. Exactly the thing that will pique my interest!
In the centre is the Taiping Clock Tower, the most prolific symbol of British heritage in Taiping.
King Edward VII School, Ms Chuah’s school during Form 6. Look at that intricate looking facade!
Taiping Government Office, almost the same style of architecture as the MPPP building at Padang Kota.
Perak Museum is located over Taiping too!
Another British officer’s residence.
Before we settle down for the night, Ms Chuah brought all of us to Taiping Old Market to have a lil supper. Taiping Old Market is quite similar to what we have over Kuching for Gambier Street Market. Unfortunately for us Kuchingite though, it was all gone for the Waterfront expansion project…
Anyway, ordered a cup of hot milo, complete with small chinese style stirring spoon typical of chinese kopitiam style.
To go along with the hot milo is traditional charcoal toasted bread! Its layer of butter and kaya is combined to perfection.
Ah Bui decided to go for a lil chinese fare by ordering Char Siew Pao 叉烧包. Her comment: taste just like Kuching! lol.
While me and XinMi, feeling of eating more, ordered Glutinous Rice with Chicken 糯米鸡.
As well as a little dimsum 点心.
Settled down at SzeSze’s spacious mansion of a home for the night before we continue our exploration for the next day. As we settle down in room, the girls do what girls do…
Guess who’s fingernails are these?
The gigantic huggable rabbit shaped pillow, dubbed as 妮妮妈妈的兔子, the poor stuffed rabbit doll in Crayon ShinChan who usually ends up as punching bag for Nene’s mom (and occasionally Nene herself) to vent their frustration when Shin-Chan’s antic aggravated them to boiling point. lol.
Looks like the pic spam is going to be very long! Next post: Day 2 in Taiping! Stay tuned!
Prologue: Haiya still got a few things to settle before I head back home, especially things related to my MA’s application. Who should I find to become my referrer? Hmm think think…
2 comments:
Bravo, Zhe Rong. I'm not sure if it's too early to congratulate you on your impending graduation, but I really like the fact that you're doing all these really cool roadtrips, and the like!
Looking forward to the 2nd post ...
=)
lol Thank you! I still have 4 months to go before I donned my graduation robe and mortar board so it's never too early or too late!
Now 2nd post in process. Pic spam is tiring!
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