In the absence of the moon....

Currently Listening to:

Winner Takes It All

by

Il Divo

I feel like a ROTTEN POTATO....

Because

The POTATO feels ROTTEN....

Forgive me.

Please forgive me....

Dafodils along my high way....

Currently Listening to: River Flows in You by Yiruma

Okay, sorry again for the absence. As stated before Dec 08 was a busy month for me. My Fraser's Hill trip was fine (probaly won't blog about it but pics will be uploaded in Facebook la - hopefully) and not long after I came back, I stayed over at Jenny's for a couple of days (explains the absence) before she flies off to US. So now I am back and chilled. And am in leisure to blog about my Turkey trip. I won't post that many pictures here as most of them are available on Facebook (actually only a fraction there - with 800+ pics - I had scrutinize every choice before uploading - end up only uploading less than 200 pics) and kalau nak tengok more, come to my house je la. :P

Day 1 of tour in Turkey (Istanbul and Canakkale):
Visited the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and Haghia Sophia (San Sophia Church). Later on procedeed to Canakkale by ferry.

Temperature outside: 5 degrees

Arrival in Istanbul - Atarturk Airport

First picture outside the airport -in the bus-

Jalan raya dia orang...

The famous Blue Mosque

Their common walking road - macam Europe. Not pleasant to walk on for people with small feet (macam aku)

The Obelisk of Theodosius

Blue Mosque courtyard

Cantik la....

Inside the Blue Mosque - prayer hall - had to tanggal kasut. The reason it was called the Blue Mosque was because the glass windows were blue and when the sun light came in, it made the mosque look blue (from within).

Way to Topkapi Palace - I just love the trees.

Background: Topkapi Palace. This is their common snack kat the jalan - some kind of bread - macam kita orang punya pretzel.

Blue Mosque again

It was a nice walk to Topkapi Palace

Lovely view of the East and West of Istanbul. We were in the East side (European) and the West - across the sea - is the Asian side.

Love this pic

Their street cats are really big, fat, fluffy and voluptuous!! Macam our home cats...

Inside San Sophia church (which was later turned into a mosque and later into a museum)

Love the interior

Preservation going on...

In the eveing we headed on to Canakkale - after a 3 hour coach ride (we spend more of our tour coaching - travelled almost half the country - Turkey is big!) in a big ferry - which was FREEZING outside. But I loved it! Muahahah!

This is the famous Turkish tea called 'chai'. All their tea cups look like that and their apple tea is good too.

*******

Okay, I gotta stop here. More to come on day 2 of tour. Actually banyak yang I can talk bout my vacation in Turkey - experience, people, culture, language, lifestyle, history etc.- but malas to blog panjang2. If ya wanna hear more, just let me know - I can yakk non-stop about it to ya! :D

Hehehe... okies have a HAPPY AND BLESSED NEW YEAR ya!

Lotsa love and God bless!

*hugs*

Aurora....

Currently Listening to:

The Day I Fall In Love

by

James Ingram

The Potato is back!!! Her trip to Turkey was amazing! She travelled almost half the country (which half of the tour was spend coaching in the bus from city to city- blessedly she bought her Twilight book to read - twice!)

Weather there was so good, cool to cold and sunny! According to my research (before going), it was suppose to be cold and wet, but blessedly it was not! :) Winter was great! Temperature ranged from -4 degrees to 15 degress; depending on places. The South seemed much more colder - and SNOW was a fantastic attraction for pictures in Cappadocia (most South) which took a mere 11 hours (by coach) to travel to!

The Potato is not gonna upload pics yet as there are almost 800+ pics which have yet to be sorted according to day, place and preference. Let's not forget the editing of size for easy upload, hehe. Most probaly pictures will appear in Facebook first - hopefully by this week.

Just so you know, the Potato fell ILL on the second last day of the tour! Blessedly it was almost the end of the trip, if not DIE wei, hehe. I think she got it on the Boisborus Cruise - it was freaking freezing. So much for overestimating her tolerance for the cold. It was horrible after then - fever, flu, cold, cough, sorethroat, phlegm, headache, bone aches and piercing coldness in the body! Had a lot of panadols then and the moment she got back to KL, she had to see a doc and got an injection on her butt! And it was far from pleasant. she shall not go into the details in which she resents the doc for still prescribing her with tons of medications the size of her pinky and how awful each pill tasted down her throat!

And the flight was horrible! It made the sickness worse and the uncomfortable seat nearly cracked her bones inside out - 12 hours!!!

Note: The Potato despises Malaysian Airline Seats - Not short people friendly seats!

From KL to Dubai (vice versa) - 7 hours
Transit in Dubai - 1 and a half hours
Dubai to Istanbul (vice versa) - 4 hours

A little preview here of whats to come: Family pic - mum, aunt (second), the Potato and aunt (fifth) in Cappadokia with 'fairy chimmenies' - and yes, the white colour in the background is snow. :P

Thank the Lord Almighty for a safe and beautiful trip.

All glory goes to Him, Amen! :D

Raining Butterflies!

Had a great week and awesome weekend...

Happy Merdeka btw...!!!

Been to 1 Utama 5 days in a row

Shopped

Watched 3 movies

Hung out with lotsa friends and family non stop

Pasar Malam

Klang Bak Kut Teh

Church

Big family dinner (Tan)

Lovely, hearty and friendly-laughing meals (friends and family)

Bonding moments *smiles*

Sweet conversations

Wall E obsession

Smiled too much till it hurt

Meeting 'old' friends

Meetng 'new' friends

None-stop girly chattering in the car...hehe.

Merdeka day outing :)

Friends

More friends

People

Uncle Hang's birthday

Jenny mei mei darling's birthday :D

Seeing more and more of God's faithfulness and blessings in me

Out 18 hours a day

Tired, but having fun! :D

Come rain, come shine!

God bless and HUGS!

A Breathe of Sunshine

Currently Listenin to: I'm Your Angel by Celine Dion

At last, after a lethargic PMS period, boring classes, mental emo-ness, physical laziness and mysterious headaches, I have finally installed the 'omph' to blog about my day 5 in Cambodia. :)

So on day 5, we were still in Phnom Penh and and the city tour continues. We visited the King's Palace, Watt Phnom, Russian Market and had a River Cruise. It was a splendid day as I never new the Kings's Palace was so huge with lotsa mini palaces in it. It was beautiful and filled with culture and err... Buddha statues...haha. Maklum la, Cambodia is a very religious country and Buddism is a man part of it. Many of the palaces were turned into temples. Many cambodians would often visit the King's Palace to pray (for free entry) while us tourists have to 'donate' USD 6 to enter. The pics coming up consist of the palace tour but unfortunately, photography is not allowed inside the palaces's internal domain (inside), hence only buildings. There are also no pictures on the shopping spree (yes, again shopping, almost hari2 there shopping) at the famous Russian Market because I had too many things in my hand (:P) then and it was really too hot in there (that I chose to hold my fan instead of the camera). So anyway.... let the pics begin and let the story continue.... :D

Day 5 in Cambodia: King's Palace, Watt Phnom, Russian Market and River Cruise

This tree here adorned the entrance of the palace. I find it to be really beautiful and interesting as it was uncommon and elegant looking. Note that it rarely has any leaves but the thin branches and pretty flowers. The flowers look really sweet upclose.
I just had to take a pic of this banana tree. Or should I say just 'banana'! Have you seen so many bananas (or so long) on one tree? I know I havent.
Map of the entire palace domain. It's pretty big. Or should I say very BIG. Click to view more.
From here onwards... there will be many pics of different palaces inside the whole palace compound. And I mean a lot! This is one of em...

Must kaki ayam when masuk...











Inside one of the palaces... because takde orang... I tried taking pics...hehehe. This, ladies and gentlemen is a giant golden foot print of Buddha.

Golden Buddha and if you look closely, it's adorned with diamonds.
There must be hundreds of thousands of buddha statues in the entire King's Palace and almost everywhere inside each palace is filled with buddha statues.
The walls of the internal compound... Cambodians just love to have history on their walls. :)
Then there's the exhibition rooms....Here, we have the significant (so to speak) white elephant of the king... oh, and with lotsa buddhas too.
The raja punya throne thingie when he tak nak jalan :P This is one of many, too lazy then to take all the chairs then.

There's an exibition room whereby lotsa golden elephants where put in display, the entire room glittered with gold!
Royal Seal... pretty nice to play with :P
Outside the palace... From the jalan besar...

Which by then, obviously, we dah habis our palace tour and moving on...

Did not take as many pics as I thought I would as it was really hot then and I really needed in my hand was my fold-able fan to make sure I didnt melt. :P

The interesting thing about Cambodia is that during their pilihan raya, they dont advertise like we do (TV, ads, banners etc). Instead... a few days before the election day, they'll have a really big and long convoy of the campaign like a big parade! FYI, during our stay in Cambodia, it was the election week.. :P So we had a chance to see how another country have their pilihan raya. These two pics show how it's all like. And mind you, we sat in the tuk tuk for 15 mins in the traffic waiting for the whole convoy to past. Imagine the length and amount of cars, people etc for it.

This is the Cambodian Parliment.
This is Watt Phnom. A monument / temple dedicated to the lady who founded Phnom Penh. There's only one picture as the camera was running out of space and again, the heat compelled me to stick to the fan instead of the camera.
We took a stroll after that alongside the river (in which we will take a cruise in the evening)...
Their makanan ringan or road side food junk.... Siput with salt :P

And after that, we headed to the Russian Market for more shopping!!! But no pics la (explained d why above). And then later we had a river cruise. What's so significant about this cruise is that this river leads and joins with three other rivers (it's something fascinating apparently to my dad) from different parts of the country as well as connecting to Vietnam. So we charttered a boat with 15USD for the entire cruise which was about 2 hours. We were hosted by a lovely family (the boat is their house!). It was a really sweet and comfy house/boat.

The banks of Phnom Penh and the other 'cruise' boats.
There.... is where Vietnam is.
Top of the boat... me parents enjoying the breeze.
The union of 2 (and behind is the third) rivers....
Sweet sweet daughters of the boat. My mum gave em little angpaus...haha.

*****

So that ends day 5 of Cambodia. Will be posting on day 6 soon and then HABIS! Hahaha.... hope you got a little exposure on Cambodia through my little bloggie. Have a nice weekend and God bless. Hugs!