What Patong Beach is first famous for? The beach off course! I’ve posted quite a number of Phuket travel stories so far but I still haven’t posted much things about the beach itself. This is it: The Patong Beach, the beach itself. We reached Phuket and Patong in the morning, had our first look at Patong Beach and had our first lunch at Jungceylon shopping mall. After lunch, we walked around the town to get some feel of the environment and local culture, and we headed back to our Safari Beach Resort for a brief nap…. zzzzzzzz.

In the late afternoon, we went out again. This time we were walking down to the beach, just across the Beach Road in front of our hotel (this is the best part of Safari Beach Hotel which situated in front of the beach and next door to Bangla Street). Have you ever experienced this: You thought of going somewhere or buying something on travel but you did not do it in the first place and you started to say to yourself, “Nevermind, I still can do that LATER”? And what would happen next? You would never have the 2nd chance to do it! It happened to me on my Gold Coast travel where we thought of going back to see the sunset at Surfers Paradise on our last day but we failed eventually as bad traffic delayed our way back from Hinterland and it was already night hours when we reached home…

So, whatever you think you want to do or see or buy on travel, DO IT IMMEDIATELY or you’re going to miss it! Same with our fun hours at the beach of Patong. If we delayed to go to the beach on our first day in Patong evening, we were going to miss the best evening sunlight in Patong as there were too cloudy to see sunset on the rest of our days in Phuket!

I love the late afternoon sunlight at Patong beach. The beach was so attractive under it…

While many tourists were sunbathing under the sun, there were many other activities going on the beach.

Beach parachute ride is a famous activities at Patong Beach.

We were doing something else…. crab catching!

Jetskiing is another favourite sport on the beach.

Love sunlight, lovely wife…

Beach soccer is among the local favourite sport on the beach. There are a lot of Thai soccer talents out there…

An illusion of moving sand after wave tides, one of my favourite shot.

Beach chairs could be rented for sunbathing and there are also best for people watching!

Singha Beer on the beach! Lovely!

The best part on the beach of Patong: visitors were served with complimentary Starbucks coffee! Wonderful! I couldn’t find any of this in Malaysian beach. Can you?

An unique feeling of tasting coffee on beach!

Though evening sun is bright, scattered clouds blocked parts of the sunset unfortunately…

The best dusk scene I could captured on the day in Patong Beach. The sun set at 7pm and we left the beach for our first dinner in Patong! What we did at night after dinner? Exploration on the Bangla Street, the most happening street in Patong and Phuket!

Don’t miss my upcoming stories on Phuket travel. I will try to wrap up the whole story of my travel to Phuket before this May. Why? In May I will write and concentrate more on my exciting short 14-day tour to Western Europe!

p/s: If you think this travel photo blog has something you are looking for and is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee. Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

This coming May would be my 2nd time visiting Western Europe. for the second time, my itinerary does not include any ski tour at any ski destination in The Alps. If you’ve read my Europe tour itinerary planning earlier, our travel to Western Europe shall pass across the Alps twice; Firstly, we traveled by train to Venice passing through the mountain range; Secondly, we will fly over the Alps from Rome to London. along the way we could stop at Switzerland or Southern France for a short ski tour but we do not. In view of our tight budget and tight schedule, we have to pass it over for the second time. It happened to be the same situation as in my first time to Europe. So my dream ski vacation to Mont Blanc and The Alps would remain as my dream…

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe, measuring 4,800m above Sea Water Level. The Mont Blanc Massif is the popular site for skiing, mountaineering, hiking and snowboarding. Chamonix is the French town to stay around Mont Blanc.

I skied only once back in my school time in Scotland over 10 years ago. In fact it was only a short hour fun before snow storming. So, skiing remains a new sports to me. I was dreaming then one day I would arrange a long ski vacation at one of the ski destination in the Alps, staying in a ski resort and experience the excitement of the game and the white environment. I did even dream of owning a French property near Mont Blanc so I could overlook the White Mountain every holidays! Perhaps I should start with a proper ski lessons in the near future…

As world temperature is rising every year, thanks to our own human daily activities and desire, ice is slowly melting away. Snows at the Alps or other white mountains are getting thinner and thinner. One day, we would not be able to see any snows on the Alps or Mont Blanc. So, if possible, visit them NOW before it disappears! If there is ski property for sale, consider to grab one for investment as people will rush to see the last piece of snow land in the future! – Travel Feeder, your travel photo blog.

If you are visiting Malaysia, one of the top places to go in Malaysia should include the Langkawi Island in northern Peninsular Malaysia. What can you see in Langkawi? Other than beaches or Perdana Gelleria, the next hot spot to go must be this crocodile farm. In fact there are not much things you can see in Langkawi but this farm surely worth a visit. Langkawi Crocodile Farm or Taman Buaya Langkawi in Malay is a 20-Acre-Land featuring over 1000’s of crocodiles in various species and also alligators, in a few separated man-made ponds.

I went there last year on my company trip to Langkawi. It has been 10 years since my last time there and there are still reasons to revisit this island.

After paying RM8 entrance fees, visitors could explore the garden the way you like freely. The main pond is the biggest with pedestrian bridge built over it.

Visitors could walk slowly on this bridge overlooking many crocodiles doing all sorts of activities resembling their real lives.

The environment within this 2o acre compound is very nice, comfortable, clean with lush greenery.

Wow, look at that! What’s the species of these crawling crocodile?

Further strolling down the walking path, we came to the show pond. No seating provided, visitors have to stand around the stage to watch the ‘man vs crocodile’ live performances.

There are 2 ‘old’ and tamed but big crocodiles in 2 small ponds. First of them came out of water to start the show…

Why is he opening his big jaw with sharp teeth? Any prey around? The audience?

Oops! He actually just woke up and waiting his teeth to be brushed!

Simple action. The crocodile went back into the pond to sleep again after that. Lazy creature…

Now. The highlight of the day came. The second giant crocodile is coming!

Anaconda?

Water being sprayed onto her rapidly as she was crawling up. A hot tempered one I guess…

Dang dang…. dang dang… dang dang…..dang dang….

“Hi! How are you? Stay your head up will you?”

“Don’t move babe! I’m on your back…”

“Freeze!”

“Oh no! She is opening her mouth! Run! Guy Run!”

“Don’t worry! Superman is here… ”

“Err… let me test whether her teeth or my arm is stronger… ”

It’s more than 4m in length! Ladies and gentlemen, the show is over.

We continued to walk through the bridge over pond.

Wondering what are they doing? Sleeping? Chatting? Playing? Dying?

It suddenly rained. Look at them! They are alive! They definitely love rains!

We came to another pond. Oh no! These crocodiles are not friendly at all! They are looking for preys! They are mouth watering…

Oh I see. This is the feeding pond where crocodiles who are starving will crawle to here to look for real food, fresh meat. Only difference is there are served by trainers.

“Bye bye! Food’s finished! Not full enough? Try to be stronger next time!”

Other than that, visitors could also find a restaurant and a souvenirs shop inside the Langkawi Crocodile Farm. For RM8 per entry, you can spend your time there from 9am to 6pm. We stayed there for one and 1 half hour and that should be enough unless you are having lunch there or wandering in the souvenir shop. “Is it worth to go?” Should pay a visit if you haven’t been there before. “Is this post worth to read?” Must subscribe to my Feed via RSS or email if you haven’t done so! – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog

The above photos were captured with Panasonic Lumix FZ28

Sounds like a devotee? Yes. Temple after temple on the 5th Day of Chinese New Year (年初五). We went to TianHou Temple, the biggest temple in KL after brunch (Malaysian slang: Breakfast and Lunch together!), and visited the Taiwan’s FuoGuangShan (佛光山) initiated DongZen Temple after dinner. It was actually planned by me. If you have read my previous post about TianHou Temple at night and FGS DongZen Temple at day last year, this is an update to the same places but in different time of day!

What are the 2 things dominated temples during Chinese New Year? Bingo! It’s lanterns and incense. Here are some photos captured in Tian Hou Temple…

There were people all over the temple who came here for prayer, devotion, site seeing, lantern watching, photo taking and so on…

What you could see from the above photos other than lanterns are lanterns or else lanterns. Have you got enough?

In the evening, we travelled for 1 and a half hour to another temple in Jenjarom, near Banting, Selangor. It’s DongZen Temple. Parking were all full and we needed to parked our car 2 blocks away. DongZen temple is the uprising destination during Chinese New Year because of it’s attractive lighting at night. Many people come here merely for it light decorations every year. I’m one of them…

All decorations with lighting are creatively designed and constructed with steel frame and thin cloth.

Wu Hoo! (五虎) Five tigers in the Year of Tiger.

GuanYin in a lotus pond.

Lanterns. This time is a mix of red and yellow lanterns…

At around 10:00pm, actress acting like a GuanYin (观音) parading in the crowd and splashing holy water to the crowd.

This sculpture of Buddha attracted many crowds as well.

Remember where the ‘paper felt’ buddha statue stood last year? It’s GuanYin statue this year…

As there were so crowded inside the compound, I did not take many photos indeed. These are just some introduction images to DongZen Temple at night. The traffic was so jam when we left the place and guess what? We reached home at 1:30am!

Today is the 11th Day of Chinese New Year. There are still 4 days for whoever interested to see all these lighting and lanterns at these 2 temples. And I’m still have 4 days to celebrate this Chinese New Year of Tiger. GONG XI FA CAI – Travel Feeder, your only travel photo blog.

It’s coming! Another 2 months and I’ll be in London! A big round of applause to our budget airline AirAsia, which had encouraged me to travel to Europe again after 12 years. I’ve booked my air tickets 3 months ago and I finally have my first Western Europe tour itinerary drafted recently. The whole idea of the trip is to visit some of the top cities in Western Europe in a short period of only 14 days. Reasons why being such a short period off course includes budget, my work and also my children. So 14 days is all we (initially I’m going with my wife only but eventually we are going in a group of 5 including Jean, her siste, my brother in law and a friend of mine) have in Europe. And my role has also changed from a husband and lover to a tour leader and organiser of this small tour group! Ha ha!

If you know where I’m coming from, I’m the advocate for budget travel. It would be my biggest pleasure to have saved more in my travel! Since budget is our next biggest constraint other than time, how and which cities to cover in Europe is a challenge to me. Since none of them have been to Europe before, I thought we better concentrate on those my Top 5 Cities in Europe. To be less ambitious, I’ve opted out Prague. Since we have only 14 days, I decided we travel only the Western European coutries, start from and end in London (the only European destination Air Asia X covers).

In order to plan out our preliminary itinerary of the Western Europe trip, I needed to consider these following factors in advance:

1. Transportation cost. I would say transportation cost is the biggest expense of our trip, contribute no less than 50% of the total cost. Though we have bought low fare air tickets to London, we still need to move domestically from London to other cities and countries. We have 2 options here: by plane of train. Different route has different pricing at different timing. In other words, it affects my itinerary planning with tight budget!
2. Number of places of interest. Firstly, transportation cost would increase if we travel more. Secondly, less time we are going to have at each destination if we travel more. Thirdly, which travel destinations we would die for visiting it once? These are the factors to consider.
3. Season or Festival? Since we have confirmed our return flight tickets, we couldn’t change the season when we will be there. I prefer travelling Europe in May because it’s end of Spring. I love vibrancy of Spring and Jean scared of coldness, that’s it. It’s already my perfect traveling period to Europe. Festival? Ok, I’m searching for the period of any festival going on there during May, so we could pop by if possible (or we could avoid for extremely high crowd). Also the day of weekly open flea market might be our consideration as well;
4. Accommodation cost. Budget hotel in Paris would not cost the same with either Venice or London. So planning our itinerary would also depends on the cost of living and number of days to stay there. For me, any place or city in Europe has its own attractions that worth hundreds Euro to stay and needs months to explore. So, which travel destination to stay longer would only depends on the accommodation cost of that place. that’s the only factor, and
5. Strictly for ladies. They haven’t got enough money to try the German knuckles or beer but they always have plenty to spend on fashion! Insertion of certain shopping paradise into our itinerary would please our ladies in group. Planning to spend a day in London shopping at the final days would be a good idea.

In view of the above factors, I have drafted a preliminary Western Europe tour itinerary for 14 days. Check this out:

1. 1st day – From KL to London. Stay in central London;
2. 2nd day – From London to Paris via EuroStar. Stay 2 nights;
3. 4th day – from Paris to Munich via rail. Stay 1 night;
4. 5th day – From Munich to Venice. Stay 2 nights;
5. 7th day – From Venice to Florence. Stay 2 night;
6. 9th day – From Florence to Rome. Stay 2 nights;
7. 11th day – From Rome back to London. Stay 2 nights, and
8. 13th day (midnight) – From London back to KL on the 14th day.

This is just my preliminary planning. I need your feedback to tell me whether I’m too ambitious or we should stay more days in either city. What do you think about this itinerary for short trip to Western Europe? – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.