Harrods, the famous name you should have heard of. It is the luxury departmental store in London. Many celebrities and royal families love to shop there. Established in 1834, 7-storey Harrods is the biggest store in London with a total area of more than a million square feet. From a grocery store when it was first started, Harrods has now been transformed into a prestigious departmental store selling all varieties of luxury goods, fashions, services and foods in over 300 departments within its premises in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, London, UK.

Local fashion ‘big name‘ such as Burberry are prominently housed in store. Travelers visiting London should add Harrods into their ‘must-visit‘ tour itinerary eventhough shopping is not in your list. It’s located in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which is 2km West of London city centre.

It is reachable by taking taking the Piccadilly Line of London Underground and get off at Knightsbridge station, either you are from Heathrow Airport or Leicester Square. Very convenient and it costs £4 per way. From the underground station, you need to walk like 200m along Brompton Road and some other luxury boutiques before seeing Harrods in front of you. Opposite it is the latest TopShop outlet (another big name in UK fashion).

It’s a huge store put it this way. If  you plan to really explore every corner of Harrods, you need at least 1 whole day. You can do that if you have plenty of time and if you are a real shopaholic and there are over 30 eateries within the premise. However, if you are planning just to witness the luxurious environment within and people watching, with just a couple of hours to spare, you can briefly go round the Ground floor and stop over at its unique Food Hall at Ground Floor.

Food Hall in Harrods is indeed food lovers paradise. You can find all the finest and freshest foods under one roof. The best part of it is amidst those counters selling charcuterie, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, candy, bakery and poultry, there are also 13 restaurants and cafes where you can dine in for lunch or dinner. Let’s follow me to travel around the Food Hall by photos taken by me below.

Fresh seafood counters.

Even fresher seafoods…

Rotisserie, a restaurant for all sorts of quality flame-roasted meat, chicken, duck and lamb from the meat counter in Harrods food hall.

The Pantry department where you can find jams, biscuits and more. Take a look at the ceiling. There are unique ceiling design to each departments and they are beautiful.

Bakery department. These are special made Harrods pastries that cost a bomb. However, if you are lucky enough, you can try it with 50% off the original price!

Candy department. Again, these are exclusive Harrods candies which could not be found any other place…

Next to the pantry is Fruit and Vegetable Department. The beauty and the mess…

Red Currants, Black Berries, Rasp Berries. Do you fancy any of them? Selling at £7-£10 per small box!

Another food and gourmet counter. Mouth watering…

Specialty confectionery and patisserie counter. Do you think you want to try? With such a price tag?

What about 50% discount? Such a good news for budget traveler, like me…

UPDATED: Click above slideshow to view complete travel photos of London

UPDATED: Click HERE to view High Resolution Lightbox of all the above photos in Harrods and Its Food Hall!

Eventhough you are not shopaholic and you have limited budget on your London travel, visiting the Food Hall in Harrods sure will worth the £4 underground ticket. We bought the daily ticket which covers Knightsbridge as well as other travel destinations in London for only £5.60. So it was even more worthwhile to pay Harrods a visit.

However, there are few visitors guidelines that should be put attention on. Visitors must ensure all clothing is clean and presentable and that the appropriate footwear is worn whilst in the store. The most relevant rules to me is that I was asked to carry rucksacks in my hand rather than on my back or shoulder. This is both to prevent damage to displays and for health and safety reasons. Harrods provides a left luggage service at small cost, should the bag be too heavy to carry. Another affecting rules to me is the restriction of taking photos in any area within the store where photography or filming may not be appropriate. That is why these photos here are extremely valuable! Hope you enjoy. Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or email Feeds for upcoming free updates on my stories of Europe travel. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

Recently I was being tagged by Mark from Travel Wonders Of The World when he wrote about Three Travel Secrets of Sydney. Not because he referred some of its content to Travel Feeder. It’s beacuse of a game intiated by Katie from TripBase where worldwide bloggers list their Three Best Travel Secrets and then tag other bloggers to grow this tree of travel secrets. So, thanks Mark for his tag and now I have to continue the game by writing some travel secrets!

Normally, visitors or tourists travelling to one travel destination for few days or few weeks would not be able to figure out the secrets behind the scene of a city. Only when someone stays there up to a few months or years would find them out. Otherwise, residents living there would be the best person to tell you the travel secrets of that place. Whether they would tell you the naked truth is another story.

For visiting Malaysia next year as recommended by Lonely Planet’s Top 10 Best Value Destination 2010, you have to drop by its cpital city of Kuala Lumpur as part of my Top 10 Places to visit in Malaysia. For visiting Kuala Lumpur, I would probably be the best person to disclose the best travel secrets of the city since I’ve been staying here for more than 30 years and I’m Malaysian. You gotta believe me if you are planning to visit or coming to Malaysia in the future. These secrets are only for those travelling with either Free n Easy package or Self-Travelling arrangement. For travellers who booked an all-inclusive travel package to Malaysia, forget about this post. You will not be brought to these…

Ok. These are the three little secrets of KL.

1. Best Shopping mall for small electronics like digital cameras, laptops, computer accessories, handphones, memory cards or camera bags – Low Yat Plaza, the biggest IT  mall in Jalan Bukit Bintang. You can get the lowest price (or at least low price) in Malaysia here. It’s located along Jalan Bukit Bintang next to Sungei Wang Plaza and Imbi Plaza. It is also 2 blocks opposite the Time Square KL. Low Yat Plaza is the only 1-stop shopping mall for electronics in KL. Not only it’s the cheapest, you could find the latest IT gadgets here as well. I bought my HP laptop, SDHC cards here. Prices are mostly shown in tag so you don’t have to worry about being swindled. You may try your luck by pressing some of the price down even lower ;
2. Best local Foods centre for tasting most of our local Malaysian most popular and best quality foods under one roof - Lot 10 Hutong (十号胡同) food court at lower ground floor of Lot 10 Shopping mall in Bukit Bintang. This is the latest food court centre in KL where more than 10 famous Malaysian eateries were invited and brought into here, so that travellers abroad could taste the best local Malaysian street foods in one place! There are the most famous Klang Bak Kut Teh, Mou Shan Gao, Soong Kee’s beef Noodles from Lebuh Ampang, Hokkien charcoal fried noodles from Petaling Street, Wantan (dumpling) noodles, Siew Pao, Roti Canai, Chicken rice, Dim Sum and so much more. It’s located along Jalan Bukit Bintang next to KL Plaza and Pavilion Shopping mall. It could be easily distinguished with its green coloured building fascade. The best time to visit is from 11am to 12:30pm where less patrons are occupying the limited dining tables, and
3. Best Transport going round KL - KL Hop-On Hop-Off City Tour Double Decker bus. It is the most comprehensive transports for tourists to go, see, eat, shop and photo around the whole KL. Buses are running 7 days a week from 8:30am to 8:30pm with continuous circular rides and 30 minutes interval between each tour bus. These tour bus covers extensively over 40 city attractions including nearly 100 hundreds in Kuala Lumpur. KLCC, Twin Tower, Bintang Walk, Merdeka Square, KL Tower, Bird Park, Petaling Street (China Town), Jamek Mosque, Royal Palace and so on. Tourists could buy tickets on the bus or at the station and can “hop on” and “hop off” the bus whenever and wherever desired at any of the 22 bus stops. Along the tour, travellers would be guided through the history of KL and places it is going in eight languages. Prices are from RM36++ per pax per whole day. You can even buy 1 or 2 days ticket. So, you can either hop off at KLCC twin tower to take photos and hop onto the next bus in 30 minutes time or, if you want to do some shopping at Bintang Walk, hop off at Bintang Walk and spend 3-4 hours then only hop on back to the tour! However, the best day for this tour is on Sunday where the road traffic is the least congested.

Now you know the top secrets of visiting Kuala Lumpur. Make sure you don’t disclose them to other people unless they are also reading this travel blog. Ha ha! – Travel Feeder.

So, it’s my turn to tag these 5 bloggers,

Vkeong – Malaysia Food Blog, Malaysia Travel Blog;
Mei Teng – Foodi en travel bug;
Gary - Everything Everywhere ;
Heather – Foot Steps;
Christine – Almost Fearless.

Have fun!

How’s my first look at Patong Beach? Here are some of my first few travel photos of streets, shops and beach around Patong Beach that many are waiting to see. Please read in conjunction with my story of “From Departure To Arrival At Phuket Island“.

Along the way to Patong Beach, there were many architecture background worth shooting at.

We were approaching the beach now….

Say ‘Hello’ to Patong Beach! We reached our hotel in Patong Beach at about 9:30 in the morning, after some delays with travel agency half way through. It was still early to check in, so we dropped our luggage and back out to the streets for some site seeing around the beach.

Before that, I need a street map of Patong Beach. Please refer to this map when you see the photos below. You will understand better on what I’m going to introduce next.

This is Thaweewong Road, the beach road. Behind the block in front is the beach. Behind me is our Safari Beach Hotel, a 3-star hotel with 5-star location… I would recommend it to all travelers! :)

50 meters right from our hotel is our beloved McDonald’s outlet. 2 doors away is the Air Asia branch at Patong. So convenient!

Further down the beach road are all the exclusive dining outlets and hotels.

Facing those restaurants is the Patong beach. Sun chairs and umbrella were seen everywhere put in line with the beach.

Beautiful beach. Fine sand. Calm sea and clear blue sky…

50 meters left from our hotel is the most popular street in Patong, the Bangla Street, the ‘Heaven on earth‘ at night… but is lifeless in the day.

These bars will turn into life only at night. Check it out!

At the other end of Bangla Street is Rat-U-Thit Road, the Patong shopping street where souvenirs shops, shopping complex and restaurants are scattered along it.

Quite strange to see rows of shops within the compound of the Royal Paradise Hotel…

You could find luxurious seafood restaurants along the Thaweewong beach road. However, if you are looking for more economical options, these seafood restaurants (photo above) along the Rat-U-Thit Road could be your answer.

UPDATED: Click Here to view original High Resolution file of the above photos via Flickr.

What are the things that you could see in all of the above photos except the beach? Bingo! Those bunch of overhead electrical high tension armoured cables! They are everywhere!

What would you think we were going to do next? LUNCH! We were starving! Where did we have our lunch? I’ll tell you later. – Travel Feeder.

I was wondering one day that since Eastern and South-eastern parts of USA are facing Atlantic ocean, there must be lots of nice beaches along the coastline which are worth travelling if I have the budget, one day . I was right on this. After watching one of the travel documentary over TV recommending the top 10 beaches in US and surfing around net that I realised there are in fact lots of them which are brilliant for travel but unfortunately very little of them are widely publicized in Malaysia. Apart from the previous 2 destinations along the same coastline, I found another wellknown beach city, Hilton Head Island which is great for golfers.

Hilton Head is an island located in South Carolina, USA, 20 miles (32 km) north of Savannah, Georgia. It is a popular vacation destination with over 2 Millions travelers all over the world visiting Hilton Head each and every years. Travelers love the island because of its eco-friendly environment with majority of lands are still occupied by trees and wildlife.

Hilton Head South Carolina is the home of wildlife, alligators, deer, Loggerhead Sea Turtles, hundreds of species of birds, and dolphins are still living here. Most natural properties of Hilton Head island are still very well preserved by the local government of Carolina. Many of the Hilton Head island rentals are occupied by visitors who come here for wildlife admiration and photography which is especially tempting to me .

Congratulation to….. Myself! After all the hardwork done to promote it to the world for the last 3 months, with the aim to provide one-stop travel information and travel tips to my readers, Travel Feeder.com has recently achieved its short-term target: To secure a Google Page Rank! And we just got it,  from none to Page Rank 2!

PageRank™ technology has been developed by Google to reflect the importance of certain web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Websites or blogs that Google believes are important or valuble pages will receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Though it’s only PR2, it shows that Travel Feeder has started to be noticed by search engine sifu, Google. That is why I’m so excited!

There are many ways to check the PageRank value of your blogs and the most popular checker would definitely be the PR Checker.info. I used PRChecker as well and the Top 5 reasons to place the PR button on Travel Feeder’s Trusty Index section are as follows:

1. PRChecker provides very cute small buttons, which you could notice it at Travel Feeder’s Trusty Index
   ;
2. To show my visitors the current page rank of Travel Feeder.com;
3. To check the page rank of this travel blog while visiting the site myself;
4. I heard, it could help in SEO, link exchange, and my travel blog promotion matters, and
5. To impress, hopefully, my visitors with the page rank value of Travel Feeder, and I believe it would be higher and higher!

If you want to check the same for your website or other’s blogs, you could use the PR check tool below. Just key in the url and you will get the PageRank figure instantly!

A big THANK YOU to those friends out there who have linked Travel Feeder in their blogs or websites without which we will not be able to get such ranking. For our new visitors who think Travel Feeder is worth linking, please do so and ping me for an appreciation link back! But, NO SPAM please! My Akismet has worked really hard to blocked more than 472 spams so far until to date. See ya Ciao! – Travel Feeder.