Lumix
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!”
UPDATED: Click Here to view high resolution version of the above travel photos in Crocodile Farm of Langkawi Island
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
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Finally, I’m going to wrap up the story of my South Yangtze China in this post. We woke up in the morning and it was already our 8th and final day in China. After having our breakfast in our hotel, KuaiJie by Holiday Inn, we checked out the hotel and headed to our final destination in Shanghai. I couldn’t resist and took a few photos of the scenes around since it was my last chance to do so.
If you were following these stories since the beginning of the tour, this is the only group shot of all 5 of us, posing in front of the hotel.
Well, we left our hotel and arrived at this place shortly. I haven’t mentioned where we went to, have I?
They claimed it as the branch of Beijing’s TongRenTang （同仁堂）traditional chinese pharmaceutical centre. I claimed it as the final travel hoax of our China tour! I’m not sure whether this is the authorised branch of TongRenTang, maybe you can tell me from this photo I took at the main entrance. According to our group member who went to the original centre in Beijing, packaging of medicine seemed different which I have no idea. I called it a hoax because it didn’t look like a conventional medicine store but more like a spa-like wellness centre. I called it so because when we went into the building, we were brought by a sales rep into a small hall. Without informing or explaining, a group of young therapists came in with a pile of warm water and offered us a foot reflexology session! Some of us declined the offer and we sat aside waiting while the rest were enjoying their session. Then a lady in uniform that looked like a physician came in to explain about the history of TongRenTang to us.
While those friends whose feet soaked in the warm water were enjoying the reflexology session, again, few physician came into the hall and approached them to offer pulse diagnosis on their health. This was the catch! Your feet were held by the therapist and physician were holding your hand. Where could you run? 
After making a diagnosis, the physician will suggest a course of treatment from their full range of chinese medicine or herbs. Coincidentally, out of those 10 members who did the pulse diagnosis, all 10 of them were diagnosed with some kind illness and had bought some medicine from TongRenTang! Believe it or not? No doubt, their diagnosis skill and results were very convincing. But can you afford not to buy anything after the physician told you to treat your illness as soon as possible? At the end of it, our group bought over thousands bucks of Chinese traditional medicine! “We… are the champion, my friend…”
Same with other travel hoax of the package, we had lunch in the same building. At around 12:30pm we left Shanghai. Oops! Not quite. We headed to LongYang Road station in Pudong district of Shanghai to take a train to the airport. Passing by the Nanpu Bridge again, I took these photos from inside of our coach.
The scene was actually filtered by the coach window with sunscreen. The result was not really satisfactorily. What I did was to try to savage them with PS Element6 again. Some stains on the coach window glass panel could still be noticed though…
We took the fastest train on earth, the Shanghai Maglev Train, SMT! It cost RMB50 per person. Off course, it’s included in our all-in travel package.
I was quite excited to go up this escalator to the platform… How fast could it be? 200km/h? 300km/h? What’s the maximum speed of a F1 Ferrari race car? 360km/h? We will see…
Nothing special of the platform other than a huge tunnel roof.
There was it! The SMT train, or the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation Demonstration Operation Line.
The distance from Longyang station to Pudong airport station is 30km and this SMT could reach there in 7min and 20sec!! Can you believe that?
The cabin is spacious and seat are comfortable. Noise level are tremendously low and without much vibration either. Objects and scenes outside were moving backward really really quick as soon as the train took off.
Look at the speed! It reached the maximum speed of 430Km/h in just 3 minutes!! And it wasn’t wobbling and I was still steady enough to take this shot!
This is the departure hall of Pudong International Airport of Shanghai. So I shall conclude our travel to South Yangtze China here. Bye bye Shanghai and China! I shall see you again later this year!
UPDATE: Click the above slideshow to view all travel photos of Shanghai tour.
UPDATE: Click HERE to view the original high resolution version of the above photos
Hope you have enjoyed reading this and all my other stories of the tour in Travel Feeder. If you haven’t, please do so by reading this first. Thanks. – Travel Feeder.
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The title may sound ridiculous. Yes. In terms of overall image quality, my Nikon D60 still has the edge. However, in certain aspect and under certain circumstances, my 15 month old Panasonic Lumix FZ28 is no doubt better than my DSLR, or even most of the DSLR in the market. “Are you sure?”
I’ve been using both compact camera (FZ28) and DSLR (D60) for more than a year now. None of the reviewer will review the same camera again after owning them for 1 year. Most of them don’t even own them in the first place. So, they can’t tell you the actual experience of 1 year usage. Not even 3 months (that was why I did also a confrontation test over these 2 cameras before). Nobody can tell you the actual advantages of using them after that long (or maybe there are?). Since I own these 2 gadgets, and I don’t have plan for upgrade yet, I might as well note them down here.
Since there are still people searching through the web (also this blog) for FZ28 and D60 reviews, I decided to disclose these advantages of an ultra-zoom compact camera (FZ28) over the DSLR (D60) here.
- Live Histogram. Lumix FZ28 (or most of the compact’s) has it and D60 (or most of the DSLRs) hasn’t got it. Histogram is a very important and useful feature of digital cameras. It tells you the actual key tomes and exposure of your photo. Don’t rely only on your camera LCD. It’s not accurate. It shows the JPEG image processed by your camera to suit the LCD viewing. Slight under or over exposed shot could not be seen from the tiny LCD until you download it to your computer. The only way to know from your camera whether the photo you just taken has the optimum or desired exposure is from the histogram feature (if you haven’t seen the histogram, check it out by pressing the joystick of FZ28 or the navigating down button of D60. You will see a histogram to show you the amount of lights captured by the sensor. Towards the right are highlight and towards the left are shadows). Both FZ28 and D60 has this feature. The difference between them which is important for fast action shot or ‘one chance only’ shot is the Panasonic has it LIVE on LCD when you compose shot. The Nikon can only check the histogram after the shot. If you shoot under complex lighting and your camera’s metering couldn’t get it right on spot, and you found it to be much under or over exposed, you have to compensate your exposure and shoot again. Off course, this doesn’t cause any hassle if you are shooting landscape or buildings. Imagine this, if Beyonce or Barack Obama is posing for you once for only 10 seconds or so, can you shoot, check histogram and tell her to pose for you again?
- Shooting Macro. Don’t bombard me first. Off course DSLR can shoot macro if you have a dedicated macro lens costing no less than USD500 like the Tamron SP60 or Nikkor Micro 85mm. But the flexibility and easiness to shoot macro with a compact camera is still better. Macro photography is all about sharpness and Depth Of Field. Image has to be sharp and DOF has to be adequate to reveal much details of the object. Thanks to its puny sized sensor, FZ28 can shoot macro anytime with ease. You don’t have to have plenty of lights to capture it but still able to get sufficient DOF. Even I use my D60 attached with Tamron SP60, I’ll need strong sunlight and small aperture up to F22 to capture the same object as with my Lumix FZ28 without exotic lens and sunlight and wide open aperture of F3! The end result of compact camera could be as sharp!
- Ultra tele-zoom up to 18x or 486mm!! Do you know how much is a Nikkor 300mm F4 telephoto lens? USD1,400!! It weighs over 1.4kg and measures 222mm long!! Even if you use cheaper option of fixing a teleconvertor lens to extend your existing lens by 2, you still need to pay USD500! A brand new FZ28 (current model would be FZ35) camera cost me only USD420 a year ago!!
These are the critical reasons why I’m still using it alongside my Nikon D60 after 15 months. However, other than these 3 aspects (Yes. Only 3), I still love my DSLR. Under most circumstances, DSLR is still better in producing crisp, clean and nice images, as long as you spend enough money to invest some excellent lenses and accessories, and very importantly, spend enough time… – Travel Feeder.
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