I charged my camera battery the night before. Hardly taking photos in 2022. I focused much on work last year. That will change in 2023. I will put more time for my family and friends, and will try my best to keep my day job strictly within standard office hour. I reckon I will be more productive, smart and confident when my physical and mental health in good shape.

There’s no specific theme or target. For me, I will just enjoy the morning scenery and the warm rising sun. And working out my photographic eye.

There was a crocodile sighting in Labuan water mid January 2023. I thought it was a normal thing. Crocodiles will go out looking for food, but if it is as far as going to the salt water, I can only imagine its food source is getting scarce. I heard about people sighted crocodiles in the mangrove forest near the Tanjung Aru bridge where people like to go fishing a while ago.

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We started visiting places after lunch with my parents. They left that afternoon as they have to work the next day.

We started off by visiting Christ Church. On our way to get there, we walked passed vacant old buildings. We stopped many times to photograph Hana. Iskandar was not interested; he just sat in the stroller and he’s not gonna get out. 5 minutes later, we arrived at Christ Church Melaka. There are a lot of tourists, all taking pictures and group selfie. We didn’t spend much time there. I guess this time we will just stimulate our visual, rather than exploring and get to know the historical value of these attractions.

We continued walking to almost all the attractions, namely the A’ Famosa, Melaka Sultanate Palace, Independence Memorial, Dutch Graveyard and Stadthuys. All these monuments are located near to each other, so it’s all within walking distance. We came to Melaka without much preparation, so that’s why we didn’t put much effort to visit other monument/historical attractions at other locations.

I am pretty sure there must be somewhere within this area that rent a bicycle. If you’re not a big fan of walking, rent a bike. If you’re planning to drive, the road within the area is mostly one way street. Means if you missed an intersection, you have to find another intersection that will lead you to cross that missed intersection again. Just walk to make things easier.

Later that night we went out to ride on one of the trishaw equipped with bright neon lights, decorated in themes with big speaker. We let Hana chose, and she picked the trishaw with Frozen theme. The guy even played “Let It Go” song the entire ride. It cost MYR 25.00 per ride and the route started from the front of Christ Church to A’Famosa. 10 minutes ride and we’re done.

We continued walking to Jonker Street. There’s nothing interesting there that night, as it was Thursday night. Some shops are still open. Tourists still flocking this area. Perhaps, they’re enjoying the architectural and art work of these buildings.

Afterwards, we headed to Mahkota Parade. It was close to 9pm. We ended the walk and decided to return to our room early to rest.

Honestly, I am not satisfied yet with this visit. I really like the atmosphere of the town. Hopefully I will be able to visit Melaka again with longer time to spend. Merely 2 days are not enough, and I didn’t take much picture here. Next time, I shall come with a lot of information beforehand.

Read my day 1 travelogue in Melaka, Malaysia

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It’s the day.

Now, we bought a combo ticket online, that is an entry to Legoland Theme Park and Legoland Water Park. For combo ticket holder, or if you are a hotel guest, you are allowed to enter the theme park 30 minutes earlier. There is one dedicated lane for this on the far left side. However, if you wish to just wait, there’s a dance show by Lego staffs and one big Lego mascot.

Once you entered the theme park, there are two big Lego shops, said to be the biggest Lego shop in South East Asia. You can skipped the shop and return to it if you wish to shopping before getting out of Legoland. The first thing we go to was the park where miniatures of famous landmark in Asia were build. 3 million Lego bricks were used to complete all the miniature. We took a lot of picture here.

Afterwards, we start moving to all attractions. The first thing you need is the map of Legoland. If you stay in the hotel, you have two maps provided in your room. Or you can just head to the shop I mentioned earlier, and look for the map. It’s free. The map will help you plan your time. For us, we do need to plan the time spent on each ride or attraction, as we have to go to the water park later.

 

Advice : If you are planning to come during peak season, better not buy combo ticket for both parks on same day as it will be very crowded. Legoland staff shared this tip with us. We were lucky to come during non peak season and able to enjoy all rides & shows.

For the most part of Legoland theme park, your kids will enjoy the place. There are learning centre for Lego Mindstorm (must be 8 years old and above), also another place for your kids to build “buildings” and test it stability, build a race car, etc.

But if you are a Star Wars fan, you MUST visit the Star Wars Mini Land. You will be entertained by a short film of Star Wars Lego (it was funny), then you will walk in several rooms, each housed a BIG diorama of selected scene from each Star Wars movie! At the end of this series I will share all pictures taken there.

As a combo ticket holder, we were able to exit the theme park one time (this does not applied to non-combo ticket holder). We used the time to go for lunch, bought new memory card for the SJ4000 and send some items we bought to our hotel room. If you chose to have lunch in Legoland, the price is not really that expensive, but prepare to spend about MYR 20 per person.

We entered the waterpark at 3 pm, after 1 hour of lunch and rest. As we’re bringing Iskandar (children below 3 years old = free entry), we have to pay MYR 11 for entering water park. We were given 2 diapers for Iskandar. We rent a small locker that cost us MYR 20 per use to keep our valuables. It is computerized, you just need to enter few informations to set your password. Bigger locker also available at different rate.

At the water park, the water slide is the main attraction. Again, not all these are for 3 year old kids. We had to take turn to take care of Iskandar. Maybe next year Iskandar.

We decided to leave early. After all we have enjoyed everything Legoland have to offer. We returned to our room, get clean and went out to Medini Mall again for dinner. We spent some time at the hotel lobby later for the kids to play and little shopping of souvenir and some Lego set before heading back to our room. We were all tired but I stayed up to pack our backpack to check out tomorrow morning.

Standard check out time is 11.00 am but I am planning to leave early to take the bus to Melaka.

Booking.com

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We almost not proceed to this part. Exchange rate MYR – SGD are just crazy, about SGD 1 = MYR 3.06. We discussed about this, and decided to give it a go as we only spend our time at Universal Studios. We used up to MYR 300 to get a mere SGD 100. I think it would be sufficient for lunch and drinks around the Universal Studios, according to what I read in some people blogs.

For this trip, we stumbled upon pakejuss.com, a company whom arranged for a day trip to Universal Studios. The company will buy the ticket for you, get your embarkation/disembarkation card ready, arranged pick up at selected hotel, send you to Universal Studios and send you back to the hotel. I dealt with Mr Farid personally, whom we met on the same day of our trip to USS. We supposed to meet one day earlier before the trip for briefing, but we arrived at Johor Bahru late in the evening. Mr Farid met us at Hotel Sentral lobby to pass the ticket, and spend some time to explain the trip, including a guide on Custom & Immigration clearance for both Johor Bahru and Singapore.

Tips :

At JB Sentral, if you’re travelling alone, head straight to a self-check custom lane. If you’re travelling with children, head on to the counter.

The same process applied when you return to Johor Bahru. It was easy, but a bit slow. We were the first one to get off the bus, but the last one to get on the bus. Travelling with family would cost you time for this kind of purpose. Most of the time we experienced easy clearance when we travel in group (well, not this one). My wife and my two kids were allowed to be checked as a group, and I have to wait in line. Not a problem though.

When we arrived at Universal Studios, the bus driver told us to wait at the same place later before 7 pm to return to Johor Bahru. He later added it would be great if we could be earlier than that to beat the traffic. Doesn’t sound good. We might rush on everything just to be there on time. Reminds me of a dedicated train to travel passenger from Hong Kong Central to Disneyland. Oh, well.

The park opened at 10 am. The queue was not long. We are lucky to travel at this time, I guess. All the blogs I read about complaint of having to wait in long queue during peak time, like school holidays. We were there during school holiday. Perhaps people were not motivated by the current economy situation. Haze could be another factor. Iskandar might not enjoy this trip. For some rides, there are minimum height requirements to be met, and unfortunately he didn’t. But there are lots of things to do here and we did enjoyed our time. Finding Halal food is not a problem at Universal Studios Singapore. We had ours at Oasis. The interior of the place looks nice and the air condition really are comfortable as it was really hot outside. We rest in the restaurant for a while before continuing to the next spot.

If there is one thing I would like to recommend is to buy the water bottle, preferably the big one. It cost you a SGD 10.  This bottle labeled with Universal Studios brand, and upon purchase it will be filled with your choice of soft drink. You can find this bottle anywhere in USS. Just look for a cart. We bought ours at Hollywood area. When you bought this bottle, you are entitled for refill anywhere in USS for the price of SGD 2, with your choice of soft drink. Much cheaper than buying individual can of drink for all of us. We drank a lot. It was really hot and we refill our bottle 3 times.

There are ATM machine and money changer in USS if you need more cash to shop for souvenir. Furthermore, in case you wish to end a cash issue, consider a payday loan from this Related Site vamoola.co.uk. They are fully legitimate and FCA Registered. Credit card option were also available on all shops. We completed all rides in 4 hours (including lunch break), so we have another 4 hours to spend before returning to our transport. We decided to go for another round and look for shows that we might have missed during the first round. Also, some famous characters will come out (check the schedule) for you to take picture. We are very lucky there were not many people on that day, otherwise we might have to spend longer time queueing for rides, shows and taking pictures with these fictional celebrities.

At about 6 pm, we headed down to the parking lot to wait for our bus.  I believe we enjoyed our time at Universal Studios Singapore. I’m not sure if we will come again, but at least we fulfilled our promise to the kids. They were happy, and that was great for us.

Next, Legoland.

Reference :

We booked our trip to Universal Studios Singapore using a package provided by www.pakejuss.com or you can simply contact Mr. Farid at +6013-756 3824 (send a message to him with the date you plan to visit USS and the number of people you’re going with to check for availability).

Booking.com

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Rizuan Nizzam walking on the beach at Rusukan Besar island, with Kuraman island on the background.

This time, Labuan Marine Park Department introduced a new program for photographers. So, there were about 30 names in the list, but less than that showed up. It was the usual us, the MGV Production and some photographers from Labuan Photography Association. There are photography competition being held specifically to promote Marine Parks in Malaysia. So this trip is in an opportunity to make a good pictures and submit it to the competition. Labuan Marine Park has been doing a lot of things in engaging local community (local photographers for example) to enhance awareness and promoting Labuan Marine Park to the world.

Ajib, one of the Muqtadir’s and Rizuan student, seen here as silhoutte figure. He’s photographing the rocks stretching along the island during low tide.

I submitted my prints to the organiser on the 3rd week of May, about a week from the closing date. I have no intention of winning, but perhaps I submitted the best images I could get from this trip. Among the rules are all images submitted must be taken during the month of May 2015. Personally, my submission is a gesture of appreciation to everything Labuan Marine Park Department has offered to us. Here, in Labuan Marine Park, we developed a really great friendship, understanding and mutual respect towards each other.

Of course, this is the place where I will take group picture of us every time we came here. 

Silhouette Faizam (L) and Yadee (R) during sunset at Rusukan Besar beach.

I hope this won’t be our last visit. We will come again. There are a lot of things this island can offer. Friendship and memories.

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Since the last updates of my trips to Hong Kong with family, I am occupied with a lot of things. The so-called updates on sharing my experience in Hong Kong was halted. After all, when I read the previous post, I guess it is good enough to anyone looking for information about travelling to Hong Kong (from Malaysia at least). The only thing I did after returning from Hong Kong is separating the family pictures with the street photos. I won’t post it anywhere. Yet.

I also limited my activity in social media. I completely left Facebook (so far) and not regret anything that I missed. My life is much better without knowing anyone opinions and problems. I will enjoy the real life, with my real friends and families. I still update my Instagram @saifulrizan maybe once a month. The account followers were less than 50 I think. The only reason is because of the people I followed in Instagram are inspiring, creative and positive. It is the complete opposite of the atmosphere in Facebook. My friends in Facebook are great people. Those photographer friends, those inspiring youngsters expressing opinions, ideas in music, those thinkers and of course, my family. It is only of how Facebook works that I am not keen of scrolling down the timeline.

There is not much travelling after the trip to Hong Kong. I thought that I will visit Japan this year, but looking at the air tickets for the whole family is just expensive for now. Maybe I will visit Japan in future. And to know that Japan Tourism has developed Halal tourism kind of thing there is very convincing. As of now, I will just keep studying Japanese language. Just in case.

So, what else? I have started learning SWIFT and Xcode. SWIFT is the programming language introduced by Apple for developing iOS apps. It really is a much simplified, user friendly programming language. Xcode is the SDK for developing an iOS app. I have no experience and background of doing this. I believe I can do this as long as I never stop doing it. I kind of get the idea of writing a SWIFT codes now. Learning programming really is challenging, however it does trained you to solve a problem, up to the root of the problem. Like looking at lines of codes that won’t execute because you type “:” instead of “;”. At the moment I have the Android SDK as well, but I will focus on the iOS first. As of today, I have wireframe my first app that help tourist in Labuan. The only thing left is to find media and text for design. There is no rush. I am not doing this for the money. Eventually, it will come anyway.

A lot of things happened. Work, friends. Good things, bad things. Happy, sad, in between, mixed feeling. Everything a normal human being will experience. I will just go with it. Time will tell and I am not rushing.

There are a lot of things I want to write now. My return to this blog means I will always try to update and write something new at least once a week. I will write about LiVR, my interest in developing an app, an Arduino project and about my life.

Until then. Best regards.

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