Japan: Dotonburi, Osaka (Part 2).

Best Tako balls in Japan? Well, there was a long queue and my sisters gave it the thumbs up.

Look at how many hot plates the store had? The young guy behind the hot plates was really good at making Tako balls, not like some of the people in Singapore's Tako balls stores messing things up half the time. He must have been selling thousands of Tako balls every night! Imagine all the octopi without tentacles!

Fugu (Puffer Fish), anyone?

Holy crab! It's alive!



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Japan: Dotonburi, Osaka.

My favourite holiday destination is Japan but the very expensive Japanese Yen has made me reluctant to visit the country for the time being.

For two years in a row, my family visited Japan and stayed in Osaka, using it as a base, and took the very efficient public transportation (trains) to make day trips to Kyoto, Himeiji and Nara. Osaka is known as Japan's kitchen and has great food. It is also less expensive than Tokyo where we stayed during another vacation in the 90s.

Dotonburi in Osaka.  Lots of restaurants and street stalls here.  Glorious food!

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Genting Highlands.

These were taken while on a short trip with my family to the Genting Highlands in October 2008. I remember it was when ST Engineering's shares sank to $1.80+ per share!

The way Genting Highlands was packed with tourists, you would be forgiven for thinking that there wasn't any financial crisis in the world!

Beautiful lights in the hotel lobby:

Lunch time:

Within the shopping mall and indoor theme park:

I like the temperature there:

Three hotels, lots of mist and the way to Kuala Lumpur:

I cannot remember. It was either Genting Hotel or Highlands Hotel.  Very confusing:

The inside of the bus we took to get to Genting Highlands and back.  Quite comfortable and I spent the 6 hours or so each way watching different movies on demand:

A thrilling ride down Genting Highlands. Not my first time travelling up to Genting Highlands but I was still amazed by the road which in certain sections turned 180 degrees, almost:

The bus refueling at a petrol station in Malaysia, just before crossing into Singapore. Clever practice since it is so much cheaper to buy petrol there:

Entertainment on board Super Star Virgo.

I much prefer going on a cruise than taking a plane. It is more comfortable anytime, in my opinion.

I also enjoyed the life performances on the cruises very much.  Some of these were protected by international intellectual properties laws but those which were performed by the ship's own crew were not and we were allowed to take videos of them showing off their talents.

I took some videos with my little digital camera and I am sharing a clip here. I learned that I cannot upload videos onto blogs directly from SD cards. I have started a YouTube account to show videos on my blog via YouTube. I am getting to be less of an IT dinosaur by the day, it seems. ;)

Please pardon the poor video quality.  Photos, I can take quite well but I need do a lot better on being a videographer. ;p

Star Cruise to Penang and Phuket.

I was just sorting through my SD cards when I found one which has some travel photos and videos taken while I was on holiday on the Super Star Virgo some time ago. Nice memories and I would like to share some of these. I could just plonk these in my investment blog, ASSI, but since I am trying to declutter that blog, I started a new blog for these:

This is the ship's pool deck with their new water slide:

Penang's Cruise Centre which was still under construction on this trip:

 

A spanking new mall, Queensbay Mall:

 

A must whenever I visit Penang is a visit to this shop to buy Nutmeg Oil, which is good for muscle aches, headaches and stomach aches. Apparently, Penang makes the best Nutmeg Oil, being home to vast nutmeg plantations. My Malaysian friends tell me to only buy Nutmeg Oil from Penang and not Melaka:

These were the tenders which ferried us between the ship and Penang. Now, it's no longer necessary as the cruise centre in Penang has been completed and cruise ships could dock next to the cruise centre. So, passengers could just walk down a ramp from the ship to go on land. My parents and I used the new cruise centre when we took the same ship to Penang earlier this year.

Our ship, Super Star Virgo, as taken through the window of a tender on our way back to the ship:

A beautiful sunrise as we got into Phuket, which was a lot more fun than Penang:

Plenty of these wooden boats with propellars on very long shafts in Patong Beach:

 Taxis or "tut-tuts" in Phuket:

Lunch in Phuket Town, authentic "Pat Tai":

Nothing like a cool glass of coconut juice topped with succulent coconut flesh in the sweltering afternoon heat.  Guess what? It was only 60c a glass! I had 4 glasses!

Patong Beach in the late afternoon:

Very reassuring. The Thais are ready if a tsunami ever hits again:

Beautiful, isn't it?

Makes me wanna pack my bags and go off on a holiday again.
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