Month: March 2017

The Smoky Bandit

The Smokey Bandit

Royal Malaysian Air Force (TUDM) MiG-29N are nicknamed Smokey Bandits. One of its more famous pilots is lady top gun Major Patricia Yapp Syau Yin who flies solo. She’s Asia’s first female MiG-29 fighter pilot. The squadron based in Kuantan were at the LIMA Air show.

Aerial display and aerobatics do not necessary require a very long lens, unless you want to lock onto a solitary aircraft. For formation flying, a 70-200mm lens (of 35mm format equivalence) should be adequate. And another common myth is that one must get near or into the airport.

Langkawi’s terrain is hilly and that means you can find better spots on higher ground for a better vantage point. The back perimeter fence of the airport is good too because you can also capture the carnival-like atmosphere created by the villagers.

I must warn you that if you get your schedule wrong or if a session is cancelled, you won’t be able to get out from there. The narrow road will be jam packed with villagers, motorcycles, cars and hawkers.

Morning directional light is a good time for both white and colourful contrails. Even the black exhaust of the MIG 29N looks better. This was photographed during LIMA 2011.

Olympus E-3, ISO 200, f11, 1/800 sec.

#lima #lima2015 #lima15 #rmaf #tudm #mig29 #airshow #smokeybandit #contrail #langkawi #olympus

Why?

If You Scroll, A Thousand Bed Bugs Will Crawl Out From Your Bed And Bite You Where The Sun Don’t Shine.

Some of you may wonder why I am creating so much content related to hotels. Fair question. As I explained from the onset, I decided that becoming a hotel booking affiliate partner can hopefully and God Willing (please type InShaAllah or إن شاء الله‎‎ in comments) – provide a potential residual income. It is not passive but active, as I have to think of ways to market it legitimately and legally within the terms of use.

Anyone from anywhere in the world can be a user. Everybody travel these days and they can use the booking service from anywhere to anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. For example, it can an be someone in Iceland looking for accommodation in Fiji. Or a local in Ipoh wanting to go to Penang. I have many social media friends from over the globe who followed me for a long time already. So what are the setbacks? People forget. Therefore I have to keep it sticky, visible and fresh in people’s minds regularly.

After my hospitalization, I needed to find a stable revenue stream that is reliable. The advantage is I have plenty of time. I can create content easily from my library of images, I am fairly competent technically, an experienced webmaster and know the in and outs of SEO. I have much travel related content and it meant easier and faster approval when applying to be an affiliate.

I also have many sites to cross link. Still, I need to reach a critical mass of regular users before I can see fruitful results. Many search engines, I suspect, are also affiliates. Why not? They need revenue too and they compete with me. So I try to think of creative ways to value add. Is all blood, sweat and tears, even though it is an online business.

Webmasters will know this. Regular citations mean faster search engine spidering and indexing. It is very hard mental and physical work as I need to be diligent in ensuring specific hotels are correctly linked. I also need to keep an eye on server performance, bandwidth management and hard disk space utilization. There are many more technical challenges and costs to worry about. Not a business, I’ll recommend to the faint hearted or to a newbie.

A sale is not a sale until the money is in the bank. Some people might cancel their bookings. Also affiliate partners dont pay you immediately even though or because the commissions are micro in nature. Have to wait until you reach a certain threshold and time is needed before commission are even tallied and accumulated payment is sent out, if it reaches the month’s minimum quota.

Anyway, in case you have forgotten, my landing page is at:

http://www.mycen.my/agoda/

You can also help me by introducing me to friends who travel frequently. Thank you for your support.

You can share this post too, if you like and I won’t hit you with puzzling fuckery such as “copy and paste, don’t share”

Also no silly WTF conditions like:

don’t scroll without typing amen.
this baby is too cute, scroll if you are heartless.
Ignore if you have no heart or liver.
1 like = 100000 prayers.
Leave this on your Fb for 2000 hours so I can see who my friends are
Ptui!

Picture of hotel guests looking at very scary torrential rain from the lobby. I love this hotel as it is opulent, classy and very grand – The Empire Hotel and Country Club in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. If I remember correctly, it is near the abandoned Neverland amusement park built for Michael Jackson. I checked the rates today from my provider and it was quoted at around RM 850. Prices may vary depending on the dates you selected.

Rain Over A Fishing Village

While traveling from Taiping to Kuala Sepetang, I saw a standalone purple hotel on the way. Thinking it might be the Yam Hotel, its name was even more intriguing as we drove closer. It was named after another tuber and it was The Potato Hotel!

Kuala Sepetang, formerly Port Weld, is such a charming town. It is a fishing village and there are mangrove river tours to watch fireflies and eagles, There is also great seafood and there are a number of charcoal kilns good for educational visits.

Remnants of the original first railway line of Malaya 1885 is till there with the ticketing counter (now a kopitiam), the original station sign and bits of the old tracks still around,

The town is both a historical and eco tourism gem that is under promoted and unknown to many Malaysians. The town’s name change didn’t do it any favours, I suppose.

It is so near to Taiping, another sleepy and picturesque colonial town, well known for its Lake Gardens. I saw the Potato Hotel again when compiling a list of hotels for the Taiping area. Am pleasantly surprised to see so many new accommodation options for Taiping.

No disrespect to past and present detainees of the notorious Kamunting detention camp but you dont need to be detained under the ISA to stay in Kamunting town nearby.

Kamunting has many budget hotels. Or one can also stay in Bukit Merah Laketown where there are chalets on water. See the Potato hotel or pick another hotel here and visit the triangle of attractions:

http://www.mycen.my/hotels-in-taiping/

Picture captured from bridge spanning the river mouth at Kuala Sepetang.

#taipng #kualasepetang #portweld #perak #rain #river #larut #ecotourism #tourism #fishing #village #hotels #smaltown

Julio Iglesias Could Be From Kuala Pilah!

If you are in Kuala Pilah and a suave Latin stranger asked you “Passar Di Mano?” Don’t panic as the Mat Salleh was speaking loghat Nogori (Negeri Sembilan) dialect and wanting to know directions to the market. Tell him the famous cendol stall is outside the market. Anyway, I think he was singing in Italian it may have meant passing through Mano.

Saw this post on Instagram by Zet (@zeti__) and thought it was quite cute and humorous.

I shall ask my Italian friend Elle Effe (@ellecina) what it means and where is Mano. Mano isn’t the name of an Indian actor either.

#negerisembilan #nogori #julioiglesias #spanish #italian

The Day I Became A “Jaga Kereta” For A Submarine

The Day I Became A “Jaga Kereta” For A Submarine.

With LIMA starting in a couple of days, I am looking at the many images I captured over the years. This is one of my favourite moments from LIMA and it was from 2007. It was so bizarre, funny and am honoured to be able to experience it. I stumbled upon the scene at Porto Malai naval harbour by chance. Was walking on the dockyard after a lunch cum tour hosted by a Royal Malaysian Navy ship earlier.

An Indian Navy submarine was trying to dock after resurfacing. There was such a big commotion, with every sailor shouting back and forth. One would think one was standing outside the noisy kitchen of a mamak restaurant. LOL. The confusion and pandemonium were probably caused by the unfamiliar territory and unconventional berthing. The captain was the coolest guy standing there (below the tower) unperturbed.

A submarine up close was such a rare sight and I was standing at the edge of the dockyard photographing the drama when, all of as sudden, one of the sailors threw a thick and heavy rope at me! I grabbed the the rope, hooked it to a bollard and started shouting “Gostan, Gostan” like a boss. More like a ‘jaga kereta’ (a self-appointed parking attendant by the roadside with a dirty rag), actually.

The local word “gostan” (to reverse) is believed to have originated from “go astern” in sailing terminology.

“Gostan sikit. Lagi, lagi… Oooppp!” Hand slaps submarine, jaga kereta-style.

Not an expert on submarines but a search of scant archived documentation of LIMA hinted it could be the INS Sindhurakshak, a Russian-made Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine of the Indian Navy. Hopefully it was not the INS Sindhurakshak. In August 2013, the Sindhurakshak sank after explosions caused by a fire on board when the submarine was berthed at Mumbai. There were fatalities.

Find or book a room in Langkawi here:

http://www.mycen.my/hotels-in-langkawi/

#lima #lima2017 #lima15 #maritme #navy #naval #submarine #india #langkawi #olympus