Category: Travel

A Tree In Sungai Lembing

While searching for the previous tree image, I found one image from 2007 photographed in Sungai Lembing, the historical mining town. There was also a tree in the middle of the road. That was ten years ago and I am not sure if it is still there. Maybe recent visitors can confirm.

Known as the El Dorado of the East, it was once a bustling cowboy town in Pahang. It had one of the world’s biggest and deepest underground tin mine while it was in operation. Today it is a sleepy, rustic town with a few relics still standing in the ghost town. It was like as if time stood still, all of a sudden.

2017 re-processing of the image made the colours pop. Originally, it was flat and dull. I still remember having a homemade pineapple ice drink with boiled pineapple cubes and attap chee at the stall across the road. Wonderful stuff.

My friend the famous turtle scientist and conservationist Pelf Nyok has a cousin staying there who can guide and ferry you to the famous rainbow waterfall. I didn’t go though. It was on the local hipster bucketlist during the last decade.

Olympus E-510, ISO 200, f10, 1/250 sec

#sglembing #pahang #tree #smalltown #tree #nature #heritage

Drive By Shooting

I don’t know what was going on. A senior citizen was arranging some old newspapers outside her house in a village in Sekinchan paddy land. I was a passenger in a car and I shot with the window rolled down.

You can take preemptive actions such as upping the shutter speed and deciding how you want to frame it before the car approaches. I kept one finger on the exposure compensation dial as I was thinking her silver hair might be problematic. It wasn’t in the end as the camera’s dynamic range contained it.

While anticipation is good, I didn’t expect her to lift up the broadsheet to conceal herself at the critical moment. I cued driver and friend Daniel Tang to look at my LCD screen so he can adjust or pace the car’s speed accordingly. Takes practice but I have been on many trips with him in the past.

I chose a black and white rendition as the vegetable patch was overwhelmingly green. Black and white also gives street photography the raw and gritty look befitting the subject.

Panasonic GM-1, ISO 200, f10, 1/320 sec.

#sekinchan #village #streetphotography #blackandwhite #ruralscape

Flooded Sekinchan

Prolonged rainfall last night turned the flooded rice fields into a landscape resembling that of a sea. I asked a farmer if the planted paddy crop will be affected. He thinks not as lowland paddy can survive waterlogged conditions.

The distant building is a ,”bird hotel”. Farmers and land owners supplement their income by harvesting the nests of swifts.

Asus ZenFone 3 image.

#sekinchan #floods #paddy #fields #asus #weather #rice

The Best Iced Coffee In Phnom Penh

In the middle, the comical and diminutive guy is Mr Bunnarith, the famous and friendly owner cum barista of The Best Iced Coffee In Phnom Penh. His signature coffee and stall is like a national institution; so be aware many rivals and wannabes are claiming the same name. Look for the funny man. There exists a Facebook fan page but it is also not by him. When you are at the Russian market, show other hawkers this pic and they will point you to him.

He was running the business for over 30 years and is known by tourists from all over the world, as seen by his collection of pinned magazine and newspaper cuttings from all over the world praising his coffee. Locals love his Khmer coffee too. The milk coffee is made with tins of Cambodian Best Cows brand condensed milk.

I had a long chat with him and he told me he aspired to open an international coffee chain. Ironically, many foreign franchised coffee chains are now in Cambodia. Although an overhanging sign proclaimed “We can speak English”, he spoke halting Hokkien or the Fujian Chinese dialect and we conversed using it. On the other side (camera left), was fellow Malaysian traveler Augustine Gan

I could not remember or find the exact year. I searched my Gmail and found an AirAsia booking dated 2008. Can’t be definite as I have been to Cambodia several times.

#travel #cambodia #phnompenh #khmer #russianmarket #coffee #me