Today is the first day of school after two weeks of holiday... I was expecting a massive traffic jam. To make things worst, I woke up late and had to take taxi and guess what??? I sailed through my way to work... I guess there's a blessing in disguise with the whole petrol crisis after all...

I've been meaning to update some stuff but the workload is just... *sigh*... Nevertheless, I'm gonna steal some time today... My friends and I went to Port Dickson on Saturday 24th May before I went to my parents'. We stayed at Corus Paradise Apartment.The apartment was clean but with bad taste of decor. Ocean view, 2 rooms, 1 bath with shower, and it's clean. Oh I said that already. Yeah I'm happy with it.  

View from our apartment balcony during low tide.

THE BEACH.

OK, it's true, you can't compare the PD beaches to those in the east coast. But they are not bad at all, really. It was just a one night stay so I didn't dedicate as much time as I would've liked for photography session... Or rather snapshotgraphy as I call it (out of respect, I reserve the true term of photography only for the professionals). We had lunch at Teluk Kemang. I kicked myself for leaving my camera at the apartment. I used my loyal mobile instead.

Some scenes at Teluk Kemang Beach (taken with my mobile)

We went around PD afterwards and stopped by at a night market on our way back to the apartment. We bought some munchies and I bought 2 pairs of colourful toe socks. Bloody cheap!! RM5 a pair! That's a quarter of the normal price in KL. 'Hi, my name is Jo and I'm a socks-addict since 1995'. And the crowd, in unison says 'Hi Jo!'

Somebody bought some jagung bakar

BEFORE SUNSET

I never tried taking sunset pictures with a DSLR before. I looked up for some tips from the internet and most said I need to use some filters or shoot RAW. Since I don’t have a budget for fancy filters and I don’t have knowledge of tweaking and manipulating pictures, I just jumped in and hoped experience could teach me instead. While snapping my heart out, a 'pakcik' who takes care of the recreation boats came forward, introduced himself. He thought I was a journalist...hahaha.. He couldn't stop talking and I couldn't stop taking pictures (so basically I partially ignored him). His favourite word is 'perkembangan', repeated more times than necessary, mostly associated with the hotel and tourism in Port Dickson. All of us agreed afterwards that he really meant 'kemajuan'. An adorable pakcik indeed.

 Pakcik Perkembangan trying to scare us.

This is a turn off... the dirty PD.  

Sunset

more pics here www.zorpia.com/meknjong/album/1070072/Port_Dickson

AF FINALE.

There were 7 of us pretty girls who went, only 4 stayed for the night (the prettier ones). That night, there was a final concert for AF on telly. It's another local singing competition like the American Idol. I didn't follow the show but the others did, so they watched it and I happily .... slept.

PRINCESS WATER FRONT

That's the name of the restaurant that we went after the show ended around midnight. I woke up to the alarm ringing from my belly. Yeah, it's a nice name, good location; the decor is pretty to match its name with manmade mini waterfall, nice plants, plenty of wood structure with antique lamps like an old Malay castle..... I felt like a pretty princess already. And then the food came..... There must be a mistake. They should change their name to Anorexic Princess Water Front. The owner was rude when one of us questioned the portion. We ordered for 4 people. What we got was even smaller than a portion for one person that one could get elsewhere. Honest, I'm not exaggerating. The Evil Queen of the castle finally realised that they made a mistake and we were charged correctly. But what really upset me was the way she handled the situation. She never said sorry. She even raised her voice showing her annoyance, and she never really looked at us. And those wrinkles she had, definitely not from years of smiling.

 

Taken with my old compact camera. Now, you tell me is this enough for four people? That small plate you see is supposed to be Kangkung Ikan Masin for four.

But I didn't let this bad experience spoil the trip. It was good just being away from KL and I was in the right company.