Marina’s Bloggariffic

My trip to Malacca was fantastic! Yesterday was the first time that I was riding out of Singapore and it was such a memorable experience. I would love for to do it again! :)

The Vespa Club, an enthusiast group which I joined last year organized an outing to Malacca last Sunday. As I’ve always wanted to experience riding overseas, I jumped immediately when I knew about it. Malaysia was a great place to start because of its vast natural terrain, picturesque sights as well as wonderful food along the way.

As I slept at about 3am the previous night, I woke up groggy when the alarm clock rang at 5.30am. I was supposed to meet the gang at 6.30am and was still deciding whether to go or no. At length I dragged myself out of bed and stuffed my passport and other necessary items and had a quick shower.

I reached the Jurong Bird park which was the designated meet-up point and saw that the others were there already. I was late! I tried to bribe everyone with the chocolates that I bought from the chocolate factory last friday.

Moon_star, she’s in the pink scooter, lead us to the Tuas second link immigration check point where we had our passports checked and paid S$0.60 using our cash card for our scooters to cross over. It was another RM$1.30 for the Malaysian vehicle toll later.

After the check, I took in the beautiful sights as we crossed the bridge connecting Singapore and Malaysia. It was gorgeous to see the rising sun coming out from the sea and into the blue skies. At times like these, I wished I had a helmet camera. I would love to show you the lovely sights I saw while on the road.

We stopped by Gelang Patah to meet up with the rest of the gang and to have our breakfast together. In Malay, Gelang Patah translates to Broken Bracelet. But as to why the area was named as such is a mystery to me. I quickly exchanged my Singapore money to Malaysian money (1 SGD = 2.20 RM) and then I had Nasi Lemak and Teh Halia! Yum!

After our breakfast, Roadster, who will be leading the group later on, briefed to us on the road that we will be travelling as well as cautioned us that because the travel would be long and monotonous, to try to keep ourselves awake and entertained.

But first, we pumped petrol at the petronas petrol kiosk that was nearby. There is no Premium, 98 or 95 (and other different types of petrol). Here there was only two choices of oil. Petrol or diesel. I stared at the pump, not accustomed to how it works.

Its very different here. The meter will not reset till the person has paid for his oil at the counter. So if the person takes his time, or worse, drive away without paying, the next person will have to wait a very long time. After a while, the meter reset and I filled my tank. I paid about ten ringgit for the fill. Cool!

And that we started our journey. It was a very long ride. I kept myself entertained by listening to my mp3 player and taking in the view of the plantations. There was no commercial or housing buildings anywhere along the highway. It was only trees everywhere. We stopped only for some of us to refuel and for all of us to stretch our legs.

Here is a video of us at one of our stops :

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Click here to watch in youtube

But it was really fun for me to ride in a procession with the vesporeans. We must have been a sight to behold with our colourful and eye catching scooter. Everywhere we go, there will be someone waving and shouting, “Vespa! Vespa!” at us. I saw that there were also other motorcycle group along the road. Even they were waving and giving us the thumbs up. I feel happy and proud.

After about 3 hours, we finally reached Malacca! It was already noon so it was hot hot hot! The gang went to have lunch at the famous Chicken Rice Ball restaurant. But as the place wasnt halal, I didnt eat there. Roadster was really nice to accompany me for lunch as we searched for a suitable place to eat.

We stumbled upon an indian restaurant and feasted on the yummilicious chicken biryani. Even though I wasnt so hungry, I find myself polishing off the rice. It was so good!

After lunch, Roadster wanted to go shopping. So I took the chance to roam around by myself and take pictures. As Malacca was formerly colonised by the Dutch and the portuguese, there are a number of landmarks here which had a European look.

This is the Stadhuys building. Formerly a residence of the Dutch Governor and his deputy. Now it is converted into a museum.

A gothic church was built by the French priest.

The colourful streets itself too made me feel like I was walking back in time. There are loads of antique things and sights.

Like these clogs. These shoes are memorable as they have a very loud “click clock” sound as you walk around in these. But they can hardly be found in Singapore anymore.

This man here is doing a handmade sweet. He’d chisel off the hard candy made of sugar. You can hear him when he works and the loud sound of the clinking will attract many children.

While walking, I chanced upon a chendol shop! I love chendol! These cool dessert will surely cool you down in the warm weather. I love looking at how the dessert is prepared. First the man will take a block of ice and puts it in the machine. The ice is then shaved into a container which is then layered with coconut milk, gula melaka, red bean and jelly. Yum!

There is a river down the path that I was walking at and I admired the view. Just as I was daydreaming at how nice it would be to take a dip on this hot day. I saw something interesting …

Err … I think I’d rather not have the dip.

Later on we grouped back together and rode around the Malaccan town and did a quick bout of shopping and then it was time to head back.

The way back home is easily one of the most stressful riding experience that I’ve ever had. Somewhere along the middle of the journey, traffic got congested and got heavier as we went along. And then the skies got darker and angrier and the rain poured down.

I always get nervous at times like these. Visibility is low and tempers are high. Accidents always happen on the roads when there’s a heavy downpour. And true enough, there were at least 3 accidents which I saw along the way home.

Every motorist wanted to go back home so much so that they squeezed through everywhere! Even the cars and busses cut into the shoulder lane!

This journey was very physically challenging indeed. My back and legs felt sore from all the riding. It was already nightfall and the only illumination was from our vehicles. I definitely wouldnt want to be stuck here alone!

I was wet, cold, tired and miserable. My mind started to play tricks on me. I could hear loud cheers and I looked around me to see where the sound came from. Could it be from the plantations? Could it be a cult? I shouldnt have watched the 100 scariest movie scenes the night before.

Then I realised that it was the tour bus-coach in front of me which was playing a movie. The cheering scenes emanated through the glass panels. Bah!

After what seemed to be forever, I was really grateful for the quick stops at the R&R along the way so that I could get warmed up again. A warm drink and a stretch of the legs and we were off. An hour later, we were back in Gelang Patah again for our final stop and dinner.

I couldnt decide on what to eat. In the end, I decided to have a burger. Cerealz seemed shocked when I translated the words of the banner at the burger stall :

Arnab = Rabbit
Kasawari = Ostrich
Rusa = Deer

How on earth did the stall owners able to buy Ostrich and Deer meat anyway? But I tried the rabbit burger just to see how it tasted like. Interestingly enough, it tasted like chicken. Maybe they were all chicken meat … hehehe.

After dinner, we pumped petrol for the final time and then headed back to the customs then we said our goodbyes to each other. By the time I reached home, the first thing I did was to head to the bathroom to get out of my dirty and wet clothes and have a nice warm shower and then collapsed in bed and snoozed immediately after that. I was that tired!

I realise that I didnt buy much things in Malacca. I still had a little souvenir though.

Wow, what a tan! Hehehe. But now all my limbs feel stiff and my skin feels like a radiation effect. I’m sunburnt! Argh!

Links

• More pics from the outing
• Vespa Club Forum thread
• Moon Star’s Flickr
• Un Sith’s recap

If you liked this post, please consider voting for me :)

Early saturday morning, the company where I worked at had a meet so that we can have a hand trying out a game. The company was promoting Granado Espada, a MMORPG for use in creative education. The game was mentioned non violent and promoted teamwork.

I met Liling and Mus, a Multimedia Educator for River Valley Primary and together, we tried to get ourselves used to the game.

When you start, there are a number of characters that you can choose from. Among them, I chose a wizard, a fighter and an elementalist. You could play all three characters simultaneously in the game.

You’ll start in a tutorial area where you learn to get used to the interface. After your basic tutorial, you’d be required to do some tasks from the non-player-characters to gain more experience and items.

One of the initial task that I had to do was to deliver lunch for the Queen’s guard. That quest was pretty easy to do. But like all RPG games, the more you complete a quest, the harder the quests that you will be given in time.

Some of the nice things about the game is that it had really nice looking graphics. I like how detailed the characters looked like. And how absolutely lush the environment was. Plus the background music was really nice to listen to as you explore and fight your enemies.

Interestingly, the game reminded me of Ragnarok, another MMORPG that I used to play. It was similar as the range of characters are comparative. The type of monsters in the environment was similar too. The main difference was that Ragnarok was more 2D and that the characters were more cute.

Here I am in Ragnarok. I was a girl magician with a cute little bow in my head fighting with my assasin friend. It was fun to play but I stopped playing after a while when the game started to be subscription based.

To be honest, I am not much of a gamer. Games like these can get quite stressful when I’m required to do a quest and especially when my characters are fighting and nearly dying.

But at the same time RPG’s can get rather mundane after a while and I can get quite bored of the monotony (of killing things) after a while.

I’m sure that RPG’s are great. Apart from the gameplay, I’ve seen some spectacular machinimas that are created through these type of games. One of these is this clip done by Fling Films.

The sad thing is that games like these can be quite an addiction as one can really get immersed in it. I find myself saying, “I’ll stop when I get to level 13″ or “I’ll stop when I finish this quest” and before you know it, you’ve spent quite an amount of time on the game.

Thats why I’m up at this time. Its 3.10am right now at this point of writing. I should have been in bed hours ago.

Have you ever played a MMORPG game before? What did you think about it?

p.s Thank you Snack Monster, I wuvs you! :D

p.p.s If you liked this post, please consider voting for me :)