Adventure Trip to Taal Volcano

 4th March 2012

One of the highlights during our trip in Manila was the adventure trip to Taal Volcano, the smallest active volcano in the world. We were picked up by the tour guide, Gerald at our lodging. The trip took over 2 hours to reach Tagaytay city.

We had a quick stop for natures call at a dining cafe, and one of us, Shak intrigued at the sight of 'balut'. Oh, just so you know, balut is a Filipino well-known dish, which is a boiled FERTILIZED egg. Yes it was boiled, but c`mon, there were feathers blended with the egg for god sake!

Of course none of us dared to have a taste of it, thus we requested our tour guide to eat it. And like some jakun photographers, we snapped the eating scene like nobody's business. Ahh.. yes, I tried quite hard to keep my face as straight as possible when seeing him eating the egg. Well, respect other cultures, right?

 Afterwards, we descended to the shore to board onto the boat. The ride to the volcano across the Taal Lake took about 30 minutes to arrive.

On the paper, it didn't sound too adventure, thus we expected amateur level of hiking with leisure walking to the top of volcano. With little preparation, we didnt bring the spare pants, spare shirts as per advised. Degil.

It was sunny and dry day. The local guide recommended us to hop on the horse with an additional price of Php600. I was thinking that the deal was fishy, thus mutually agreed with others for not riding the horse. On top of that, we were also advised upfront by the tour guide from the mainland for not using the horse-riding service. After all, we are still young and strong physically, arent we?

After battling with dust in sunny day with blood and sweat (ewah!), even some of us almost gave up walking to some extent, finally we reached at the top of the mountain. Yeeha!

We were awestruck with the sight of bright turqoise lake which is surrounded with high wall craters. And amazingly, it is still active and ever ready to explode.( O God pls dont let it happen while we are still around~)

We took some time to have a rest after challenging hiking (yes, for us who have been less and less fit over working years :P), and the next activities were  capturing every breathtaking scenery while we could and hitting golf ball into the lake. That is source of income to the local too.

We descended down the mountain, and yes, again with the breath of dusty air. Hmmph! It was not a pleasant experience tho.

After having picnic lunch, we were ready to depart to Manila city.

But hey! We have yet to snap the picture together with this cute tour guide, Gerald. So,we stopped in the middle of the highway for capturing this sweet pic(sweet as I see it. Hihi)!

It was funny that his shy behaviour made me assuming that he was a teenager who dropped out from school. But surprsingly he is in 30s with a daughter of 3yrs old!Aiyayaiii!~

Adele-Set Fire to the Rain

It started from Rolling in the deep, when I repeatitively hear the song, gradually I found that the beautiful voice of this English 24-yr-old singer is getting irresistable. And it was followed with Someone Like You, which has unleashed her undeniable strong vocal.

And come the next hits, Set Fire to the Rain, with its haunting title, now I am Adele- addicted. Never get enough with her songs especially this very new song.

Effortlessly beautiful singing.

On the other hand, her award-winning fiesta during recent Grammy Award at her first time appearance, I have a feeling that she has the potential to be the next Whitney Houston, ok, definitely not with the cocaine and drugs abuse whatsoever.:p

And while it was apparent that her physical is not as skinny as other gorge singers, she is beautiful in her own way, no?

Tivoli Garden Residence Apartment, Manila

We arrived in Manila in the morning, so next thing to do was to unpack our stuff, get refreshed before going off to the city. Oh hang on, for the intro, my friends and I went to a short trip to Manila recently. We wasted not much time at the Clark Airport and shoot to Tivoli Garden Residence Apartment in Makati city.

 

 

The local settlements along the way are almost at  run down state, but as we entered the apartment premise, we were caught offguard. Complete different as compared to the surrounding community. And silently I thank God that our lodging for this trip was not that bad.

 

checking in

counting pesos in hand.converting frm little RM, it was a lllooottt man!

Ok, let`s have a brief tour inside our shelter. This apartment comprises of 3 bedrooms with two bathroom, living room and kitchen. It was a small unit of apartment , but I think the landlord is very genius in deco-ing the available space so that it looks bigger.

                                                                             the pantry

 

 Flat screen LCD, with American Idols and Best of How I Met Your Mother marathon in Starworld channel,enough to make us felt at home. Not that I am really a fan of AI, but, who cares~

 

Overall, the stay was really worth the money we spent, at super affordable rate and backpacker-friendly! Oh yes, I booked the website from booking.com.

Charles and Keith for the next complete wishlist

Oh yes, nowadays, travelling to KL hasn't been a regular trip anymore. And recently I had an annual ACD assesment at KLCC tower.The assessment took over 3 hours to complete, and even the assessor interupted casually in the middle of the assessment "alaa tak payah serious sangat ngn ACD ni, datang KL mesti shopping.." duhh!~~

Ok, lets make it short, the assessment went well *:-DD*, I was delighted upon exitting the room and skipped the tour around Suria KLCC and went to the hotel room, instead.

I changed my formal attire of blouse, pants and shoes to shirt, jeans and sneakers. Off I went to have a stroll at Pavilion.

Speaking of wishlist, I`ve been meaning to buy a pair of high heels, I mean literally high, not just one or two inch higher, but 4 inches and I always hooked with Charles and Keith collections. When entering the Charles and Keith  store, I always had an adrenaline rush seeing the beautiful shoes, but man! why they are sooo freaking high for my height? And the intention stopped there, with no Charles & Keith was grabbed.

And this time around, as always I entered the same store again to browse around the shoes, and aaahh.. , being alone with no friend by my side to be 'ruler reminder', I slipped off my sneaker and there~!

It felt so good in it that I just didn`t care of how ridiculously tall  I will be. I guess that`s why womens' obsess towards stuff like shoes or bags, for that matter, sometimes beyond reasonable explanation, no?

So now this pair has joined the rest of my shoes collections, notice how it differs with my other footwears? :)

Hyatt Regency Resort,Kuantan

Recently I went to TARA workshop which was organized at Hyatt Regency Kuantan. It is located in Teluk Cempedak, nice attraction just a few miles away from Kuantan city center.

 

The room rate varies according to the room type, and the view from the room. So I grabbed the chance to pretend myself as a 'lavish tourist', definitely I chose sea-view room.Kui kui kui..

The interior deco is typical like other hotel that I have written in earlier posts.

You know what I mean..the dim lighting, flat screen telly...and wooden floor.

And for lazy bum like me who rather taking a brief nap than having a stroll at the beach, the balcony is just perfect for enjoying the breezy evening before it turned dawn.

And the best part of staying in this room is the opportunity to see the sunrise straight from my bed, as soon as I cracked my eyes open. Breathtakingly awesome!

Tonka Bean Cafe, Dining Heaven of Impiana KLCC

If I were to choose which hotel would I go when travelling to KL, Impiana Hotel KLCC is not likely my first choice. The distance from the meeting venue, the facilities they offer in the guest room are the reasons of why I rather choose other hotels on top of this hotel.

But ...

But,  if you are planning to be on outstation for a liiiitttttle longer than usual, say in 4 days or more, plus if you appreciate food, Impiana Hotel KLCC  is the best lodging I would say.  I stayed in the hotel throughout the week for attending  a training. 

For every 2 nights stay, I was given a complimentary dinner in Tonka Bean Restaurant. Plus, I had the chance to enjoy the delicacies served during the lunches too! So let's feast our eyes now!

As always, I preferred the breakfast to be tagged along with my room. American breakfast is always the preference, definitely.

This ad of buffet dinner was displayed in the lift for January 2012. And upon learning how much I saved for the scrumptious dinners, I was over the moon~Yippi!

Ok, I just want to skip the elaborated details here. The pictures tell it all. I am a big eater!

                                                                 mussels and chicken salad

mussel in ice

Here are the lunch and dinner meals that I took. I snapped the pictures of some of them, and for the rest of the meals, I was just too drooling to remember of snapping the pictures. Hehehe. And the heavy intakes start now~~*drum rolling*

Speaking of desserts,  they serve the Baskin Robins ice creams for the lunches and dinner! Awesome! And these are the desserts I created the look on my own, with the chocolate dripping over the cakes and ice-creams, just to add some flavour. 

 

It is 10 o'clock, and it is time for me to go to the bed. But, as the matter of fact, I`m starving already. Whuuu~!

Caramel pudding- the amateur version

Apparently preparing something from kitchen is a fulfilling way to spend my leisure time before going to bed, well, besides watching telly whole night, definitely. =)

It has been months that I planned to cook things from my new kitchen. And for a start, I decided to make caramel pudding. Easy-peasy version one, trust me.!

The ingredients are easy to get from the market which are 6 eggs, evaporated milk, a cup of sugar, and table spoon of  vanilla flavour.

Spread some sugar into the container and heat the container until the sugar is melted and turn brown. That will be the base of this pudding.

While in the other container, mix all the remaining sugar, vanilla flavour, eggs and the evaporated milk.

Stir until the sugar is melted and blended in the mixture.

And now that the mixture is ready, pour it inside the first cointainer with the caramel. The more sugar you melt, the better, but please make sure that the caramel spreads evenly for a better by-product.:p

Heat  the mixture on the stove until it is hardened. Oh yes, please use double boiler in this process, or if you dont have one, just put the container of this mixture into another cointainer with water. Wait until 20-25 minutes, when it is thickened and hardened, remove it from the heat and let it cool.

And it is ready to be served!And yes, you might want to pour the golden caramel on top of it for more flavour. Just heat some more ounce of  sugar in the container.