If you happen to be in Cambodia, Thailand or Laos during 21st January until 5th February, drop me an email and you are in for a treat. Please include the date, the location and a little bit of introduction about yourself such as name, nationality, age, gender and contact number.

Hope to see you guys there!

Most of the wonderful things happened to me were the result of my spontaneous decisions. I’m not the type who likes to make detailed plans. Most important for me is I know what I want and let my desire brings me to where I am now.

These are few of the spontaneous decisions I have made throughout the year.

Made the most expensive purchase of my life. Yes, you may have guessed it; a new house for my family and yes, I did not plan for that. If you want to know how spontaneous I could be, this would be the perfect example. Went to see the show house (encouraged by my brother) and few weeks later, signed a paper that basically mean I have sold a very long period of my life to the bank. I didn’t even compare other housing projects. Luckily, I haven’t regret this decision and I hope I won’t.

Visited Hadyai, Thailand for the first time as a weekend breakaway.

Decided to visit my friend in Vietnam and embarked in 3 weeks backpacking adventure across Vietnam, China (Zhuhai to be exact), Hong Kong and Macao.

During the adventure…

… I have (accidentally) eaten dog meat

… had coffee, Vietnamese style.

… swam in cold water of Halong Bay.

… rode on a scooter along busy roads of Hanoi.

… had romantic moments beside Hanoi’s West Lake.

… took a long bus journey to Zhuhai and back

… bet on a horse in Sha Tin racecourse

… saw panda bears in Ocean Park

… had the most breathtaking view on top of Victoria’s Peak

… bought a netbook in Wan Chai

… gambled in Grand Lisboa casino in Macao.

… drank herbal tea with insect legs in it.

… unexpectedly met a friend in China (imagine 1 out of more than 1.3 billion of people)

In time to come back for my brother’s wedding. Not long after that, I have a nephew.

Visited Singapore again.

Then I volunteered myself as a St John Ambulance member; learning new skills and most importantly, making new friends.

Celebrated Merdeka in Langkawi with booze on the beach with the new found friends from St John Ambulance.

Rafted down Sungai Sedim with Launi and Wan Chun.

Did some charity works with Lions club.

Launched a new online Penang travel guide to help fellow traveler to my beloved hometown.

Appeared briefly in one of the Astro’s program.

Did a flying fox and wall climbing in Pulau Jerejak on my birthday.

Family wise, I am glad that I managed to spend more time with my family now thanks to the decision I made more than 2 years ago to become self employed.

2008 was also a year filled with many wedding bells. Recently, I became best man of Nam Soon’s wedding. He is one of my best friend from uni. From the wedding, I get to know a few wonderful people from both the bride and the groom’s family and friends.

Not to forget Yap’s wedding early last year.

Before I ended the year, I managed to meet few of my best buddies from uni. We had a great meal in Midvalley’s Delicious. We chatted for hours catching up with each other on what’s going on since we graduated 6 years ago. Most importantly, we have rekindled our friendship.

Even though I have met new friends along the way, but I have lost some as well. I don’t dwell into it and just move on with life because life is too short to live in regret. All I can learn from it is not to repeat the same mistake again and be forgiving when the opportunity arrive. So, I am sorry to those whom I have offended or hurt last year. What can I say? It is not my intention and I am not perfect. Mistakes happen.

Like last year, I won’t make any resolutions this year. Yes, there are still many things I haven’t achieve, goals I haven’t reach and places I haven’t visit. Like every year, I will work hard to achieve them and take pleasure to enjoy the journey toward my goals. It is the journey that brings me true happiness. Even though there are a lot if uncertainties this year, I am sure I will be able to ride it through as long as I keep a positive and open mind.

With this, I would like wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Photo courtesy from Charles Key, Alvin Lee and RoundEGG. Hope to see you everyone again next year.

New found friends in Pulau Perhentian

Another group photo in Pulau Perhentian before going the dive boat

Everyone dive into the ocean with some purpose. Some people dive looking for sea creatures. Some people dive waiting to take the perfect underwater photograph. Some people dive as a career. For me, I dive because I enjoy the landscape and the sensation I get. It’s a whole new world down there. A world where everyone flies like an eagle instead of walking. A world so silent that you can only hear your own breathing. A world where being fat or thin is not an issue. A world so blue that redefine the meaning of cool. Little did I know beneath the surface that seem so volatile hide a garden that is peaceful, calm and full of life. It fades in slowly right before my eyes as I descent into the blue abyss almost like how I used to dream it.

With my dive buddy, Launi

Another dive buddy; Samantha

One of my most memorable dive trip was live-on-board (LOB) diving trip in Trang, Thailand on December last year. Basically, all I did for 3 days was sleep, eat, dive and got drunk (either from sea sick or beers). It may not sound so appealing at first. Who in their right mind would want to spend 3-4 days of their holiday on a boat in the middle of a sea without Internet connection, phone coverage, shopping mall and suffering from sea sick most of the times? But boy, how wrong was I. The journey to the boat itself was nothing short of an adventure. A bunch of clueless divers (in 4 cars) got lost in Thailand in the middle of the night. We overshot our destination and almost drove straight to Phuket. Well, that’s something I won’t mind for sure! We managed to reach our boat somehow and we were 3 hours late!

The boat that we will spend our time on for 3 days.

The boat was huge enough to fit in 30 guests. I was assigned to a small tiny room with a fellow diver. The room was so tiny that I can barely turn on my bed and I swear the room was right on top of the engine room because every cells in my body vibrate when I lied down and it was noisy too. 2 pills of Novomin did not help much in getting me to sleep either.

Getting ready for our first dive

Corridor to my room

Lower deck. This is where the toilet, kitchen and diving platform located

Place to keep our diving gear

When the sun rises, I was greeted with a magnificent morning view that I never seen before. I couldn’t see any land on the horizon except for a lime stone hill that looks like it rises vertically from the ocean. We have reached our diving destination. It is call Koh Ha or literally translate into “five islands” in English. This is where we did all of our dives on the first day. Because lack of sleep from last night, I suffered terribly from sea sickness. After the first dive, I ‘fed’ the fishes with all my breakfast and last night’s Pad Thai. I lost my appetite and I skipped my dinner. After the first night dive, I went to sleep early while the rest party on the sun deck.

Pale look from the sea sickness

Divers on board

Batman and Robin?

Luckily, I recovered from the sea sickness and felt way better than the first day. We basically did 5 dives everyday; 1 before breakfast, 1 before lunch, 1 after lunch and a night dive before dinner. As you can see, I don’t describe the diving schedule by time but in relation to meal because that was all we did; dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, dive, eat and dive.

Octopus and lion fish

Fancy for Unagi?

Shrimp

Yellow sea horse. How cute…

Punk star fish?

Lion fishes

Frog fish?

Looks like a mermaid’s chamber to me

Underwater football, anyone?

Penalty kick

Waiting for the next dive… or was it lunch?

Of all the dives I did during the trip, my best experience was during one of the night dive. Even though it was extremely dark down there, I felt like I was clubbing underwater; high on nitrogen and ray of ‘disco’ lights flashed from all directions from the divers’ torch lights. Sometimes, all of us are too immersed with the night life of the underwater world that we drifted far apart from each other without realizing it. When that happened I have to turn off my torch light so that I will be able to spot the rest of the group from the flashes of their torch light. However, I never let myself loose sight of my dive buddy because it is dangerous to be left alone in the dark open water. In case of any complication, no one will be able to spot me until sunrise. By that time, I will be either bloated on the surface, swept into the deep water, torn into pieces or cannot be found forever until some fisherman catch a huge shark with my BCD in its stomach. Either way, I am dead. It does get scary to be surrounded by darkness in a place where no one can hear my shout and all the predators swim faster than I do. I did imagined a lot of scary thoughts like a lost great white shark suddenly appear from behind and make me its dinner. Oh yeah, we are no longer on top of the food chain when we go down underwater. Scary or not? The only ray of hope (no pun intended) is from the light of my group’s and my own torch light. We learn to trust each other because we have to depend on each other to survive in case of emergency. Apart from all the scary thoughts, what I really enjoyed about night diving is when I was surrounded by tiny specks of planktons (or some kind of organism) that glow in the dark. When I turned off my torch light and let myself in total darkness, I can see them everywhere like a starry night except that they move in all direction! It was so beautiful and almost surreal. Another moment I like most was doing safety stop under the boat. It was basically 3 to 5 minutes of staying still doing nothing at 15 feet underwater. Within the short moment, I took my time to enjoy the beautiful ray dancing around in the clear water that came from the spotlight shining down from the boat. After every night dives, everyone drinks, sharing jokes and laugh the night away.

Cheers! Started drinking already even before the sun went down.

Sunset. It’s time to do night another dive.

When two is a company…

…three is a crowd!

Sad moment… Poor Kit becomes blind and has to beg for money with Ping helping him with melancholic musics.

On the last night on the boat, I decided to spend it on the sun deck so that I can fall asleep under the starlight. It was a wonderful experience until I was waken by strong wind that rocked the boat so hard. I stayed awake fearing the boat might capsized. Luckily, nothing happened and thanks to that, I managed to witness sunrise; something that I never see for very long time.

Spending the night on the sun deck

The sun deck

Dawn…

Before we ended our diving trip, we stopped by at Morakot Cave (Tam Nam) or popularly know as Emerald Cave. Hidden inside the cave is a beach. The only way to access the beach is snorkeling through the cave. It gets really dark in the cave and torch light is a must. After swimming for a short distance in the dark, I began to see light coming from the end. The beautiful beach awaits us at the end of the cave. That was the first time we touched ground after 3 days on the boat. Boy, how reluctant we were when it was time to go back to our boat. We were so captivated by the beauty of the beach. You see, the beach was surrounded by high rocky walls that cast shadow over the beach. We were practically inside a giant bowl. With such an impressive setting, I can’t help myself imagining Captain Jack Sparrow kept his treasure here when we was on his way to Singapore.

Waiting for fellow divers on the sea

Snorkeling toward Emerald Cave

Isn’t it dark in here?

The cave is so dark that you need a torch light

Light at the end of the tunnel

I think I found my paradise.

See… Boon so happy he can’t stop rolling on the beach.

Surrounded by high rocky walls

Yeah! Group photo before going back to the boat.

The fun never stops even after we have ended our diving adventure on the boat. We continued to party in a local club jumping up and down to a rocking Thai live band like a teenager in a rock concert. All of us went so wild that almost everyone is drenched from head to toe after dancing and pouring each other with buckets of ice water. That was what 6 bottles of Chivas can do to us. What more amazing was the local dive master took his heavily modified car that looks like coming out from Too Fast Too Furious movie doing donuts on the road! The night went so wild that I can’t even mentioned some of the incidents in this blog (for the record, we didn’t do anything illegal or hit any dog).

On the next day, we continued our journey back to reality with heavy heart and terrible headache.

I went to watch Twilight after the “What a Bloggiful World” event. Knowingly it is yet another chick flick, I went ahead anyway after it was highly recommended by one particular blogger who thinks having a handsome vampire watching over her bed when she sleep is a good idea.

True to my expectation, this movie smells like a chick flick from all directions. You know; pretty gals, cute guys, high school, prom night, romantic scene, all the usual stuffs that make any girl’s heart melt like butter on hot pan are there. Basically all the girls went crazy over the handsome vampire named Edward Cullen played by Robert Pattinson. I personally don’t think he is that great looking. His face just look like typical ‘ang moh’ to me (I’m gonna get so grilled for this!). Maybe his main attraction is his eyes with the thick eyebrow. I don’t know… maybe I don’t know how to “appreciate” a guy’s look.

Anyway, look aside. The movie certainly has its cool factor even though the love story is kinda lame. The girl (Bella) simply fall in love head over heel with Edward and all he need to do is to act cool and stay cool. How convenient. The young couple then faces challenges from both side of the society because of their differences. As predictable it is, they prove their true love by overcoming all the challenges. Overall the plots are loosely tied. But then again I like how the movie portray the vampires. The vampires in the movie avoid sunlight not because they will get fried, but because their skin will glitter like costume that Elvis wore on stage. So they have to hide from sunlight to prevent the human from spotting them. Another thing is, they do not have any fangs. However, they can bite and their bite are venomous. The venom can turn anyone into one of them. Honestly, with the vampire that cool, I really don’t mind getting bitten by them. But then again, can I live without good foods, sun and beaches? Maybe not.

I don’t know about you guys, but don’t you think the conversation between Pak Lah and George Chan went something like this?

What a wonderful way to meet up with some of my favorite bloggers all at once at the same time. So yes, I’ll be there. Hopefully you will be there too.

My neighbor’s car on fire!

It happened just few minutes ago. The fire brigade is still there investigating the scene as I write this. Remember, you hear it first from BenLeow.com.

OK, I’m going back to sleep.

1. Peace to the World especially Cambodia, Thailand and Laos because I will travel there very soon.

2. Better economy so that I can afford a new netbook, a mobile phone with Wifi and GPS capabilities and eyes surgery so that I can see clearly without depending on spectacles or contact lenses.

Well, it is not a very noble Christmas wish but at least it is a honest one. Right?