Hahndorf

Guess where did I went today, Hahndorf!!!

Last time I went there was about 3 months ago, where Aunt Florence (Amanda's mom), Uncle Steven and Jane came to Adelaide. Its a German town 30 minutes from Adelaide where most of the people living there were or are still Germans. So no candy guessing there are lots of German themed shops and buildings there.

We went to the German cake shop first for our lunch. I strongly recommend this humble looking shop just beside the main Hahndorf road. Good food, friendly people, what more can you ask?


Look for this if you're in Hahndorf!


A small cafe serving great food and lots of atmosphere~


The shop's famous Beesting Cake.


Some sweet and delicious apple pie


Hahn burger (burger with a huge beef Pattie and sunny side up egg in between the buns)


Chicken Schintzel

After our lunch we went for a walk along the road and visited shops selling various items which included German ice cream and a traditional old German candy store.

Hambugs candy store (Look at all the candies on sale!)


Lol, stumbled across this fuel price indicator where "dying" is the same price as a litre of unleaded petrol :P


The trip to a German town wouldn't be complete without looking at German sausages ain't it? (But these are only dried salamis, we planned to eat German sausages at a restaurant later)


Nice looking shop selling German products.

After 2 hours of walking, we went to a German bar and had some beer, German style!

Drink Drink Drink (I ordered a man's jar, German style!)

.
..
...
....
.....
.......
.........
...........


Still Drinking....

.
..
....
......
.......
.........
..........
............


Looking at the bar to divert my attention from the huge jar of beer... (While still drinking)

.
...
....
.....
.......
.........
..........
............


Finished in in the end! (Total time 1 hour, including lots of chit chat and 3 chicken wings XD)


Unfortunately I got a bit woozy and felt too full with all that beer in my belly, so I had to save the German sausage for another time. Next time babeh, next time...

I wrote this post after passing out for 3-4 hours after I got home. That German beer was a killer, I drank about 1/3 Johnnie walker and not get drunk before but this beer is brutal!

Well, that concludes my Hahndorf trip! Till next time!!!



P.s. To my 2 dearest housemates Chong and Wilson, DON'T TROLL MY BLOG AND LEAVE STUPID COMMENTS A**H**LES!!! KILL YOU 2 TOMORROW!

Christmas

Beware, this is a word-only post!

Just Reached Home!

Feeling a bit dizzy due to the boat ride from Langkawi Island back to Penang. I'm totally burnt out from the exhaustion from traveling long distances. I'll be taking a break starting tomorrow. Please do not find me XD

This year's Christmas was spent in Langkawi with friends. Went with old ones and came back meeting/knowing new ones. I've noticed my socializing skills has improved a lot since I've started studying in Australia. I could engage conversation with people from different ethnic backgrounds easier than before and my gift of being accepted by kids is even better than I previously imagined.

Took a ferry from Penang Jetty which costs RM115 for 2 ways. It was a 4 hour journey where it unloaded passengers onto Pulau Payar Marine Conservation Park. Slept most of the time while spending the remainder reading Dan Brown's Deception Point.

The moment I stepped out of the ferry terminal, I was greeted by the same verse over and over again. "Sir? Taxi?" , "Sir? Kereta?" (Damn annoying, but hey, since global recession ma, so people are desperate, can't blame them). So I walked behind a pair of middle aged couple and used them as "parents" to avoid the people from asking me if I want a taxi or rent a car (Hehehe... Sux to be them XD). In the end I went to a car rental store and rented a sucky Proton Iswara. Feels good to drive after 10 months of "driving sober-ness" at Adelaide :)

My retreat of choice was AB motel located near the Underwater world at Pantai Cenang (I asked Chin Ying to book it since I was short on cash after returning from Aus so it doesn't hurt to be a cheap bastard once in a while right?). The room was not bad, I stayed in a room which was RM50 per night with air con and 2 single beds which was not bad. The ventilation was good. The downside of the motel is that the room I'm staying at does not have windows -.-" But the motel does have chalets for rent with windows and all. The motel is quite good as its newly built.

We spend the afternoon shopping along Pantai Cenang and walking along the beach. We didn't went for a swim because my mom (and everybody else's mom) warned us not to go swimming in the sea because it was monsoon season and we might get swept away by the waves.

Christmas Eve was spent with foreigners at a beach-bar with a camp fire. We sang songs under the moonlight. Chin Ying, her bf and her friends got drunk from drinking Malibu (Some sort of strong liquor I suppose) while I stayed away from most of the hard liquor by keeping myself sober enough to keep all of the drunkards in check XD

I missed the countdown because I was already in bed, my body gave way because I was exhausted from the airplane transit from Adelaide-Perth-Kl-Penang and the journey to Langkawi. Woken up at midnight from the non-stop chain of sms containing Christmas Greetings from my friends (Thanks guys! really appreciated it!)


Well... In conclusion, most of my Christmas was spent in Lala-land planting cherry trees XD
Drop me a comment and tell me about how did you spend your Chrismas with your love ones :)

Barossa Valley

OK, it was confirmed that yesterday was one of the best days of my short Aussie life!
Barossa Valley was excellent! We went to 3 of the famous winery in Barossa Valley. Each and everyone of them was excellent and I can't wait to go explore other winery as well. Lets let the pictures do the talking shall we???

When we finally arrived at Barossa after crossing through countless crop fields and secretly taking blackmail worthy photos of each other (Hehehe... Amanda~~~ XD) we headed to the Barossa farmer's market first to check out what the local farmers had to offer. They did not disappoint, the veges were fresh and the fruits were much bigger, cheaper and sweeter than their counterparts in Adelaide. The market was quite unique because there was wine barrels every where. Wine is what makes Barossa Valley stand out so it is quite common to find that the designs of many houses and landmarks are themed to resemble a winery or contain something about wines.


The poster hanging in the market



Some snap shots of the market


From left, Jane (Amanda's friend from melb), Amanda and Me!

The first stop on our wine drinking journey takes us to the famous Wolf Blass winery! My god it was huge! The vineyards extend to the horizon and the wine processing plant was so large that it looked like an oil refinery rather than something wine related :) We know that we're going to be in for a great treat, and it did not disappoint!


The courtyard at Wolf Blass


A collection of the more famous wines of Wolf Blass
from left (Platinum label vintage Shiraz, Black Label vintage Shiraz, gold label, grey label, yellow label and red label)


A picture of the Platinum Label Shiraz which costs about 185AUD(Abt RM463) if you buy it directly at the winery. If you want to taste the wine, you'll have to pay 10AUD(RM25) for 1 sip.


Chilling out at the courtyard


That's Amanda's mom beside her and her grandma beside me!



The wine tasting facility (you can buy the wines you like here too!)


Jane's wine cellar @@"



"Ok, shall we get started?"


Drink, drink drink...


Happy man/women (After going through 13 different kinds of red/white wines)


The waitress serving us also gave Amanda a free bottle of Tranmere Riesling for her graduation on Monday! She was so nice!



In the end we bought about 10 bottles of wine, I bought 2 good ones which were presidential selection of Shiraz and Sauvigion Blanc which costs about 24 AUD each. The wine and the people here gave me a nice time and I'm sure I'll be retuning in the near future!

Stop 2: Penfolds winery, easily one of the best red wine producers in the world. Their Penfolds Grange selection of wine is one of the most expensive wines in the world. One bottle may fetch up to 550AUD for 1 produced this year while u add a few hundred more for the ones produced a year before that... Don't believe me?




Outside Penfolds winery


Amanda and Jane (ambassadors for the consumer of Penfolds wine all over Malaysia XD)


The wine purchase and tasting facility at Penfolds


Cam whoring on the bar, (Yes, there were tons of people looking at us as we were hogging the bar XD)

Jane bought a few reds and a bluestone tawny which tasted excellent (IMO, better than any other wine I've tasted that day) and the cheapest wine there costs twice the price I paid for the wines at Wolf Blass!


When we asked for an extra bag for the wines, the waitress said that we'll have to pay 2AUD for another one, so Amanda went to the guest book and wrote this down... At first she wrote Jane's name but got smacked and changed the name to Dane Louise XD




Our winery hopping journey took us to another winery, this time to Jacob's Creek Winery. The were tons of people at Jacob's Creek but imo its only a tourist attraction rather than a proper world class winery. The wines are cheaper compared to Penfolds and Wolf Blass because it is only a local brand... But still, the winery was huge!!!




Jacob's Creek


The wine tasting facility at Jacob's Creek

I didn't drink much (only about 3 types) of wine after stopping. I already felt a bit woozy after about trying 30 plus different types of wines from the previous 2 wineries so I left the big boys and girls (Jane and Uncle Steven) to try the rest. All in all the wines at Jacob's Creek was good, but not that great compared to the wines at Wolf Blass and Penfolds.

Japan Homestay

Cheesie is planning to go to japan for a homestay! I think its the same company that organized mine when I went to japan for a homestay myself. Can't really remember much because it happened 2 years ago but I'll try hard to recap on the stuff that I did during my homestay :)

I remembered that my mom had to drive me from penang to Empress hotel to meet up with the other guys. Hahaha! I went with Guisong. The first person who came up and chatted with me was Stephanie which we remained good friends till now :) I remembered during one of the workshops I had to remember all of the names of the people participating... I had a tough time remembering all of them as Malay names seem the same XD Ok, less talk more pictures right? Here are some of the pics that we took during our 1 day crash course of Japanese culture before we flew to japan:

Note: This post contains images of me from 2 years ago. Viewers are advised to exercise extreme caution as your eyes might hurt when looking at my face. Keep pictures of your male/female idol (i.e. Lee Hom, Leah Dizon, Alice Tzheng etc) beside you when viewing this pose. Look at them instead of me when you can't stand my face. Thanks!


Stephanie's group presentation (about Malaysian stuff I think)


Group photo of winter Nagoya 06'


First ray of sunlight! When we were going arrive at "The land of the rising sun"

Guisong, Hafiz and I were different from the batch as most of the people's foster parents live near or in Nagoya while 3 of us were to take Shinkansen to the Hamamatsu city which is located in the Shizuoka Prefecture. (Yes! only 3 of us among 40+ people had the chance to try the shinkansen!) Hamamatzu is famous for the manufacturing of musical instruments as most of the major manufacturers if musical instruments is based in Hamamatzu city. Does Kawai and Yamaha ring a bell? Suzuki's HQ is also based in this city and Honda was also found in this city as well.


The Shinkansen train station


Best pic I could take of the bullet train, it was too fast!

My foster family came to pick me up. They are from the Shimada family, besides my foster father(Takashi Shimada) and my foster mom(Etsuko Shimada) I have a grandma and an 18 year old sister.

Some pics of my house + family members:

My tatami bed! How cool is that!


The living room (There is a heater under the table, I wish I had this now T_T)


Me + Mai Shimada (sis)


Me + bobo-chan (family dog, extremely intelligent)

We did some touring of the city but it was a pity as I couldn't experience the Hamamatzu festival which made this city stand out from others.

Quote from wikipedia:
"Hamamatsu Festival, held from May 3 through May 5 each year, is well-known for Takoage Gassen, or the kite fight, and luxuriously decorated palace-like floats. The festival originated about 430 years ago, when the lord of Hamamatsu Castle celebrated the birth of his first son by flying kites. In the Meiji Era, the celebration of the birth of a first son by flying Hatsu Dako, or the first kite, became popular, and this tradition has survived in the form of Hamamatsu Festival. It is extremely exciting to see over 160 large kites flying in the sky to the sound of trumpets.
Those who visit Hamamatsu at this time of the year can experience the city at its most exciting time. During the nights of Hamamatsu Festival, people parade downtown carrying over 70 yatai, or palace-lake floats, that are beautifully decorated while playing Japanese traditional festival music. The festival reaches its peak when groups of people compete by violently marching across town. (Naka-ku, Minami-ku - May)"


The Hamamatsu Festival


Usually they race around the city (car vs car) with a mini orchestra inside the cart.

My okasan also invited Guisong's and Hafiz's foster parents to her house for a little get togather party.

Making Takoyaki (octupus balls)


Make Make Make XD


Played Dress up with the girls at night XD

We spent the next few days visiting schools, which include a kindergarden, a primary school and Hamamatsu High. Besides that, we also went to Hamamatsu Castle, quite a breath taking sight although it is not as famous as the other castles in Japan.



Kids!!! They were really cute and nice!!!


Hamamatsu High School


Pics with the students


I attended a class on history of Japan... VERY HARD Understanding what the teacher is talking. Even the students agree with me :)


Girls posing for us (instead of paying attention during class) ^_^


P.E. Lessons (Girls were playing tennis while guys were playing sccocer)


Japanese making Muah Chee (Actually its not but I forgot the name of the stuff)



Hamamatsu Castle (It would be nicer during spring as the sakura{Chery Blossom} trees would make the view spactacular!) Like this:



Sad faces on the kids when we were going back

After that We met up with the rest of the group at Nagoya and headed for Tokyo disneyland. Spent a day there before taking a flight back to Malaysia.


Tokyo Disneyland!!!


A photo with the younger kids which went on the trip


There are about 500MB of pictures that I've wanted to upload but this would make the blogpost too long and draggy... Well, this will have to do for now! I have fond memories of Japan and I wish to go back to visit my foster family after I've graduated from uni.

Miss them a lot!!!