The Day I Left - Runaway

Here's my confession

10 months ago I choose to runaway from  reality. I've suffered from a bad relationship and could not handle my emotion. I left my job straightaway, book an air ticket to Philippines and off I went. 

It was the worst moment ever in my life. The 3 weeks trip in Philippines did not help at all. Throughout the year then was hell till I decided to get a job in Singapore. 

Somewhere away from KL where I would not be reminded of the painful past. Told myself that I'm gonna settle down here for 2 years save some money and then plan for my big trip. 

As a Asian I felt really sorry for disappointing them. They have put hopes for me and hoping that I would be settled and not travel around too much and especially doing solo travel at times. I, however could not do that. I'm hopelessly addicted to traveling as of now. 

It's been a year. Scars are there but wound are healed. Now I have nothing in mind but to enjoy my current position and save up as much as I can. Am glad that I'm still doing flash packing whenever I have holidays. Did Laos after Philippines last year and heading off to Krabi in April for a short getaway.

RTW coming soon hopefully. 

Illigals Club and How We Got Stopped By A Police in Jakarta

It was a short 4 days 3 nights getaway trip with my best friend Christie. Decided to book a flight to Jakarta since Air Asia was having the air tickets promotion.

On the night before we fly back next day we decided to check out the club scene in Jakarta. The concierge guy suggested us to check out Iligals Club. According to him its a relatively new club and pretty happening one.

Took a cab there from our hotel and this annoying taxi driver decided to charge us more. It is just so annoying despite us telling him off and he kept insisting on the higher charge. In the end my friend just throw him the money according to his meter price with a bucks more.

It was a Thursday night and boy we was so wrong the whole club is so empty. There's probably not more than 5 tables of customers. Music was okay (they were playing trance) that night and the whole club looks quite nice though. The club PR guy came and talked to us and some disgusting old man wanted to dance with us. Left the club early at 1am because it was just too boring there.

On the way back to our hotel, there was a road block and the police decided to stop our cab. The moment he knew that us girls is from Malaysia he INSISTED us to speak in Bahasa. Asking to see our passport and demanding for bribe saying that we do not have tourist visa. We didn't give in of course and told the police that we do not need any visa to enter their country and he can send us to the Malaysian embassy he demands on. He let us go after failing to scare us.

All these corrupted things happens pretty much throughout in SEA and its pretty sad to see it happening.

The Place I Would Not Like To Visit Again

And answer to that place is Baguio, Philippines.

I still had 2 nights left and so I decided to head to Baguio from Sagada.

Took the Lizardo bus from Sagada to Baguio. Bus ride was pretty okay and I managed to score one more time getting around 20% discount for my bus ticket using my fake Khaosan Road made student ID ;)

Should I say you smell Baguio City first rather than seeing it. Yes the moment we entered Baguio, you would be breathing in bad smell of the engines fumes coming out of the vechicles (jeepneys!).

Baguio is crowded with people and on the streets and full of public vehicles.

Stayed at Baguio Village Inn single room for 350 pesos per night. I checked in the evening and wanted to go out to explore the city a little bit. However, the moment I step out of the hostel, I'm choking from the bad smell and it gave me a bad headache.

At the end of the day I decided to go somewhere indoor to fix my hungry stomach so SM Mall Baguio City it is and shame to say it is the only place I went to in Baguio *blush.

Stayed for a night and left for Manila to fly back home.

Yes the smell is literally so bad, Baguio stinks! The only plus point is probably that the city is a little colder then other place in Philippines. Oh dear if ever the foul smell is not there.

Baguio, I'll never forget how you smell like.

The place I stayed at.

My very small single room with a bible on the table.

Pretty amazing view outside my hostel of the housing around the hill.

SM Mall Baguio City

View of University of Cordilleras from the mall

Hiking Tongariro Alphine Crossing, New Zealand

Reason No.1 why you should visit New Zealand at least once in your life time just because this view is TO DIE FOR.

I am not really an outdoor person but I started to like hiking when I was in New Zealand for working holiday and on top of my to do list is definitely the Tongariro Alphine Crossing (one of the most popular track in NZ). Mt. Tongariro is still an active volcano and this is the place where they shoot Lord Of The Ring 1. Did not had much training pre-hand but I survived 22.4km of hike.

This is the place I snapped the most photos (total of 800+ photos) because I just couldn't get enough of how amazingly beautiful this place is.

We did this hike during April (Autumn) and were lucky enough the weather that day was perfect. You need to check the weather forecast prehand before you plan your hiking date because it might be dangerous to do it during bad weather.

Took us a total of 8 hours of hike to finish the 22.4km hike which was a pretty good timing because I was hiking with the Germans and they are really fit people and I have to keep catching up with them! Lol

Started our hike at around 9am.

Partners of the day, Nora and her German couple friends.

Most of the track in New Zealand are nicely paved and really safe to hike which shows how much the government put up the effort to promote hiking for their country's tourism.

First 3km. They have these poles to indicate how far have you gone.

The beginning part was pretty easy as it is flat surface.

View of Mt. Ngauruhoe

A reminder before the next harder hike up the hill.

2nd part of the hike was stairs going up hill which is pretty tough! for me at least >.<

Having a rest after first 6km of hike. Here we and Nora splits up with her couple friends who's doing the harder track which is the Ngauruhoe Summit. According to the friends the Ngauruhoe Summit track was really a hard one as compared to the Tongariro Alphine Crossing.

The dry grass looks like ball of gold under the sun.

Hello here's me and the rock ;)

Nora and I decided to do the extra hike to Tongariro Summit.

The blue lake

Amazing colours, the wonder of mother nature.

This was the scariest part for me because I HATE GOING DOWN HILL. What you need to do is basically slide down and I was half squatting half and pushing myself all the way down the hill. There's the emerald lake's colour is formed because of the minerals from the active volcano.

Have the urge to jump down but no its not safe to swim inside!

View from downhill where we just descended. My nightmare was over!

Back to a flat surface walk.

Close up of the blue lake.

Pack some food including instant noodles and apples.

The last rest area before desending the hill after 13km hike.

We saw a few elderly people doing this hike and just amazed by their stamina. There a Swiss couple who's over 80+ years old who've did the hike numerous time! OMG

The last part after descending the hill is basically walking under the shades in the jungle to reach the Ketetahi Car Park which hurts my knees so much and I kept cursing in my mind and questioning myself why did I do this to myself and when will we reach the car park.

PS: If you ask me would I do this hike again, my answer would most probably be a NO because once is enough and I was super exhausted after the whole hike but I have no regret doing this track!

Jobs I did in New Zealand

Of all the odd jobs I did while I was in New Zealand for working holiday. 

Part 1 ~ Here you go ;)

The view from our mussel factory's smoko room facing Port of Havelock
NZ's term of smoko which means smoking/ coffee break.
Havelock is a town so small where it has more sheep than the local residents (according to wikipedia there's only 500 people living in the town)

This is the first job I did and its interesting how we managed to secure this job. We were just having a break en route to Blenheim at the local petrol kiosk and happened to talk to a local mechanic working there. He asked us what are we doing and we told him that we are looking for jobs. He told us to try our luck at the nearby mussel factory and off we went. Voila we got that job of course with our impressive resume consisting of auditor, HR, piano teacher, bank admin for a factory job LOL.

Okay...don't laugh when you see this picture!
Haha this is basically our work outfit in the factory - gumboots, white top and pants, apron, earphones with built in radio to protect our ears from the noise of the machines and this i dont know what you call thing that we have to wear to cover our hair.
It's freaking cold in the the grading room and i always wear like at least 3 layers of clothes

Benefit of working there is that we get to buy cheap mussel from the factory at 1.70 NZD per kg.
In this pic, I was cooking seafood porridge. We can have mussel buffet every week. We were doing the night shift from 4.30pm till 2am. Another of my friend and I took up extra part time as well working as the cleaning team for the morning shift staff. We have to clean the machines in the factory everyday and oh boy my friend and I were given the harder task (hello we're petite Asian girls) whereby we have to move the stainless steal part of the machine - cleanse with water, rinse with detergent, scrub every inch of the machines, rinse with water again and sanitizer and put back the stainless steal part. Crazy work where I got my muscles from this mussel factory ;D

One of my best friend/ colleague. Marion from France
Behind is the locker where we put our belongings during work. The factory has strict regulations which we had to follow.

Traveled for 2 weeks down to West Coast, Southland and Otago.

Settled down at a lil' town called Roxburgh in Central Otago and started hunting for jobs.

Did one day of raspberry picking in a small orchard. That was my first time trying out an outdoor job.
The raspberry trees were almost the same height as us human and we sometimes had to squad up and down to pick the berries hidden below. After the whole day of picking my knees were aching like crazy *ahem sign of ageing probably ;p

Few days later we got a job in a pack house packing mainly apricots and some nectarines and plums. There were this sign in the pack house saying no eating in the working area but after some time of working everyone started to just take the nice fruits to eat while doing our work half way. *wtf who can stand the temptations of all these yummeh fruits especially when they are right in front of you.....gulp.

Apricots going into the grading belt according to their size.

Different sizes of apricots will then be sent to its own belt

From there, we will pack the fruits into the overseas, local and jam bins.
Fruits are then kept in the fridge and will then reach overseas in 3 days time.

Packing the mini ones which will be sold in the local supermarket.

Work in the pack house for 1 month+, quit the job and me and Chris went to travel again, doing the Southern Scenic Route, Dunedin and Oamaru.
Had the time of our life during this trip.....every place is so beautiful and special in its own way.

We initially planned to head back up to the Northern part of the South Island for apple packing job. Unfortunately, because of some certain reason we had to cancel the plan and came back to Roxburgh.

Here, we got a new job in another pack house packing nectarines and apricots as well. Since the fruits season are reaching its end, we were asked to wash the crates which they use to put the fruits in. I think i've washed over hundred of it in the outdoor no matter rain or shine. The weather was crazy. It can be so cold in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon when the sun is out it gets crazily burning hot or even rain.

During the weekend, we went to the orchard for picking, this time around we picked green cages and plums. We were enjoying ourselves eating the fruits there rather then working hard to pick more because we don't get any GREEN CAGES back at home.

I think i'm good at climbing wtf ;p

Monkey in action ;>

Green cages and plums that we picked!

Ohai, i is plum picker =}

Got tired of washing the crates in the packhouse partly because my hands were aching and so we quit to travel again for another 4 days.