Thursday 31 December 2015

Less Travels in 2015

2015 was a relatively boring year for me in terms of travel. I only travelled to 6 places locally and abroad. Here goes:

Bangkok in January

Left for Bangkok immediately after work and arrived at the hostel at 12 midnight on New Year's Day just in time to see the fireworks.

This trip to Bangkok was a fruitful one because we met up with Sitt and Orn whom we met during our trek to Poon Hill, Nepal in October 2012. We went for dinner at CentralWorld to catch up and to talk about more travels, what else!

And what would a trip to Bangkok be without shopping. I bought loads of dresses, t-shirts and shoes at the Platinum Fashion Mall.

Boat ride on the Chao Praya river to get to the Grand Palace. The water was black in colour that I was careful to keep my mouth closed literally throughout the ride for obvious reasons. 


Pulau Tidung (Jakarta) in March

This trip was relatively disappointing because the island was dirty, dirty, dirty. You can read about my experiences here.

Sunset on Pulau Tidung. The piece of land on the right are dead corals with rubbish on it.


Universal Studios Singapore in April

LvH was in Singapore for work at that time so I took the opportunity to organise a trip to Universal Studios Singapore, for the sake of visiting it.

We also visited the SEA Aquarium which I think LvH enjoyed most because he's an avid diver. The rest of the rides in Universal Studios were too young for us actually but I had a great time!

Jelly fish at SEA Aquarium.


Mulu World Heritage Area in May

This was my second time in Mulu. Decided to go again to accompany LvH who has never been there.

I had a great time doing other stuff that I didn't get to do during my first visit. The new stuff that I did were Garden of Eden Valley Walk, Fastlane to Lagang Cave, adventure caving in Stonehorse Cave and the canopy walk.

We saw this snake during the canopy walk early in the morning.


Sandakan (Sabah) in July

It was a long Aidilfitri weekend and we took the opportunity to visit the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, Labuk Bay Proboscis Money Sanctuary and the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre.

You can read about my experiences here.



Australia in September

Saved the biggest (read: expensive) trip for last.

The main reason I went to Australia was to attend my sister's MBA graduation in Toowoomba which is about 125km from Brisbane. So I took the opportunity to visit Sydney and Melbourne too.

View of the iconic Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge from Circular Quay.


New job

Joining a Japanese bank was probably the biggest change for me in 2015.

I was already almost 2 years working under the bloodiest bitch of a boss at one of Malaysia's leading resort & hospitality company, and I was planning to move on. So I upated my Linked-In profile and waited. Soon I received a call from a headhunter and the rest as they say, is history.

I left for Australia on 28 August which was my last day at the job, spent 2 weeks in Australia, returned to Kuala Lumpur on 12 September and started my new job on 14 September. Timing was absolutely perfect.


2016 travel plans 

I have 31 days annual leave in 2016 (includes 9 days carried forward from 2015). So I'll have more time to travel compared to my previous jobs which had less annual leave.

Angie and I are already preparing ourselves physically and mentally to trek to Everest Base Camp in September/October 2016. I plan to blog about my preparations - monthly practise treks, wardrobe, gear, etc.

I'll also be making a trip to Oman at the end of the year to visit LvH who's now based there.

Apart from that, I don't have any other plans to travel. If I do, it would only be domestic travel. One reason is because of the drastic fall of the Malaysian Ringgit. Malaysians are now poorer everytime we step out of the country. And foreigners are richer whenever they come to Malaysia. I won't be surprised if the number of tourists to Malaysia will reach an all time high in 2015 and beyond.

As the world welcomes 2016, I wish all my readers, followers, family members, friends, relatives, etc. a wonderful year ahead. The world may be in a state of chaos and disarray. But I believe that there's always hope.

Happy New Year 2016! May we be continuously blessed in every way.


1 comment:

Sapi Lucu said...

agreed, same goes with Indonesian. Rupiah downfall were making me less travel abroad last year. I did only Japan and Rusia last year, not even a single trip to Spore!, while usually I did at least 1x a year. Oh I visited KL last year on August but for 3 days training which basically spent wandering around my previous office at Bukit Bintang

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