Travel Bucket List

And so I was sitting in my office cubicle on a Friday evening, waiting for the break of fast so that I could join my colleagues dig into the scumptious buka puasa spread in the pantry.

Suddenly I had a flash of inspiration to complete a bucket list of travel stuff I wanna do before I'm unable to, if you know what I mean. So I started jotting down profusely all the places I wanna travel to and do the things that will make mamma proud.

So here my friend, I present to you my travel bucket list. Promise not to laugh.

Review: Eight Mentigi Guesthouse in Cameron Highlands

We stayed at Eight Mentigi in Tanah Rata during our recent Ent hunt trip to Cameron Highlands.

Eight Mentigi started business in early 2010 which makes its facilities brand new at the point of writing. The guesthouse is named after the road it's situated on.

Tip: If you don't have ideas to name your guesthouse, use the street name. But what if the street has names like "Jalan Haiwan" or some other weird name I can't think off at the moment because it's 4.14am?

Entrance to Eight Mentigi.

Essentially the guesthouse is made up of 2 houses: Eight Mentigi 1 and Eight Mentigi 2, as you can see here:

Eight Mentigi 1 (house on the left) and Eight Mentigi 2 (house on the right).

Eight Mentigi 2 was formerly Papillon Guesthouse which was extremely rundown until it was acquired by Smith, the owner of Eight Mentigi and renovated to become Eight Mentigi 2. I think he spent approx. RM250k for the renovations.

The reception area is in Eight Mentigi 1 which is clean and spacious:

At the back of the house is where the kitchen, common bathroom and more rooms are. That's not my red backpack in the corner.

I like it that both the houses have its own living room instead of travellers from both houses having to cramp into one living room. How sad would that be.

Living Room in Eight Mentigi 1.

Living Room in Eight Mentigi 2. Now, that is my blackpack and stuff on the sofa.

Eight Mentigi 2 does not have a super duper audio visual system like in Eight Mentigi 1. Instead it has a nice dining room where you have a comfortable place to write your journal, research for your next travel destination or surf the internet all day long. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Wifi is FREE !!!

 Dining area in Eight Mentigi 2.

There are various types of rooms to suit different travellers - twin rooms, family rooms and even dorms. All rooms are basic and clean.

Some rooms have WC ensuite whist some don't. So make sure you specify whether you need this facility in your room when booking your room.

Like most guesthouses, Eight Mentigi offers transfers to Taman Negara and Perhentian Island. This is especially useful if you're travelling around Malaysia and need transport assistance.

All in all, I enjoyed my stay in Eight Mentigi because facilities were good, Smith the owner is extremely friendly and rates were reasonable by Cameron Highlands standards. So yeah, I would stay at Eight Mentigi again when I return to Cameron Highlands.

If you're interested to stay in Eight Mentigi, here's the brochure:

Eight Mentigi Cameron Highlands,

No. 8A, Jalan Mentigi,

39000 Tanah Rata,

Cameron Highlands, Pahang

Tel/Fax: +6 05 491 5988

Mobile: +6 016 566 1988

Email: eightmentigi@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.eightmentigi.com/

Searching for Ents in Cameron Highlands (Part 2)

(Click here for Part 1)

And so we returned from Cameron Highlands satisfied that we found the Ent again. Here are some latest photos of the fella:

Still the same after 3 years. Thank God for forest conservation efforts!

I managed to snap a photo of the Ent's legs:

Twisted legs of the Ent. Could this Ent be a human being who was cursed by the spirit of the forest to become a tree? My imagination working on hyperdrive here.

Ents are a race of beings that resemble trees. They were created by J.R.R. Tolkien in his hugely popular Lord of the Rings (LOTR) novels that were made into movies and went on to become the greatest movie epic of all time.

Now here comes the part where I tell you that we not only found the Ent again, we also found another tree that looks exactly like Treebeard:

Treebeard is the oldest living Ent and is described as being 14 feet tall. I think this tree suits the description.

If you can't imagine this mother of a tree being Treebeard, I did the honours of showing you:

Pardon my lack of CGI skills, but Picasa certainly helped a lot!

Apart from characters from the LOTR movie trilogy, we also found some other interesting tree formation like this one shaped of a kidney:

And I saved the best for last. We also found a character from Jurassic Park:

 Looks like a dinosour's head foraging for food.

Mossy Forest and Gunung Brinchang is one hell of a movie set. If you're going there soon, remember to watch out for these movie characters all shaped by trees. Who knows, you may even find other movie characters that we missed.