17th Oct 2010: Museum of Ethnology & Old Quarter

Another early day on backpack. We were served with fresh French loaf with fried egg and a cup of Vietnam coffee at hotel. It was worth every cent spend in the hotel.

This was a packed day within the Hanoi City. Our first site of the day was the Museum of Ethnology. It was about 10km from where we stay. We hailed for a cab and speeded through the busy street of Hanoi. We arrived at the Museum at about 10am. Based on review online, we decided to check on the outdoor display and continue indoor if we have time left as those at outside seem more appealing and interesting. First we headed to the largest minority tribe house in the museum, the Cham House. It was a well organized compound with little huts with each serving certain people of the family and for specific purpose. The walls were made from earth and wood combination and the structures were slightly raise above ground.

Then it was hideout at the Ede House. The rain was very heavy forcing us into the house for about 30 mins. Ede House was pretty much like our 'Rumah Panjang'. It was a long house for the whole of the community. The most remarkable part of the house was the awkward shape on the staircase at the front. It seemed to me like boobs, non functionality, for decoration purpose only.

Then we headed to the Water Pavilion right in front of the Viet House. The water puppet show seemed less interesting due to the lack of maintainance. Those puppets' colour faded and the water was full of green moss. So we left half way through the performance to visit the Viet House. It was a concrete made structure with wooden door frame and a over 1 feet of obstacles.

Next in our list was the most interesting building, Bahnar Communal House. It was a high platform, high roof community hall for Vinh Quang commune. However I didn't get why they made it so hard to get into it. Beside the Bahnar was the obscene Giarai Tomb. We were not aware of it being a tomb and forgive our shallowness for taking it as a place to make out looking at the building was surrounded by obscene sculptures.

got what drives us to conclude that way yet?

We continued on the Yao, Hmong and Hanhi House. From our visit, we could conclude that the minorities' houses were very simple and lacking. All made of earth, wood and bamboo. Everything was done under the same roof. It was their stores, their bed, their kitchen and workplace. Many were lacking of windows too. Perhaps windows were harder to make and most probably a luxury to them. There were a pottery workshop within the compound too. Some exhibits were great and were made by local children. No wonder they have so much of masterpieces available for tourist to carry home each day.

We ended our trip with the yummy chocolate tart purchase at the Museum Cafe. No wonder so many people recommended this cafe on the internet. The tart was indeed delicious. The crust were thin and have the correct hardness. We got a fruits tart and opera cheese cake too. These 2 were ok. I preferred the chocolate tart better.

Finally we got back to our hotel to meet up with HJs and to learnt that we each has been robbed off USD4. We each has to pay USD4 for a short shower. We have previously agreed on USD12 but when he learnt that we have 5 pax rather than 3, he was quick to remake his calculation. So just for that 10 minutes shower per person, we were made to pay USD20. For that price, I think we most probably can get a full body massage ready :S

So after meeting up those girls, we continued our exploration. We went to the Hoan Kiem Lake aka Sword Lake. This lake is believed to home an endangered species of long soft shell turtles but no luck. I detected none of them. If I did I would most prob be the luckiest person on earth since last detected in year 1997. Anyway I preferred the night view of the lake better with those colourful neon lights and the cooling breeze. It was hot and worsen by the water reflectance. Luckily they have lots of shady trees along the lake side.

The Ngoc Son Temple sitting in Jade Island at the Northern side of the lake was connected to the shore on the bright red lake. The temple's architecture and build up was pretty similar to any Chinese Temple back at home. Red was always the theme colour with paintings and sculptures of the 4 sacred animal sat on all corners. Opposite the entrance to the temple was the less interesting Martyrs' Monument.

We continued our exploration into the old quarters...heading to the Dong Xuan Market. This was where I bought my pirated North Face smallest backpack. It was really cheap n worth every dongs. Backpacks were incredibly cheap...1 got 1, SY got 1 and SL got 2...shopping Queens! I thought I would have buy more if Dong Xuan has the same to offer as Ben Thanh. I could not get coffee here :-( and the food section was rather small.

Finally we rushed back to our hotel for our 10 minutes shower before our check out time at 5pm. Sadly we ended up being fool by the taxi driver. It was supposed to be few hundred meters of straight road then a right turn and continue straight for 1 or 2 more km only but he ended up taking us round and round in the opposite direction. There was no way he didn't know the direction when we newbies can easily walk around with that map. We kept telling him he was in wrong direction but he kept telling us he needed to make that turn...:S

After the damn pressure 10 minutes bathing time, we checked out from our room. We left our luggage behind and went hunting for food. The hotel reception counter was man by a friendly lady. We consulted her and found out that we are actually on the food street. She recommended us a couple of stalls next door. Finally we settled with the Net Hue. This was a lovely restaurant with air conditioned sitting place. They served real yummy local dishes. I ordered a grilled pork dish served with vegetables and vermicelli, 'Cuon thit Nuong', rice cake with shrimp, 'Banh Ram it nhan tom' and fried banana & coconut milk dessert, 'Che Chuoi'. I loved them very much! This would most probably be our best dinner here. Looking forward to discover more great place to eat.

After dinner, we walked along the Silk road again. We just have too much time to till until 8pm when Anh was supposed to picked us up. We waited from 7.45pm till 8.30pm when he finally showed up. We have a great conversation with our hotel reception lady again...talking bout travelling, schooling and etc. Anh arrived and walked us to the taxi...oh not to forget, then bakery nearby our hotel was great. They sells some interesting French pastries. We got ourselves some French macarons, almond crisps and chocolate cookies for supper in train.

We boarded our train to Sapa at about 9.30pm. Luckily we got the compartment to ourselves. 5 in a 6 beds compartment so that we could have some privacy. The bed was rather hard and the space above was limited. The higher the bed the narrower the space was. It was the opposite in India. As usual I was on the top berth. It was more difficult than I imagined. It was super bumpy and hot...the AC seemed to aim the lower berth...omg! With that condition, I was awaken every now and then....tired!

Today was less interesting due to much waiting time and less sight seeing time. Definitely hope that my bumpy sleepover was worth the scenery in Sapa. Looked forward to Sapa.

For more photo, please refer to fb

16th Oct 2010: Reminder of India and Saigon

It was a late night flight on the night before. All thanks to the reschedule by our low cost air travel provider, Air Asia. We initially booked for 9pm flight but were rescheduled to 11pm and due to the late arrival of previous flight, our flight only took off at close to 12am.

By the time we arrived in Tune Hotel, LCCT, it was already 1am. It was a short nap before waking up at 4.30am and be in LCCT at 5.15am. We were all seated on the hot seat beside the emergency exit. I loved my 14E seat. It has ample of leg space to give the extra comfort. Our flight took off at 6.40am and we arrived in Noi Bai International Airport on time. The immigration clearance was pretty quick as the crowd in the airport was less. However the baggage was rather slow. We waited for half an hour to collect 2 luggages.

The first impression that I got of the Hanoi City was the people was less friendly as compared to their famous business hub, Ho Chi Minh. We asked for whereto and howto get to our hotel but were offered with overprice taxi services instead. Taxi services offered at counter could go up to USD38 when it was actually USD15 only. We asked for a map each just in case we got separated at times but were given only 1 unclear photocopied map. I could recall how friendly the ground staffs in Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh were. Previously we did not have any difficulty in getting tourism information of the city. Read about my last experience flying into Vietnam at here. Anyway I hoped it will be better when we get to city later.

After hunting around the airport, we finally caught a taxi right in front of Vietnam Airlines taxi stand at USD15 as suggested. We arrived at APTez Hotel at about 10.30am. The hotel was situated at Tong Duay Tan. It was along a hidden alley with lots of food stalls and motorcycle parked by the side. We were greeted by the hotel's friendly staffs. We were thankful for being allowed to check in early. We were given the VIP room, 503 on the 5th floor(the Asian way of counting). The room was clean and spacious. 2 things which I was uncomfortable with were the blue lighting on the plaster ceiling and lack of elevator for a 6 stories high building.

We dropped our luggages in the room, freshened up and headed down to our first destination of the day, the Presidential Palace. En route, we looked for decent local food stall but found nothing. We finally settled with Joma Bakery Cafe, a western cafe. Nice food with excellent environment, nice hideout place from the noise pollution from the crazy traffic of the city. The roads were crowded with motorcycles and all equipped with annoying horn. As usual, I could not understand why horn was used every now and then.

We continued walking under the light drizzle along Dien Pien Phu, passing the Le Nin Park, Flag Tower and our Malaysian Embassy. It was a pleasure walk ignoring the noise and the crazy traffic. The huge trees lining along the both side of the road and colourful lantern and decorative item used for the city millennial celebration made the walk an interesting one.

The Ba Dinh Square was half under renovation. We could only watch it from far. Then we stopped in front of the Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum to admire the exterior of the Russian style architectural. We walked ups and down looking for ways into the Presidential Palace and the Stlit house. The officer stationed there were not helpful with poor command of English. We finally figured out that the stilt house was closed for lunch till 2pm from the 2 officer we bumped into.

We decided to head to the famous One Pillar Pagoda first before turning back to the Stilt House. The One Pillar Pagoda was nice but I was expecting something more magnificent since it was highly recommended by many sources. It turned out to be a 2m x 2m temple to house few goddess on the water surface. The temple was supported by a pillar of 1.25m in diameter. As I was busy on the camera, both SL & SY were looking at sourvenirs. They were offered prices in all different currencies which includes 人民币, 台币 but never 马币 was mentioned. I guessed our presences were rare in Vietnam.

Moving on, we headed to the Ho Chi Minh's Museum. It was situated beside the Pagoda. According to our old guide book, the museum resume after lunch at 1.30pm but it was incorrect. We sat by the museum and waited patiently with few other visiting groups, giving our aching legs some time to recover. However when time came, we decided to skip this from our itinerary as we have few other more interesting place to go. So we went back to the HCM's Vestige In the Presidential Palace Area. This area housed the Presidential Palace, the Stilt House and HCM living quarter as well as HCM's used cars garage. It was a nice green garden with a private lake in the heart of Hanoi.

Then we walked along Ong Ich Khiem into Son Thay. We passed the Hung Vuong and then turning into Hang Chao, the screw and electrical appliances street. We got a detour round the Temple of Literature. Stepping into the temple felt like stepping into another world. It was ambiance, all green and no worry about eye sore sight like we have seen in other part of the city. I found lots of comfort in there. I loose myself for a moment here while busy rubbing the head of those tortoise in hope for academical luck. This was surely one of the best attraction in Hanoi.

We continued our journey under the rain, heading to the weekend market within the Old Quarter. On our way, we passed by the wet market along the Ngo Si Lien. There were a lot of light snacks being sold there but we were not daring enough to try on our very first day here. We only tried the fried maze fritter. Seeing BBQ dog sold in the market freak most of us off. I wished I could have the courage to try it on.

We went to the restaurant nearby our hotel for a late tea. I got my first dessert and a beef noodle. Both were so so. Then we stopped by our hotel to ask for clearer direction to the weekend market. The reception highlighted the route for us on the map and we then left.We walked westward along the Silk street, Hang Bong. We arrived at the Hang Dao way too early. Most of the night market merchant has not started their business yet.

We walked to the lake instead. It was nicely lid with colourful neon lights. So much effort being place to make this a community leisure spot as well as a tourist spot.
Then we head back to the night market We walked and walked. The night market seemed endless. We were hungry but we did not see any food around. So we decided to diverge out of the night market street. We ate a yummy chicken Pho at Hang Khoai.

We were so exhausted. We were back in our room at about 10.30pm and I slept at 12 after a can of Ha Noi Beer. It tasted a little bitter but worth every dong. 10,000d/RM1.50 for a can of beer was too tempting.

This was a great day to start our trip. It could be much better if it was dry.

For more photo, please refer to fb

Online photo printing service by eoe Online : Part II

This is my follow up review for eoe Online photo printing service.

Software : After my last review I continued to explore on the other order method. Their Photo Express Software was great. The uploading feature was pretty similar to its online version but in a better manner. It did the printing size checking prior to upload. Alerting you on the poor quality prior to your upload and so you can avoid wasting time on those photos which you would end up not developing them. Besides, it was also cool to resize all the photos to the sufficient size prior to the upload. With this, you can actually save some time avoiding oversize image upload. As a whole this is a user friendly application, easy to install and simple to use. Score : 5/5 (*this scoring does not take the editing capability into consideration)

The assessment page prior to upload...all my downloaded photos from FB is red out ever for 4R. I am cool with the poor quality as I was only fond of the memories.

I received my 1st order and thanks eoe Online for the kind give away :D. Here is my after printing review.

Timely : I sent in my order on 23 Nov under their Blogger Review Program. The order was confirmed and processed on that very same day. My photos arrived on 25 Nov. That was very fast. Bravo to the proactive response team. Score: 5/5

Packaging : It was delivered on the SkyNet courier system. It arrived overnight. The packaging was handled with care with double seal plastic Skynet bags, no worries about damaged by water. The 4 R photos were nicely placed into the albums. I usually prefered the developer not to insert my photos into their albums as the glossy finish is very prone to fingerprints and smudges but they have managed this well. Perhaps they did the insertion with the help of photo cloth or some fine gloves. The 8R packaging was ok. They have placed the 2 photos into a big transparent bag with a hard paper board in between and finishing it with neatly taped side to keep the photo in place. Score: 4.5/5 (I suggest they offer an option to pack the large photo into a card folder for those who didn't intend to transfer them into albums. This give a more professional appearance compared to a plastic bag with a hardboard. Anyway this is an extra. If they are to offer that, then I will definitely say they are more than 5...perfetto!)

Value for money : You don't have to wait till 31st of every month or specific time of the year for such a promo price. In fact they are one of the lowest I can get in town and best that you don't have to run to the stall twice to get them develop. Score : 5/5

Printing quality : I was a little disappointing with some of the printings. It seemed like they did some contrast adjustment to my photos. Those lovely outdoor photos turned out worse of the whole album. The bright blue sky looked like overexposed white while the earth tone skin was nearer to overshadowed spot. I strongly suggest them to give an option to user on whether auto colour adjustment are needed or not on their photos. I understand that general user need to have their photo to be fine tuned to look more appealing but it is definitely not for photography lover. Please make an option for this. Make it default in your application to auto adjustment and I believe many photo lover out there like myself will know to disable it by our own choice and this will save your time too. Score : 3.5/5

some photos look ok...this is one of the best due to the original colour contrast was not so much different. Tuning the contrast would not give such a huge impact. They did change the WB a bit and it turned out fine. I didn't mind having the original colour too as it tells my story...the sun just set and it will be dark in minutes

this is the worse. It was very lively but turned out that I was like in a bush with some dying roses...so dead! The bright green and striking yellow turned out to be in dirty green and brownish yellow

thanks to the contrast adjustment, my skin was full of blemishes. The earth brown barrel turned out to be plain brown. The blue scarf under lime light became very white.

I love the photo but not the print. The green early summer leaves appeared to be early autumn and worse that I lost all the blue sky and cloud details.

I am upset with this. I love this very much which is why I got this printed out in 8R. I hate the print out. First is that they cropped my photo and second was the auto contrast. Needless to comment more :S

Conclusion : I will give them 4/5. They are good for general use. To tackle my photo kakis, they need to enable the non auto adjustment for us.

I still have 183 more photos in my folder waiting to be printed and I am looking forward to their non auto adjustment option before I proceed. I will just drop them my suggestion and hope that I do not offend them...this is nothing personal.

Online photo printing service by eoe Online

My friend has introduced me to eoe Online for quite sometime but I have not tried this out just because I have the wrong perception of how troublesome it can be. I was obviously wrong till the moment I decided to get a sponsor for my digital prints and hence giving this provider a try.

Here are the steps that I have gone through to place my order.

1. Registration

Registration was pretty simple but please read the terms and conditions. There were 2 clauses which made me uneasy.

Security risks
Please note that transmissions to and from this website may be intercepted and modified by third parties. Files obtained from or through this website may contain computer viruses or other defects.


No liability
In no event shall eoe Online, its employees or associates be liable for loss or damage that may arise from the use of this website or information available at this website. Nor does eoe Online take any responsibility for the information contained in eoe Online’s website. Any advice is to be used at your discretion.

I have concern about my personal information leak as well as my IPs. I did not understand the need of IC No during registration and strongly suggest that the service provider to remove this field from their registration form. Why bother to keep an information which has no use and may cause so much heboh later? DOB matching is a good enough method to validate individual identity.

In terms of monetary, I didn't have confidence over their credit card payment as it was done through a local company name Commerce Payment Sdn Bhd. Reputable provider like the PayPal and SecurePay are always my preferred choices. Anyway the best choice for me at the moment was the bank in option.

2. Made printing order

There are 2 ways of uploading your photos to be developed. Option 1 would be using the no install option, the Easy Upload Online tool. I will review on the option 2, installation required option, Photo Express Software later.

The Easy Upload Online uses simple activeX upload photo widget.

My average upload speed was 42KB/s. Hence averagely time needed for me to upload a 1MB photo was less than a minute.

I was not even bothered to resize my photo. However if your line was not as broad as mine, you may want to opt to resize to ~0.5MB (600 x 800 dpi) for a 4R print. You may need larger resolution for larger printing. The online too does provide a check on the end of the order to ensure the printing quality but it is best if you can resize up front and not waste your time uploading on your narrowline. I think this feature is good to serve as a reminder.

Upon upload completion, you will have to choose the printing size. The printing size can be made applicable to all photos or you may update 1 by 1. I prefer to apply all the default before I specifically modified few to certain size of my choice.

3. Payment

Next up was the payment page, as mentioned earlier in this post, I did a bank in payment and dropped them details of my payment and my order was complete. Now I will wait for few days before the printing reaches my hand.

Do come back to learn about the other order method and the printing quality!

For more info about eoe Online, please visit http://www.eoe.com.my/en/

Withdrawn Raya Advertisement

I was not aware of this advertisement until recent forwarded email with this clip attached and titled Iklan Raya TV3 yang ditarik balik. I didn't bother to read the content of the email and went straight to the video. When I first watched it, I was marveled. The advertisement was a breakthrough. It was fantasy like and different from all the previous ads.

I have to admit that the flying beca and the pak cik did reminded me of Santa and his sleigh. But I was not so sure what drove them to withdraw the advertisement. So I went back to the forwarded email and read the content.

It seemed like a group of pro-Islam was accusing that the ad contained non-Islamic element and demanded immediate removal. I did agree with them on the non-Islamic element but personally I thought it wasn't such a big deal. I bet no Malaysian who has access to TV service has not seen any of Santa scene or Siddharta Buddha...oups, I did not even detected the Buddhism and Hinduism lotus until being highlighted by this group of minority.

I think this advertisement is cool for it managed to demonstrate the true cultures of 1 Malaysia. True 1 Malaysia shall be a culture which represents part of past and future of each Malaysians regardless of the ancestry background. It's time for us to unite and we all know that unity begins with tolerance, acceptance and assimilation in you and me!