The First Borneo Lantern Festival

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Julau and Kanowit

Julau & Kanowit are two small towns near Sibu. I visited Julau before driving to Kanowit. I have a friend who runs a coffeeshop business in Kanowit. He moved his family owned business from Sibu to Kanowit few years back as he believed life in smaller town was simplier & less pressure. When I visited him today, he was satisfied with his decision making a living there. I'd my lunch in his coffeeshop.

Sampan boat at Julau

Old Native in Julau

Old Building at Kanowit

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri 2009

Today is the last day of Hariraya holiday. I spend most of my time reading magazines. It's a boring holiday for me except having some snapshots around Sibu town. Anyway, I'm still happy at least I snapped some nice photos tonight.

Long Exposure shoot at town square just now

Night view of Sibu town

Light trail at Lanang bridge

Rantau Panjang

Rantau Panjang is a new industrial area especially shipbuilding. It is around an 1/2 hour drive from Sibu. On my way to Rantau Panjang this afternoon, I found the sky and the green was just perfect for some snapshots, but I didn't have much time for more photographs. I will come back here again soon.

Cloudy sky forecasting raining soon

Green weeds in the water

The Tomato

D90 with 50mm 1.8 at f/2.8 1/125 SB400 bounce to a white card on camera left.

New SB-900 Speedlite

My speedlite arrived by poslaju this afternoon. The main purpose I bought SB-900 is because of Nikon CLS lighting. I was impressed by Nikonian Academy during my photo trip to Vietnam last June. It's a big flash and I think it worth the money. I still need more time to practice and master it.

M Mode, 125th, F/6.3 & 400ISO SB900 right triggered by on camera built-in flash

Taman Negara Gunung Gading, Lundu

Gunung Gading national park is located near Lundu town. It's famous for jungle trekking, nature, waterfalls and many different types of plants and species. The entrance fee is RM10/adult. The working distance up to the mountain ranging from 1/2 hour to as far as 3 hours one way between the nearest spot of attraction to the top of the mountain. As we were not well prepared for real jungle trekking, we choosed to walk 1/2 hour to a waterfall. Again, it's a new experience for my sons to swim in the waterfall of a jungle. The water was clean and cool. All of them were very happy to play with the water. It's a paradise for nature lover.

Sematan Beach Resort

On 26 Aug, we drove to Sematan Beach Resort, 110KM from Kuching city plying Batu Kawa Road. We checked in Palm Beach Resort at 12:30pm. It's a beautiful resort with bluish green sea water and white sand beach. I booked a A-frame chalet at RM280/night. The interior is unique, simple with A frame design. My sons liked the chalet very much because they could climb upstair and look through the window into the blue sea.

A 5 minutes drive away from the resort, here's the Sematan Town. A lot of fishing boats could be seen along the seaside.

Chalet type A-Frame

It's a new experience for my kids to sleep upstair

Restaurant-we're having our breakfast & dinner here as it's already packaged to the room rate.
Woke up early in the morning to catch the sun-rise at the beach just in front of our room. cool!

Trip to Kuching

I went to Kuching by car from 25-28/2009. The journey to Kuching took 6 hours. On the way, we stopped at Jakal, near Sarikei for breakfast. We visited Jong's Crocodile Farm which is just 18KM away from Kuching. It was fun especially for my kids watching crocodile feeding.

It's refreshing to sit at the waterfront overseeing the giant architecture in the cool evening.

Crocodile feeding
"what happened to your tail"

I stayed at Kuching Park Hotel, Jalan Padungan. The room is big and can accommodate 5 of us comfortably. At 7:30pm, I attended Photographers' Evening Out at Old Court House, near Kuching Waterfront. To my suprise, there were 260 photographers attending the event. The four speakers on stage were Alvin Leong, Saiful Nang, Jason Victor and Brandon Goh. Each of them shared their experiences in wedding photography. The event was covered by RTM crews and would be aired in RTM1.

Kuching view from my hotel window
Dewan Undangan Negeri Sarawak
View of a building near waterfont-I like the combination of blue and yellow
Aprilia April, Faidaus & Sapphire Wong (from left), BREEZE model at the alvin's photography talk