Iconic Taal Volcano at Tagaytay

The second time of my visit to Makati made me enable to meet my Philippino friends, we haven't met each other for few years. It's a quite nice small reunion, one of my friend was kind enough to drive us to Tagaytay around 2 hours from Manila. It's quite tiring I think, as he'd just arrived from the place one day before with his family.

As seeing in the website, the scenery seemed beautiful so I don't mind spending a few hours to go there. We visited the Picnic Grove, it's quite huge area, suitable for family leisure. Most of them were bringing their own food for picnic under the trees in the park. Some small stores were available selling souvenirs. There were some attractions or games, such as fishing on the small ponds, flying fox, etc.

Quite a lot people going to this place as it's Sunday. We decided to go to the ecotrail to get better view. As the sun shone quite bright, we used umbrella to protect our head. I was stunning with the view of Taal Volcano on the Taal Lake. It's really beautiful although I hadn't started walking the trail.

My friend said that following the ecotrail would get more beautiful scenery, even nearer to the volcano view. There were some bungalows on the right and left side of the trail path for people to sit/rest while enjoying the scenery. As we didn't have much time, we kept walking down after taking some photo shoots.

Because we wanted to take picture together, we asked help from one of the seller who following us to sell the snack. Surprising his shoot quite beautiful, the volcano and lake could be seen beautifully as our background. After that we bought one of his snack as the reward to take our pictures :-)

If you would like to go to the crater, my friend told me that it would be enable by riding the boat, but at least it would take around an hour one way journey. We didn't plan to stay in Tagaytay, so we didn't have enough time for it. For me enjoying from the picnic area was more than enough. You had to stay overnight there if you would like to visit the crater.

We passed through a hanging bridge, if you would like to fly, there's also Zipline ride's like flying fox, which could be rode by 2 persons together, or the more relax one was riding cable car with capacity up to 8 adults. Last stop was step up the stairs to the place which was build the first time to see the scenery.

After finishing the Eco Trail, we went to the office to pay for the park fee and entrance fee. The payment was centralized in this office, income was reported transparantly for all visitors on the wall. It's quite a good behaviour. There was coffee maker with a very cheap price, just PHP5 for a cup of coffee, we didn't dare to try it. We returned to our car, took a rest after sport at noon, by drinking and eating some snacks to fill our empty stomach before having lunch.

If you only have just one free day during staying in Manila, definitely Tagaytay is a proper place to visit. Thank you to my lovely friends for your kindness brought me there.

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Phenomenon Mendenhall Glacier - Juneau, Alaska

The second city that 7 of us (3 of my sisters' friends, 4 of us sisters including mom) visited during Alaska cruise was the state capital, Juneau as one of the most beautiful cities in Alaska. Downtown Juneau hugs the side of Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts and is a maze of narrow streets running past a mix of new structures, old storefronts and quaint houses featuring early 19th century architecture left over from the town’s early gold mining days.

We agreed to select the most famous Juneau Ice Field, Mendenhall Glacier optional tour offering by the cruise. It is named for Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, who served on the Alaska Boundary Commission that surveyed the international boundary between Canada and Alaska. Juneau is a thriving city offering a great blend of city amenities and small-town hospitality, all in the heart of Alaska's majestic mountains, rivers, glaciers, and forests. Nearly 31,000 people (Tlingit tribe is the most numerous) live in Juneau - many of them working in government, tourism, mining, and fishing, and all of them instilled with a deep love for this place. Such a mix of personalities makes Juneau unique. Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore the downtown, although it's only 10 minutes from Mendenhall Glacier.

A big bus brought us from the pier to the glacier for around half an hour. Welcome by drizzling raining when we went down from the bus, it's quite cold. We're only given an hour and a half to explore the place. Just around 10 minutes walking distance, we already could see the glacier from distance. Located at the head of the valley is Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska’s famous drive-up glacier. Some pictures were taken to capture the light blue glacier. Many visitors also arrived with big buses, it made us difficult to take the picture with clean scenery from people.

We continue walking to reach the edge of the lake, where we could see the glacier closer and watch icebergs calve off its frozen face and float away on Mendenhall Lake. My mom loved knitting, so she worked for a few weeks to prepare the handmade hat for all of us, it made us easier to find each other among the crowd. We took a group picture at the edge of the lake with great view of Mendenhall Glacier. Unfortunately the glacier was not too obvious seen because it's cloudy and still raining.

The Mendenhall is one of the 38 major glaciers that extend from the 1500 square-mile Juneau Icefield. More glaciers can be seen from Glacier Highway or from the air as part of a flightseeing tour. Most helicopter tours offer glacier landings, glacier treks and dog sled rides. The Mendenhall Glacier is a tongue of ice stretching 12 miles from the Juneau Icefield to Mendenhall Lake. At its widest point, the glacier is more than a half mile wide, with ice 300 to 1,800 feet deep. Given that average yearly temperatures are currently increasing, this interesting phenomenon will fade away melting.

The path to the Nugget Creek waterfall took around 45 minutes, we didn't have enough time for it, so my sister and I selected the path to the small hill to see the glacier from higher place while my mom and my youngest sister went to the visitor center, as it's raining harder and the path became slippery. Both of us went through a bridge, passing through some beautiful stone cliffs.

After taking some pictures, we returned to the visitor center. If you don't mind queing, an elevator could bring us to the visitor center, or you could just go to the upper entrance by stairs to the top floor where souvenir shops available. There was an observatory room where you could see the glacier panorama. In the middle of the room, there's a big chunk of glacier that you could touch. It's like a big ice cube.

There's a small theater that played movie about process how the Mendenhall Glacier moves and shapes the valley ecosystem. It contains many good pictures also full of education, I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately our time was not enough to finish watching the movies, we had to go back to the bus unless they'll leave us to find our own transportation returned to the cruise. We were running to the bus, we're the last passengers arrive, lucky that we could reach the bus on time, right before they left :-)

I'm really satisfied with this optional tour that made us possible to see the glacier with its beautiful scenery. Today Juneau is thriving not only as the state capital, but as one of the Inside Passage’s top visitor destinations and the departure point to several wilderness attractions, including Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness Area and Admiralty Island National Monument.

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SH Garden Restaurant at Ho Chi Minh City

During my last day on business trip, we had dinner with my friend from Indonesia who has worked in Ho Chi Minh for a few years in a very nice view restaurant, called Nha Hang San Vuon Son Ha (SH Garden) 147A, Hai Ba Trung, P.6, Q.3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, phone: 08 3822 3566. We arrived around 19:15, all the tables next to the windows with city view was fully booked.

We saw one empty table with "reserved" signage, lucky us that the waitress was kind enough. She said if we could finish the dinner within an hour, we could use the reserved table as the guests would come at 20:30. That's a very good service, we agree to order and finish our dinner fast. The scenery was beautiful, there was a low glass window as the fence, we still could take picture from top of the glass to avoid reflection.

My friend who stayed in Vietnam was the one who selected the menu, we were busy to capture the colorful lights of Ho Chi Minh city at night. The green fountain in the middle of the street could be seen clearly from above, as there were many trees surrounding the fountain, it's difficult to see from the same height on the street. A beautiful REX hotel stood gracefully with yellow lighting and the landmark city hall building could be seen too.

We ordered some traditional foods, such as fried sticky rice, fried spring roll, crispy prawn, meat with vegetables. For beverage I ordered Vietnam coffee, while waiting for the food, they provide us a complimentary nice crispy cassava cracker, it's very delicious, the waitress was kind enough to deliver us when we ask for more portion.

We didn't want to waste our time enjoying the good scenery, many pictures were taken to capture the beautiful scenery, of course some of them with us inside the picture. The beautiful waitress was kind enough to take our picture together with the beautiful city view background.

When the food was coming, we didn't wait any longer to finish everything, because we were starving after a long walking distance to visit some tourism spot in Ho Chi Minh city. I like the fried sticky rice that was eaten with sweet sour spicy anchovy. My friend who stayed in Vietnam taught us how to eat the meat. We had to take 1 slice of the thin round crispy wrapping (such as plastic), then add with variant vegetables, put the meat on top of it, then rolling it such as spring roll. You could eat with the sauce if you like.

I'm not quite sure whether the restaurant was on the 2nd or 3rd floor, there was an antique lift to go up and down, that still used iron bar door and wooden door. Guests were not allowed to operate it by themselves, a waitress always stood by for accompanying the visitors. The lift is quite small, so we had to cramp inside. It's a rare experience to ride this lift.

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Majestic Taroko Gorge

I heard that the scenery in Taiwan is very amazing, so many wonderful natural heritage. When my friend asked me whether I want to visit it, I didn't think twice, I agreed to join 1 week tour, one of the most gorgeous place called Taroko Gorge in Taroko National Park. The name, Taroko, means "magnificent and beautiful" in the Truku language, it is noted for its spectacular mountains and marble canyons.

It's noon time when we arrived there, many tourist buses going to this destination, the road was open and close on the certain time, as it's only one way. The bus should go around the area while the passengers could walk on foot enjoy the scenery. The guide gave us a nice color, light blue, helmet to protect us from the falling stone from the crag.

The rock now seen in Taroko began over 200 million years ago as sediment on the bottom of the ocean. As the sediment collected, it was subject to increasingly large amounts of pressure which eventually hardened it into limestone. Over the past 100 million years, tectonic compression between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate supplied additional pressure that metamorphosed the limestone into marble.

After millions of years, the streams of Taroko Gorge still tell the story of its formation. Both geological uplifting and erosion by the Liwu River have formed walls hundreds of meters high, a phenomenon seldom found elsewhere in the world.

This is the most magnificent part of Taroko Gorge, where the sheer cliffs face each other. During the exploration stage, it is the especially difficult and dangerous part to explore. When the wind comes from the broad river valley to the narrow valley it is forced upwards when it hits the cliff face.

The Jiuqudong tunnel was constructed 1996, so that the visitors can view the rock folds, joints and faults of the marble cliffs. The two cliffs are so close to each other, and it looks like they are joining to each other if seen from afar. This section has the reputation of "Nine Turns of the Coiled Dragon". The distance between the cliffs is only around 10-meters wide. In the small gap in the rocks, the narrow Kelan River's rush by, forming a "Fish leaping across the dragon gate" scenery.

My mom and I went down from the bus to explore the rock by walking on the pedestrian street next to the cliff, it's very amazing. The wall rock with beautiful texture and different color was amazing. It's formed an astonishment scenery as God's beautiful creation that human could not defeat. We walked through a short tunnel, that we could peep the river from the small hole in the tunnel. After walking around 15 minutes, we saw our bus which was slowly strolled on the one way street in the queue. It's drizzled, so my mom and I returned to the bus as we had taken some beautiful pictures, and we had enjoy the walk, we're afraid that the bus would leave us behind, and we had to walk a long distance to catch the bus.

We also could see Swallow Grotto, the trail was separated from the highway by a simple concrete divider. The road was narrow, resulting in frequent congestion in the area. The pedestrian path also open to vehicular traffic going West only that must proceed slowly. Take a walk along the 1.4 kilometer-long Swallow Grotto Trail for breathtaking sceneries of potholes on the cliff surfaces, the springs that sprinkled along the lower parts of the walls, narrow cliffs above rush river, as well as the interesting rock formation, “The Chieftain’s Profile Rock” was very fascinating.

If you go there, it's worthy to walk through the pedestrian street. It's safe and not far enough to walk, also the weather was nice. You won't regret it as the scenery is very beautiful to enjoy during the trip.

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Mekarsari Tropical Fruit Garden, Bogor

During long weekend in Mar 2012, my mother with her friend, my sisters and myself visited Mekarsari Fruit Garden JI. Raya Cileungsi – Jonggol Km. 3, Cileungsi, Bogor, West Jakarta. We stayed in my sister's home at Raffles Hill, near to the place, anyway around 10:00 we still experienced traffic jam to reach the garden, my friend already waited for us in front of the gate. The entrance fee was IDR 15.000/person

The area was quite huge, there were some trains with car engine and wheels, to bring the visitors around the place, a guide would inform us the plant that we passed by during the ride. Before riding the train, we bought ticket to see Pongo show where there was an interactive movie with audiences. The Pongo monkey in the movie will call and talk to the audience facilitate by MC. Children would love to see it, some children would be selected from the audiences to dance together with some beautiful teenagers to perform in front of the audience. No food, drink and photo are allowed during the show.

Train ride is a good option to explore the most comprehensive tropical fruit garden with plant types around ± 78 family, 400 species & 1438 varieties. If you join the train ride, you will stop in 5 different stations. In each station you could change your ticket with some souvenirs, most of them are fruit. The first station was Melon garden, in the picture it shows different shape of Melon, unfortunately we only saw the normal round melon in the greenhouse, there were some slices of sweet melon that visitors could try. The first stamp could be changed for a small bottle of fresh juice.

The second stop was at snake fruit garden, there were many variants of snake fruit. The second stamp could be changed to 1 basket of snake fruit, the basket was very cute. My mom's friend loves it and she would like to take home to Surabaya for souvenir. The tree was full of thorn, so you have to be careful to take picture near the snake fruit tree. In this garden we found a real long green snake on the tree.

Star fruit garden was our next stop, here you also could buy other fruit such as papaya. You also could taste the very sweet star fruit, the third stamp was changed with one big star fruit. The train left us here around an hour, the weather was nice, some benches were provided for the visitors, also a couple restrooms. We sat on the bench enjoy the breeze, scenery and also eating our fruits while waiting for the train.

On the way to the next stop, we passed by the marvelous Mekarsari office with water fall. The huge lake with many air attraction was our next destination. There were live music at the field next to the lake. On the other side there were some children playground for small outbound. Some sellers were also available here providing snack, drinks, also souvenirs. Giant Bubble, Floating Donuts, boat, canoe and aqua bike were some options that you could select to go around the lake.

It's been around 14:00 o'clock and we were starving, we had to walk along the lake to reach the train to go to the last stop. At the last stop we could change our stamp with the souvenirs (sandals). There were some food stall crowded with visitors, we prefer to select KFC which's already having a standard for taste and quality. To stay overnight there was Leo’s Tree House located in the middle of the garden. The 5th stamp could be exchanged to a fruit plant that we could bring home to be planted at home. On the way to the parking lot, there are many fresh fruit stalls, there was also art stage with 2 persons play pantomime.

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Adventurous Desert Safari in Dubai

When we landed in Dubai, it's really early morning around 5 o'clock by night flight from Turkey. All of us who joined the tour, were still sleepy and tired because we could not sleep well in the economy seat which was not able to recline as bed such as in business class. We had breakfast at a hotel because it's fasting time, so not many restaurants opened. During breakfast we took a chance to wash our face and hand for refreshment, we were not able to take a bath in the closet :-)



After breakfast, we continued directly with Dubai city tour. Our destination was not listed in the itinerary, the guide was kind enough to fullfill tour participant desire, e.g visiting hotel which has a room under the sea level, called Atlantis The Palm Hotel in the Palm Jumeirah. It is located on Palm Island, a man-made island in Dubai, and is surrounded by waters of the Arabian Gulf. If we don't stay in the hotel, we're not allowed to go to the lobby. We could enjoy the gigantic aquarium, Ambassador Lagoon, by paying the entrance fee.


Going back to the city we stopped by to take photo with Burj Al Arab, the 7 star hotel in United Arab Emirat as the background, it's very hot around 45 degree Celcius. Although the sand and stone wall were hot, we kept trying taking pictures form different angle with various background.


On the next day was the most interesting journey, we picked up by land rover which contained 4-6 person including the driver. We went directly to the desert, stopped by in the small store next to the desert to go to restroom and buy drinks, snacks or souvenirs. Now it's time for advanventuror desert safari, the driver was reducing the wheel pressure to make it run well on the sand.


The scenery is very amazing, everywhere just sand, with hill and valley. We stopped on the hill to take group pictures. The sand was very hot, we could not wear our shoes or sandals, so we walked with bare foot. It's very soft sand, as if you're walking on the hot soft sand for theraphy. I was in the same car with the local guide and an old couple with their sister. All of them were very scared with the dune drive journey, because the driver brought us in a full speed off road to climb the sandy hill, it made the land rover was almost tumbled. My sister and I really enjoyed it, we laughed a lot all the way because the old's couple sister was very fear until she made a very loud and rhtymic laughing. Unfortunately I could not take my mobile phone to record it, as we had to hold tight the car's handle to avoid falling down.


Finally after some manuver by the very skilled driver, we stopped on the hill to watch the sunset. It's very beautiful. Some of our friends in the tour were racing to go down the hill, one of them was very eager to win till he was fallen rolled on the sand. All of us were very enthusias to tell others about the exciting dune trip.


After sunset we went to the camp to enjoy the Arabian barbeque dinner, unfortunately it's fasting time, so we could not see the belly dancer. Beautiful henna painting was put on my hand, it's beautiful, the woman could draw it fast, some of my friend put on the feet or shoulder. There was also camel, you could ride and take photo with the camel by paying some fee. Cold soft drink and water were distributed free of charge, we could enjoy and feel how the people live in desert.


An unforgetable memory of thrilling ride to share with my family and friends back home, because the desert safari I can't find it at home. If you would like to test your adrenaline you should try this fun activity when you had a chance to visit Dubai, I'm sure you won't regret and you'll love it.

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