Selecta, beautiful flower garden at Batu

Last Dec 2016 one of my elementary school friend was so generous to bring our teachers and friends to Batu for leisure. Some of us departed from Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang and the most members from Kediri with one bus and mini van. As it's a long weekend because Monday was holiday, we decided to leave early to avoid traffic jam on the Saturday. Surabaya left around 08:00 while Kediri around 09:00, delayed an hour as planned because waiting for some friends. The meeting point would be at Selecta, Jl. Raya Selecta 1, Tulung Rejo, Batu.

We had brought lunch box for easier arrangement as we didn't want to waste time stop at restaurant to order and eat. Surabaya team had plenty snacks, as the participant was lower than registered, also one of our friends provided snack (lumpur, cucur) while we'd ordered 3 different snack (spikoe, risoles, chiffon cake) for the member from Surabaya, I'm the member from Surabaya team. Our mini van was quite comfortable, it's for 17 seat while there were only 9 of us with the driver. There was karaoke, we could sing on the way to kill the time.

After around 4 hours we reached Selecta, the popular tourism place since 1930 built by Ruyter de Wildt, everyday opens at 06:00-18:00. It's quite crowded there as it's a long weekend. After paying Rp. 30.000,-/person and Rp. 10.000,- for car parking, our driver tried to find the parking lot near to the entrance. While waiting for our friends from Kediri, we decided to have lunch in the car because we're starving and lazy to bring the box to the park. It's a complete shrimp rice, all of us loved the taste, it's delicious, I ordered it from our neighbor, my mom's friend. When eating we heard that the bus had arrived unfortunately they could not go in as our friend who brought the money was in the mini van that's not arrived at that time. One of my friend from Surabaya decided to go to the bus, actually it was a long walk and hilly to reach the entrance gate.

The rest of us waiting for a few minutes, as there's no news, we decided to go directly to the park. It's been a long time not visiting the place, more than 10 years ago, the place was maintaining well. Although there are many new entertainment parks in Batu, this place is still survived. It had restaurant, hotel, fish pond, swimming pool and beautiful flower garden. It's quite hilly, so for senior people such as our teacher who's already around 70 years old must walk carefully. One of my friend brought her sons, her youngest son was kind enough to take photo for us, so we could take many pictures together.

From entrance we reached the big swimming pool, going up through the stairs we found water boom area. The pool is shallow, it's proper for children playground. It's decorating well with colorful cute animal statue such as pink elephant, green turtle wearing shoes. Across water boom there's another pool with small slides, and a bucket on the top that pours water after it's full. So many children playing, running and swimming on the area, we're afraid of getting wet, so we're taking picture not too close to the pool.

The beautiful flower garden was our next destination, we could take pictures in the middle of the garden which is full of colorful flowers. The arch gate created from various plant and flower, we had to queue and waiting people to pass by to get a good picture. After that we went to the flower garden, various type of flower, we started with the purple Hydrangea (panca warna) and white flower, I don't know the name, it's good because it's hilly, the foreground white flowers while the background were orange flowers and bungalow. Red flower garden were attempting, but we had to wait for people moving out from the garden.

Meanwhile we saw a beautiful heart made of still with red leaves, it's very big and beautiful, we were queueing to take our turn for photo session there. There was a sky bike surrounding the garden which enabled you to enjoy the beautiful scenery from above. As the time was limited, we didn't ride on the sky bike. We found nice spot which looked like colorful photo frame with flowers under the frame. We took our own frame and made a pose to be shot by my friend's son from below the frame.

Finally we saw the red garden already quiet, so we rushed to go there taking group picture with "Selecta" word as the background. Then taking one by one, as it's very beautiful and it could become one of our profile picture in social media :-) Satisfying taking many pictures it's time for us to look for our team from Kediri. Accidentally we met our elementary friend who went there with his family, he didn't join our trip. We took picture with his family, and invited him to the villa at night for dinner and reunion.

We heard that our teacher was having lunch with their grandchildren near the giant peacock made from plant too. On the way there we met our male teachers, they would like to go back to the bus already because they were tired, but we persuaded them to visit the garden as it's very beautiful. The female teachers were still sit down on the stairs finishing their lunch and waiting for their grandchildren who went around the park to play and explore. After taking picture together with them, we asked permission to go earlier to prepare for their rooms allocation in the villa and also dinner for that night.

Although just for a short time, I like Selecta with the scenery and its mild weather. It's worthy to be visited with family and children. I plan to bring my niece and nephew there later on weekend or holiday.

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Modern Cheonggyecheon Stream in Seoul

In early Apr 2016 after visiting the secret garden at Changdeok Palace, my friend and I would like to go to Cheonggyecheon stream, which was renovated in 2003 to its present form today, it's one of the place destination that we must visit as it's quite popular for Korea's people hanging around. We planned to walk from the palace to the place, we passed by many stores and restaurants, even go cross some streets, but it seemed a never ending walk, we're so tired, we called a cab to continue

Most of taxi driver in Korea could not speak English, anyway they are very friendly, I showed him the map where we would like to go, as I also could not pronounce well Cheonggyecheon stream :-) We asked him to stop at the edge of the stream which run through downtown Seoul, it's very obvious near Cheonggye Plaza and you could see the crowd, so you would not get lost. With high spirit as finally we could find it, we took some pictures under the sunshine, we're facing the sun until we could not see our camera screen so just count on our feeling, taking picture for selfie above the stream, before we're going down to the river.

Actually there's a fountain on the beginning of the 11km modern public recreation stream, unfortunately it's not played at that time. A small water fall was quite interesting beside the stairs to go down to the river, it flew from the level of the fountain going down to the river. At the left and right side of the river were pedestrian that people could walk, but we also could sit at the stairs at the edge of the river for chatting, or just enjoying the clear water and mild weather.

We continued strolling the river, till we found some square stones put in the middle of the river for people to cross from one side to another side of the river, we took many pictures there. Then we took a rest and enjoy by sitting on the stairs at the edge of the river. Our feet were soaring as we had walked around Seoul since morning. It's a good place to take a rest and seeing others enjoy the environment with their own activity and style. Creating an environment with clean water and natural habitats was the most significant achievement of the project, it could invite more fishes & birds, also cool down the temperature.

Almost sunset so we decided to continue exploring Seoul, we tried to find toilet, all of a sudden when we went up the stairs, we're just realized that the place was really close to 20,000m2 Gwanghwamun square where we could find two statues of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin and Sejong the Great, who are great and influential people in Korean history. The square was quite huge, I tried to take photos while jumping, unfortunately my friend had difficulty to catch it, lucky finally my friend could get my jump after several jumps. Some tends were available on the square, we didn't visit them, it seemed they were selling something, we're too tired to go there.

My friend was exhausted and feeling cold because it's very windy. She preferred to wait for me below at the basement where there were some shops while I was taking some pictures of beautiful colorful flowers decorating the square. The flower was quite beautiful with many colors and they arranged it well in the ellipse pots. The distance between 2 statues were very far, I walked to the front of the other statue to be able taking both statues with the flower and Bukaksan Mountain as the background. It's very difficult to get the proper angle, I had to be patient to wait for other people finished taking picture. My friend was kind enough waiting for me to finish my desire capturing all of them.

If I'll go to Korea again, definitely I would visit Cheonggyecheon stream, as I haven't explored many sides at that time, such as visiting the coffee shop along the stream.

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Stunning Crystal Clear Sulamadaha Beach, Ternate

Reaching Sulamadaha beach at noon, walking from the car park which was just next to the black sandy beach, I was rather disappointed as it's not as I imagine based on the picture I've got from internet. There were many food stalls next to the beach. My friends said that we should take a long walk to reach the place that I saw in the internet. I don't mind with it.

As we parked under the shelter trees, I forgot to bring along my jacket, hat and sandal. We walked through the path at the edge of the beach, it's hilly and quite challenging and I felt quite tiring as I hadn't had breakfast and it's already lunch time. Actually you could ride motor bike to go there along the path, unfortunately there was no "ojek", or motor cycle rental that could bring us there. I stopped a few times to take a break and taking pictures.

Finally we reached the motor cycle parking lot at the end of the path which towards to the beach, the scenery there was very beautiful, we could see the beach from above with boats and some huts hanging on the beach. I took my time to relax and taking picture again before going down through quite steep stone ladders. My colleague was kind and patient enough waiting for me :-) I asked my colleague to hold my hand as I was afraid falling down on the ladders.

Going down to the small bay, fractional shells and corals produce white sand, many local visitors swimming on the beach. A traditional boat was parked on the beach, my colleague offered me to go by boat to the middle of the sea. It's an interesting offer that I could not refused to enjoy the crystal clear beach. It cost IDR 50.000,- to rent the boat, our colleague from Ternate's office decided to row the boat, so the owner didn't need to go with us.

There were 4 of us, it's very sunny and hot, but it's windy. We went to the sea, although it's further from the beach, there was some shallow area, that we could see beautiful coral underneath our boat. It's very nice to see the beautiful coral reef with colorful fish swimming around it. If it's not very shiny and made my skin burnt, I would like to stay there longer. The scenery was like in heaven, combination of crystal clear sea with its beautiful coral reefs and mountains behind produced an incredible beauty. Unfortunately I didn't bring swimsuit, it would be more fun if we could swim on the crystal clear water.

I would like to take picture of the boat from the other side of beach which could show the crystal clear water, so I asked my colleague to row there. When we reached the hut hanging on the beach, I climbed the ladder while all of my colleagues stayed on the boat waiting for me to take some pictures from above. It's wonderful, it almost similar to the picture that I saw in the internet.

A group of teenagers had fun there, they jumped to the water one by one with different style. It seemed that the sea was shallow, I was afraid that they will hit the bottom. In fact the water was so clear, it's quite deep for them to jump but you saw as if it's only 0.5 meters deep. I asked permission to them to cross their hut to another hut to take better angle.

I returned to the boat and we returned the beach where we started sailing. One of our colleague who didn't dare to go with us because he could not swim was waiting for us there, keeping our bags :-) We ordered coconut and fried banana at one of the hut to fill our stomach before walking back through the path to our car.

Although we were starving, I really enjoyed it. The scenery was amazing, it's a very wonderful God's creation. You should visit the beach if you plan to visit Ternate. Don't forget to bring swimsuit so you could enjoy it more by snorkeling or just swimming on the calm and crystal clear sea.

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High Waves at Water Blow Nusa Dua Bali

After completion of our task during exhibition in Bali, we returned to hotel to take a rest, it's around 16:30 already, all of us were tired. Unfortunately my hotel key was not working well, I went to hotel receptionist to ask them fixing it. During reprogramming my key, I asked the reception where the location of water blow, as I saw in the map it's one of the tourism place which's near to our hotel. He said that it would take only 10 minutes drive and 500 meters walk, the best time to visit is in the evening when the wave could blow very high almost 4 meters high.

As we didn't have time anymore to stay another night, so I rushed to go to my room and called my colleagues asking them whether they would like to visit it. All of them agreed to go and gathered in the lobby soon, no need to shower first as the time was ticking, we had to go fast unless it would get dark. None of us had visited the place, my friend activated the GPS to avoid getting lost.

Reaching Nusa Dua beach parking lot, it's so full, lucky we still got a slot to park our car. We ran to the gate, asking the guard where "Water Blow" location, he said just go straight ahead, no entrance fee. We walked fast, even running. On the way we kept asking people where the direction so we would run to the correct direction, no time for getting lost. Actually the park was nice, but we could not enjoy it as we focus to reach the beach on time. Lucky we saw a golf cart, when we asked the driver where the location, he said it's right behind Rama Sinta statue which's in the middle of large field. He didn't mind riding us to the beach. Wow... it's a nice offered, of course I took it and shouted to my friends to run unless they had missed the cart.

Five of us in the cart, it's over loaded actually, we had to hold tight to the pipe unless we'll fell down. The road was rather hilly in some part, the driver was very excellent, we arrived near the beach right away. We're very happy and run to the path towards the hut jutting towards the sea. The sun started to get red, almost sunset. Lucky we rode the golf cart, when taking the pictures, a very high wave was occurred made the people on the path getting very wet. We hadn't been that close so we were safe. I took some pictures for my colleague, unfortunately they could not take mine with high wave at the background. I took wefie so we could have a group picture with myself inside. I'm not expert enough in wefie, although the wave was quite high, it's not too obvious in the photo.

High wave was not quite often, the highest was when the 1st time we reached on the beach. We continued walking to the end of the path. There was fence protecting people from the rocks and waves, anyway you still could go down to the rock to take nearer picture to the water blow. The pounding waves froth created by the crashing waves against the rocks created the stunning beauty of the sea water flow. I was afraid to go down, when I saw my friend there, I asked him to hold my hand so I wouldn't get slipped as it's sandy and many small rocks.

On the other side you could see the sunset, anyway there was no good object in front of the sunset, the water blow at the East side. I only could take silhouette of the people who sit on the stairs to enjoy the scenery. One of my friend was hungry, so she sit there while eating snack watching us taking picture and enjoyed the wave.

It's' getting dark, my iPhone could not get good picture in the dark, so we decided to go back to the hotel. We had to walk back to the parking lot, no more golf cart to bring us, so walking 500 meters as exercise at night. My friend who stayed in Bali, just know that time that there's a good place to visit near by, at Nusa Dua beach. He could bring his family there to spend weekend. Some people have used it as pre-wedding photo location.

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Amazing black stone at Batu Angus, Ternate

Last Sep 2016 I visited Ternate with my friend, we had difficulty to find rental car, lucky that our office colleague in Ternate were kind enough to pick us up from the airport. We selected Wings air the earliest flight from Manado to Ternate, although the plane was small, we didn't care. They only allowed us to bring 10kgs luggage, so we could not bring many things. Our Ternate colleagues offered us to have breakfast and check in to the hotel first, but to save time we refused it, we preferred to go around Ternate first.

Sultan Babullah airport at Ternate located at North Maluku was not big enough, only one entrance for departure and arrival flight, anyway the airport was quite modern, although air condition was not operated in all areas. As our plane was small, we had to climb down the ladder and walk to the airport building. The scenery was quite beautiful, we could see a mountain at the side of the airport. While waiting for the pickup car, I saw beautiful black stones created wall across the airport.

Batu Angus, when I told my friend that I would like to visit it, my friend said it's only stone. Anyway we still went there, there's an entrance fee to go to the place, we could drive the car to go through the stone park, there was a nice path ways leaded us to the parking area, next to the beach. Our car was quite big, so the driver needed to be careful as the stone formed sometimes protrudes into the street. In the car I was admiring the phenomenon black lava stone, the park was full of lava that had been turned into stone as if just newly burned. My friend also admired it, he said previously another friend brought him even not entering the gate, just at the edge of the street. No wonder he said it's just stone, he didn't see the real park :-)

Some shelters has been built for visitors to enjoy the marvelous scenery. Although the sun shone so hot, it's windy so we didn't feel very hot. While my friends chatted under the shelter, I went around to take pictures of the beautiful park. Some flowers were planted to decorate the park, the landscape was strangely beautiful with contradiction color of black lava stone and sparkling blue sea. While on the other side you could see Gamalama mountain where the lava came from its eruption in 1673. The unique form stone stretched from the foot of Mount Gamalama up to the beach. My Ternate's friends said that Ternate island is Gamalama which its top was covered by cloud at that time, so people live at the foot of Mount Gamalama. Go around the island was not too far, just around 60 kilometer distance.

There was no fence or stair between the rock area and cliff to the beach, so we had to be careful to take picture. I love the stunning scenery where we were presented the blackened rock, bluish sea and greenish Halmahera mountain. My Ternate friend was brave enough to go down to the cliff, I didn't dare to do it. I took my friend's picture on the black rock, the result was very nice. He said that it's a pity if I didn't take any picture there, he offered to hold my hand going down, so I followed him. After reaching the place he went up to take my picture with my iPhone. He's very kind, he didn't mind at all to go up and down the slope :-). I'm very satisfied with the result where the background scenery was amazing, some ships were sailed on the clear blue sea.

Finally we took group picture using selphy mode in front of the welcome monument at Batu Angus. The welcome space was surrounded by the black rocks with various formation, it's beautiful. If we had much time, I would like to stay longer there, enjoy the breeze while admiring the natural phenomenon of the black rock unique composition. It's worthy to visit, just 10 kilometer from Ternate city.

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Jungleland, children adventure park at Bogor

During fasting period in June 2016, my niece and nephews were in school holiday too, my brother decided to bring them to Jakarta for holiday. We stayed at our sister's home at Raffles Hill Cibubur for 2 nights, actually we planned to go to Taman Mini on Saturday morning, unfortunately it's raining since morning, so we stayed home till afternoon.

It seemed the raining would stop, we went to the sport club restaurant called Bistro to have lunch there. The restaurant's view was facing to the beautiful swimming pool with its slides and bubble water. We promised them to go back there at evening or the day after, as we'll go to other place after lunch. Going out from Raffles Hill area, it's already around 13:30, the traffic was so crowded. Taman Mini was quite a far distance and it's too late to go there, we changed the plan to Mekarsari, unfortunately when we had to take the U-Turn, the traffic was even worse to go there, so my brother decided to take the highway to Jungleland. None of us had visited the place before, so we were blind just reading the signs and using GPS from smartphone.

The highway was not crowded, unfortunately when we entered Sentul area, it's very jammed. It's caused by car accident, we still could see the passengers who got the accident. The traffic was jammed because people were slowing down, they would like to see the accident, the white saloon car was broken heavily on the front, the front windows were broken. The passengers sat down in the middle of the street and made a call. Reaching Jungleland area, we decided to park in VIP area because my niece was sleeping so we had to carrying her to the entrance gate. It's almost 14:30 when we arrived, we're quite lucky as there was a promo from one of popular bank in Indonesia to give discount, the woman at the ticket locket was quite surprised that we would enter the theme park so late, as they'll close at 17:00.

We're lucky that we could take group picture helping by one of the visitors, although it's very difficult to take children's picture, my niece woke up already as she could see attempting colorful environment. At the entrance gate we could not get the map to go around, so we had to take picture from the billboard size map at the entrance. The zone was divided into 5 zones, carnivalia, tropicalia, mysteria, eksplora, dino world. Most of them for children, anyway if the child below 90 cm, they could not ride some vehicles.

The first selection was "harvest time", it's like a small roller coaster, my niece was crying as she was not allowed to ride as she's too young (3 years old) and short, so her brothers and father join the ride. After the ride, we brought them to "mini ferrish wheel" where my niece was accompanied by her mom, while her brothers together on the different cart. She's quite happy as she's allowed to ride it and could see us from above.

The next ride was "North Pole", where the children could sit as if on the sea lion, this time the eldest brother was not allowed to ride, it's only for the small children. The sea lion was on the water going around following the path which also went through a small cave and a small speed bump, they enjoyed it.

Rainbow train was attracted the children, it's colorful and all of them could join the ride. Lucky there was no long queue as it's fasting period, so they could ride some attractions in a short time, although some attractions were closed as it's under renovation. After twice circulation, the train was stop. I thought all of them could play "mini bumper car", unfortunately my niece was not allowed to play, to comfort her, I bought a colorful ice cream. She's happy to eat it as there was pink color as her favourite color for everything from clothes, shoes, bag, spoon, etc.

As the theme park quite huge, we decided to take the train with a long carriages to bring us around. It's like the real train with open carriage, my nephew was excited to see the train's mechanism. It took a few minutes to wait for the other passengers. We could see a giant octopus and dino statue on the way, the eldest brother insisted to visit it.

To see the panorama view of the park, we stopped by on the ferris wheel that allowed all of us to ride. The view from the top was magnificent, we could see the mountains as the background covering by the cloud, also the ripple river water flowing in the middle of the park. It's a picturesque view with lovely cool weather. My eldest nephew kept saying that he would like to visit Dino, so we followed him to Dino World.

The gate was quite attractive with Dino's statues, there was a guide wearing adventurer costume such as Indiana Jones. Entering the close room was quite scary as we were welcome by a loud sound of Dinosaurus and its moving. My niece was scared, she immediately asked her mom to carry her. I like this Dino World, they used censor to detect people movement. The Dino would move and sound only when there's a person passing them. It contains all kind of Dino with its explanation about Dino's type. It's good for education.

After Dino World, the kids would like to take another train, the circus train with Circus locomotive and colorful carriage with elephant on the top was the final ride as the park was closed. They didn't want to go home, they still wanted to play as it's too short, unfortunately none of them was operated anymore. On the way to the gate, we stopped by at Starbuck which has funny building. The rooftop looked like bananas with monkey on the top of it, while the wall looked like woods. We bought some coffees and snacks. Before going home, we took 'wefie' for group picture in front of the nice world globe from metal with jungleland signage. I felt glad that we had a chance to enjoy jungle land. If there was no children, definitely we (my mom and sisters) would not get a chance to visit it. We were happy, also the children.

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