Wednesday's Anchovies

Selamat Pagi. After a good sleep we are ready to conquer Mount Rinjani. We repacked our luggage and those not necessary items were packed and passed to our tour agent. They would bring our extra luggage and meet us again after 3days. All of us have to pack light for the coming 3days hike. After simple breakfast at the hotel, we departed around 8am. Don't be surprise that our starting point is our hotel! Target today is to hike from Sembalun Agro Villa and Restaurant until our camp site of first night - Crater Sembalun. From our villa, we walked through farms, towards our destination :) One step closer :) We spent around 3hrs to reach pos 2. It is time for lunch and our porters set up a temporary tent to cook for us. Chill time while waiting lunch to be served :) There are 3 types of hiking package. Food is different of course and the next significant point is the tent! Type 1 is luxury where you get to dine in a tent with chairs and t...

Selamat pagi. Finally it is time for us to write about our Mount Rinjani hiking trip plus Gili Air island trip :P it happened on November last year, not too late to share our hiking story LOL! Generally this is quite an easy trip since what we need to do is book air ticket, find a reliable tour agent at Lombok, choose a package, do payment and fly there :P The most difficult part is training beforehand to get ready for the 3days 2nights hike!!! Generally package offered by tour agents here are quite similar. For our case, the package included all transportation, accommodation and hiking expenses. Since we are going to stay 3d2n at Mount Rinjani, there are 6 porters and 2 guides (one trainee) followed us all the way. Porters are responsible to carry all food, water, cooking utensils and tents, while hikes carried their own necessities throughout the three days. Salute them! Our tour agent is Rinjani Trekking Club, Senggigi. Highly recommended them, professional, sincere, h...

Sa-Bai-Dee~~ Laos cuisine is quite similar to Thai food and after few days at Laos, we started to widen our scope and try on different variety of food LOL. Lets’ see what we have at Nong Khiaw! i) CT restaurant This is a place where we had our first meal at Nong Khiaw. Quite happy after we stepped into the restaurant since the ambient is quiet and with river view (with some trees blocking LOL). Free Wifi is available here which is quite important since the sim card (Bee Line) we bought from airport did not have any signal at Nong Khiaw @.@ Green curry chicken, papaya salad (super spicy!!!) and chicken in tomato sauce and cashew nuts as our meal! Total expenses: 90,000 kip. ii) Sangdao Chittavong Guest House Dinner we decided to stay at our guest house’s restaurant and have some clear noodles soup and pineapple fried rice :) Total expenses: 35,000 kip. iii) Alex Restaurant We walked around the town looking for restaurant to have o...

There are quite a number of budget guest house around Nong Khiaw. In less than RM100, you can easily find a private room with attached bathroom. Instead of private room, “bungalow” is the more common word being used here. We didn’t book any accommodation prior to arrival, since it was a last minute decision. From Nong Khiaw bus station, we hopped onto a tuk-tuk and simply named one guest house listed in Lonely Planet to the driver. There are 2 other passengers on the tuk-tuk and they got down at Chittavong , which is next to the main bridge. The guest house that we initially wanted to go is after the bridge. We decided to get down together with that 2 passengers and see whether Chittavong still have room available or not. The main bridge. Ended up this was one of the best decision we made throughout the trip :P There is “bungalow” available here and we got a private “house” by ourselves which costs us 50,000 kip per night! It was such a good deal! The room ...

Nong Khiaw, a small town 3.5 hours from Luang Prabang. How to go to Nong Khiaw : From Luang Prabang, go to Northen Bus Station and take minivan to Nong Khiaw. Northen bus station. Generally, the minivan is quite comfortable, free seating and not so crowded since big size luggage would be placed on top of the van. Tips: 1 Ticket is based on first come first serve basis, so it is better to be there earlier to buy the ticket. 2 Since the journey needs few hours, bring along water and some snack in the van. Upon arrival at Nong Khiaw bus station, tuk tuk service is available there so not need to worry about how to get to you hotel. If not, you can always choose to walk since it is a small town :) Tips: 1 There are quite a number of budget guest house here, you can get a whole unit by yourself in less than RM60! 2 The internet plan we signed up at Luang Prabang Airport, Beeline cannot work well at Nong Khiaw, no signal at all ...

Sa-Bai-Dee~ We always have fun to look around hawker stalls and restaurant when we travel before decide what to eat. Here we summarized food we took throughout our stay at Luang Prabang and we think they are all good! 1. Noodles stall at night market Our very first meal at Luang Prabang was noodles from a small stall at night market, before we made our way up to Phou Si Hill. Expenses: 17,000 kip. A small and simple stall where we sit together with local kids and had our meal :) Our noodles. 2. Dyen Sabai Bar and Restaurant We crossed the Bamboo bridge and had our dinner at Dyen Sabai restaurant. The restaurant's environment is so good that we ended up spent few hours there :P Expenses: 120,000 kip. Laos beer is a must-try :) Middle: Bamboo shoot with shredded pork swerved with rice cracker (45,000 kip). Right: Vegetarian Platter which consists of Mekong seaweed, steamed vegetable, eggplant dip, garlic mushroom, tomato dip serv...

There are a lot of budget hotel or guest house around Luang Prabang. We searched through Agoda and decided to book Villa Suan Maak as our first day stay. Review of this villa is quite good, with reasonable price and breakfast included LOL. We are paying around RM52 for one night stay, and the breakfast served the next day worth the price we paid! The room was clean, with attached bathroom and hot shower. The entrance. Dining area and reception. Rooms. Just beside the dining area. Our typical Laos breakfast :P Baguette served with omelette or scrambled egg, strawberry jam, butter, fruits and Laos coffee. The only bad thing of staying here is walking distance to town is around 10-15mins. Besides, there is no much choices of food around this area. But it's OK since we loitered around night market area almost everynight at Luang Prabang LOL.