Thursday, May 15, 2008

Laguna Redang

Last weekend (10-12 May) we went to Redang for my Departmental trip. It was the standard Redang package, room, full board food, and 3 snorkeling trip..
so few days before the trip I got me a brand new Snorkels from Jusco.. RM69.90.. glass Mask TUSA brand. I dont really know much about snorkels and masks; but since its a Glass mask with decent price, I just took it. Here what it looks like


Apart from the snorkels, I also wanted a zoom lens. Btw I recently have became a proud owner of a DSLR.. not that I am such a good photographer but since I had to buy new one, might as well upgrade meself... ANyway, so I bought a D60, which came with the standard kit lense 18-55mm. It wasnt such as good range, considering I had 10x zoom on my prosumer. Definitely missing the capability to zoom. So.. Tada... the new addition to the family..


Done with the pre-shopping... lets start the journey..

We started our trip at around 3:00AM, and arrived around 8:15AM at Merang Jetty.
For those who wants to go to Redang here is the simple trip guide:
Your place --> Gombak /Karak Entry point (toll RM6.50)
Karak --> ECE East Coast Expressway E8 (another toll at Bentong cant remember how much)
ECE --> ends at Jabor (RM21)
Jabor --> Cherating --> kemaman --> KT
KT --> Merang
Anyway we wanted to take a different route after ECE ends, which is inland route (route 14) but somehow we missed the turn and ended up on the coastal road anyway.
Anyhoot, it was a really really fast drive so we still made it in good time.

Arrived Laguna safely on their painstakingly slow boat. The brochures said that it takes 45mins, but really, its actually about 1.5 hours trip.

anyway we had a nice break, weather was fair, sometimes a bit gloomy, so not too good for photos, but still it was very pleasant trip altogether.




On the way back, we stopped by the Taman Tamadun Islam where the Crystal Mosque is.


We then decided to also look for the inland route, to avoid the construction work going on around Kerteh and also to avoid the day traffic. We managed to find it, quite easily, it was actually towards the direction of the taman Tamadun Islam if coming from the bridge. The landmark is Mydin, turn right and then look for signs to Kuala Berang. It was quite busy, until Ajil, but after that, it was quite OK. There are number of lorries, but overall it was ok. Took about 3 hrs to reach Jabur the beginning of ECE.

At the ECE, Me drove pulak... quite mengantuk as it was quite hot, plus the road was just straight with boring surroundings... Past by a group of Bikers... and finally at around 4.30pm we reached the beginning of Karak..
Initially we planned to stop by at Genting Sempah for lunch/tea but just before reaching BuKit Tinggi, somebody decided to go up there instead..
nothing much there, we just had some pasta at the restaurants, took some photos, go see entrance of Japanese park (since its already closed). Quite rugi cnsidering we paid RM16 each for entrance fees.

Neway.. around 6-ish we headed back to KL and reached home around after maghrib.