As mentioned on the title, I have visited Kuala Selangor and Sabak Bernam with my Minor-4 classmates and juniors in this early August.
It was my last uni trip with my classmates and lecturers, therefore I supposed to be very looking forward to it but I was not in travel mood due to heavy load of assignments...
Final-semester students life, haiz...
By the way, another reason I was not that excited to the trip is, local trip is not as interesting as traveling abroad like what we did on previous semesters, where we have went to Singapore and Europe countries. After traveling abroad for two semesters last year, local trip seems too normal and unattractive.
Well, good thing is we can have a relax "kampung" style trip and the cost is seriously very much lower.
01.08.2015 Sunny day
Departure was at 9.00am. It took us about two hours to reach the destination although Kuala Lumpur is just neighbor of Selangor state.
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| Found an interesting spiral walkway at R&R station. It looks like a magic circle LOL |
On the way to destination.
The first stop is a rice factory in Sekinchan.
Sekinchan is a town located in Sabak Bernam famous with its paddy plantation and fisheries. Therefore the rice factory is a must-visit place for every tourists.
The factory is located in the very-large paddy field, so we got chance to see the paddy fields along the way to the factory. Sad thing is, we have just missed the harvest season of paddies, what left on the field are mostly grasses (I think) and soils. The long journey to the factory was boring as the paddy field was too wide that we saw the almost same scenery along the way.
The scene of harvested paddy field.
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| The spacious metallic factory interior. Everything looks so grey and raw though. |
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| Entered the gallery before we started shopping for souvenirs or any other activities there. |
The factory consists of gallery part, commercial area like souvenir shop and cafe (didn't manage to went inside the cafe but the ambiance looks nice from outside), and production part (where visitors cannot enter and can only look from far).
The short tour in gallery is very informative and the operator spoke so fluently in English. And I have finally understand how the rice is harvested and processed because this question has bothered me for very long time (since childhood), like what kind of machines used to plant the paddy into the soil, how to remove or peel the skins of these tiny rice, etc.
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| The operator was explaining about the production of the rice. of listening, including me... |
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| Displays of traditional and modern tools for paddy plantation. It's like a mini museum - the ambiance is so warm and I felt so comfortable. |
The most impressive part is their product shop. The space was small but various products were sold there.
However I think only half of the products are made of rice. What I like is their flavored lollipop chocolate with rice crackers, but the price is kinda expensive for me (RM6 each if I'm not mistaken). They sell coffee, ice cream, snacks and seafood products too, with various choices of taste, flavors, etc.
At the end I only bought fu chuk (bean curb skins) as souvenir for my family.
Was tempted to try their ice cream, but I didn't think I can finish it because I felt so cold there and didn't feel like eating cold food. Some more I wanted to record a video of the food only...LOL (for your information, there is an assignment that we have to film a video of food trail during the trip).
Luckily I was able to shoot it because my classmates bought it.
Besides the factory, we explored the surrounding there. There are two shops outside the factory selling seafood and rice products, fruits, souvenirs, etc. The one located beside the factory was selling a unique kind of bazhang (or Zongzi, rice dumpling) called "sambal meat bazhang". Usually bazhang has fillings of mung beans, mushrooms, salted duck egg yolk, chestnuts and meats, which are traditional Chinese ingredients, thus sambal meat bazhang is a fresh name to me. I bought one and tried it when we checked-in hotel later, and I was so regret that I only buy one...
Ahh... I feel hunger now looking at the photo...
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| The bazhang size is medium / not small, cost RM3.50 each, therefore quite worth to try. |
In order to study local retail interior design, we visited Ah-Ma's House (阿嫲的家, a.k.a. grandmother's house), a rustic traditional-Chinese local food and snacks shop in the paddy plantation area too.
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| The signage of the shop is in traditional Chinese house nameplate design. |
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| There are two tour car located beside the shop. Don't really know they're for collection or in used for certain time... |
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| A stall located at the entrance displayed various sweets, snacks and toys which were popular during childhood days. It looked outstanding with the eye-catching and colorful items and wood kiosk. |
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| Various traditional items i.e. cooking tools, equipments, antiques, etc.were displayed there. They provoked my childhood memories and I felt so nostalgia looking at these items. |
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| They made kuih kapit outside the shop. This reminded me of my childhood time, where people often make kuih kapit outside the house and the village was surrounded with smells of the roasted batter. |
I love the ambiance of the shop. I felt warm, welcoming and cozy inside. The use of natural materials i.e. timber-strips wall, cement floor and concrete-blocks wall, as well as antique-look timber furniture and displays, filling the whole space with very rich old-Chinese feels.
Next place, Nan Tian Temple, which is located in the paddy field area too. It is pronounced as Nan-Tien / Nan-Ten instead of Nan-Tian, however only Chinese know how to read it correctly LOL
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| The gorgeous Nan Tian Temple facade. |
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| The view would be awesome if the paddy was not harvested yet. |
Another impressive place visited that day - Farm Ville Cafe and Homestay. Unlike the rustic and homey kampung style in most of the houses in Sekinchan, its mood is industrial and bold - the use of metal containers painted in sharp and eye-catching colors, symmetrical and geometrical arrangement and furnishing, etc. We could only able to explore the cafe and reception area, which is kinda small... The accommodation part is much more nicer and attractive with grid glass-and-cement land, adorable painted metal containers and other unique decorative items.
This design concept is quite creative and innovative because old items i.e. metal containers can be reused to build a sustainable architecture, therefore it is eco-friendly. The cost would be lower because of easier construction compared to normal houses.
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| Facade of the "building". |
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| Restricted area where public cannot enter unless they book and stay here. |
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| Resting/ cafe area with large glass-panels opening. |
5.00pm, check-in time @ Sekin Hotel and Resorts.
Our accommodation place is surrounded with smells of the river or sea... I don't know how to describe it, but it is kinda unpleasant to city people like me. By the way, I got used to the smells after some time.
Sekin Hotel and Resorts is just located nearby the beach, so we walked to the sightseeing tower (which is about five to seven floor height) and enjoying fresh breeze, wonderful scenery
Pantai Redang is just within walking distance from the tower. We have to walk through a small path, which is silent and many motors pass-by. It looked somehow unsafe but luckily we walked in big group.
So...yeah, pantai Redang, a lively beach even at evening and night. The sun was about to set when we reached the beach and yet the beach was still crowded. I didn't take many photos here due to camera's low battery.
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| The beautiful almost-sunset scene. Look at the reflection! |
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| Tree house at Pantai Redang. |
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| Swings beside the tree house. It would be very enjoyable sitting here and looking at the sea scenery. |
The beach has even heavier smells of sea...something like burned salted fish smells. It was not that unpleasant for me, but it made me feel hungry LOL.
The weather was not really perfect (quite cloudy that time) so we were unable to watch the sunset scene. For the food trail video sake, we decided to have our dinner at the hawker stalls along the beach. Owned by local Chinese, they sell various seafood i.e. fried clams, grilled scallops, fried squids, etc., which looked sooooooooooooooooooo tasty and mouth-watering. Maybe I was just too hungry that time...
It was fun having dinner at seaside with classmates and juniors with chilling sea breeze
While eating, the stall owner informed that we can watch the "blue tear" (ostracod) at the beach!
And everyone was like...
Little did I know what is blue tear; I heard that it's a blue-color bioluminescence (or production and emission of light by tiny living organism) which can only be seen at night, and it appears with sea waves.
I couldn't see anything when I just approached the seaside because my eyes still haven't get used to the darkness, so I was quite blurred when everyone was shouting and screaming.
A minute after that, I saw some blue neon lights appeared along the wave... Ermahgawd it's amazing!
Although the environment was kinda dim, the tiny light looked fantastic and dreamy. Such an exciting experience to watch the scene!
By the way, I googled about the ostracod and I found from this website that they can only live less than 100 seconds after stroke by the sea wave. I'm having a complicated feelings toward the ostracod now... sad but impressive, idk.
By the way, here's end of my first update of the trip.
Day 2 post here!
Spoiler: more foods coming soon...
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