Top 10 SPM 2011Wilayah Persekutuan

top 10 SPM 2011 Wilayah Persekutuan...

 1)Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah, Putrajaya
 2)SM Sains Alam Shah
 3)SM Sains Selangor
 4)SM Sains Seri Puteri
 5)SMK Aminuddin Baki
 6)SMK Agama Kuala Lumpur
 7)SMK (L) Methodist
 8)SMK Seri Bintang Utara
 9)SMK Seri Bintang Selatan
 10)SM Teknik Kuala Lumpur

Dinner at Co Do, Breakfast at Hoang Phu Gia

After the Lacquer factory, our last event for the

day is dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant

for another authentic local cuisine.

 nice oriental looking restaurant with tasteful decor and great ambience

 This is the restaurant: situated at 367 An Duong Vuong, Phuong 3, Quan 5, TP Ho Chi Minh

tempting array of delicacies

door of toilet, with a latch that reminds me of the doors of old China

houses in my hometown

tucking in to the food

 note that most of the servings are for four: 

 like this starter: four banana leaf wrapped savoury rice paste

 Deep fried steam pancake with shrimps, and squid,

 this one two each!

 Lots of salad

 sour lemon drenched salad

 four pieces of fish keropok

four fresh srping rolls

 taugeh ommelette

 tiny piece of meat patty

 wafer thin rice wrapper for you to wrap the meat with condiments

 son is picking up the rice wafer for some wrapping moments

we have nearly finished all our dishes

 Lastly we are served Com Sen: Rice Lotus Cotyledon with shredded chicken

 shrimp, pork, sour pork hash wrapped in lotus leaf and steamed

They eat everything except the salad and the sour appetiser

 noodle soup with beef

 after dinner we are driven back and we see luxury cars outside the designer row of shops

 then we reach our hotel, and as usual, we sit outside to watch the street life unfold

 people loitering outside the pub near our hotel

 the itinerant street vendor with her heavy load, peddling all sorts of wares

 Next morning, we have breakfast here

 and here

 we have a vantage view of other people's tour bus, starting off at 7 in the morning; 

we are lucky, we have our own van and personal guide;

and we do not need to wait for anybody or have them wait for us.

 Hawkers trying to sell souvenirs to the tourists;

there are very few souvenir stalls, 

so get all that you need from them!

Then, we start our journey out of the city to My Tho

 My Tho is a waterfront village, we will be taking a boat ride, then a sampan ride...see next post.

Fernando Alonso Diaz wins Malaysian Grand Priz

• Vision KL

  Congrats to Fernando Alonso for winning F1 Malaysia GP 2012!
  No luck for Sebastian Vettel.

Fernando Alonso Díaz (born 29 July 1981) is a Spanish Formula One racing driver and a two-time World Champion, who is currently racing for Ferrari.

 On 25 September 2005, he won the Formula One World Driver's Championship title at the age of 24 years and 58 days, at the time making him the youngest Formula One World Drivers' Champion.
 After retaining the title the following year, Alonso also became the youngest double Champion at the time. Nicknamed, a typical pseudonym for Fernando in Asturias, his place of birth, Alonso acts as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
 Personal and early life
 Fernando Alonso was born in Oviedo, Asturias in northern Spain.
His mother worked in a department store and his father was employed as a mechanic in an explosives factory near Oviedo. Alonso has an older sister, Lorena. Alonso's father José Luis, an amateur kart racer, wanted to pass on his passion to his children. He built a kart, originally meant for eight-year-old Lorena, but unlike her three-year-old brother, she showed no interest in the sport.
 Alonso married Raquel del Rosario, lead singer of Spanish pop band, on November 17, 2006. They announced their intention to divorce in December 2011.
 They lived in Oxford, England until they moved their residence to Switzerland in 2006. Alonso owned a house in Mont-sur-Rolle, near Lake Geneva from 2006 to 2010, and in February 2010 he moved house to Lugano in order to be closer to his new Formula One employer Ferrari.
 It is highly common for Formula One stars to take up residence in Switzerland to reduce their tax bills. In the winter of 2010–11, Alonso moved back to Oviedo in order to be closer to friends and family, costing him an estimated £50 million in tax.
 Source. Description above from the Wikipedia article Fernando Alonso

Hunger Games takes record $68.3m on opening

Eagerly awaited sci fi adventure The Hunger Games posted the fifth-best opening day ever with a staggering $68.3 - a new record for a non-sequel.
 The massive takings included $19.7m from midnight showings as queuing fans scrambled for seats. The movie easily surpassed the previous opening-day record for a non-sequel which was 2010′s Alice in Wonderland with $40.8 million. Scroll down for trailer Fans line up to see the midnight shows of 'The Hunger Games' in New York, the movie took $19.7m from the late night showings alone Fans line up to see the midnight shows of 'The Hunger Games' in New York, the movie took $19.7m from the late night showings alone
 The big start should translate into an opening weekend of as much as $140m domestically, according to Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. First-day revenues for 'The Hunger Games' were well behind the record $91.1 million for last summer's 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.'

But 'The Hunger Games' came within a few million dollars of each of the last three 'Twilight' movies, whose opening days ranged from $68.5 million to $72.7 million. The PG film stars Jennifer Lawrence as a teen forced to compete in a televised death match against other youths in a future North American society where a privileged capital city oppresses the people of 12 outlying worker districts.


It is based on the first book in a best-selling trilogy by author Suzanne Collins. The movie, which scored a firm 'A' rating from CinemaScore audiences, has had a stronger start than such blockbusters as The Dark Knight and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen according to Entertainment Weekly. As for the rest of the box office, last week’s front runner 21 Jump Street dropped 53 percent for $6.3 million on Friday. It was followed by Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax which also dropped 53 percent to take $3.2 million. John Carter came in third taking $1.4m, with Project X only just making the top five with $625,000 on Friday.

Sale on Branded Bags

Day 3 (15 March 2012) My Tho

The brochure says: After breakfast, a two hour drive to My Tho will 

expose the colorful outskirt life as well as picturesque rice fields along the

journey. Upon arrival, get on a boat trip up Mekong River 

with islet stop at Thoi Son to taste seasonal fruits, enjoy

traditional folk songs. Then visit the authentic life of the locals

and challenge your bargaining power at cottage handicraft shops.

An adventurous sampan ride in palm shading creeks will the next experience

of the riverside region. Lunch to be served with the Mekong Delta specialty Deep Fried Elephant

ear fish (next post) then back to city to visit chinatown, and a temple.

We are getting out of the city, towards the outskirts and the motorbikes are decreasing.

We drove past lots of padi fields, and strange sights greeted us: tombstones right in the
middle of the field, like in Guangzhou.

Lone tombs smack in the middle of the field.  They were born here, grew up tending the
farms and died on the farm, now they are buried here, at Death, still tending the farms.

We make a pit-stop at the Mekong Reststop where the guide calls the toilets the "Happy Place!!!

And what a beautiful rest stop this is, full of landscaped flora and fauna to keep shutterbugs happy.

Then we reached the jetty, clevery disguised as a houseboat.

You have to walk through the houseboat to get to where the boats are moored.

We love to pose.........he loves to point and shoot.

Our boat and the boatman ready to take us to the islands.

Our guide is quite the gallant gentleman.

Chivalry is not dead, yet.

Islet stop at Thoi Son to taste seasonal fruits and enjoy folk songs.

Lots of shady trees and nipah roofed huts on the islet.

Challenge your haggling skills

challenge you balancing skills

Fruits everywhere

First stop: a bee apiary.

Note his deadpan expression: he is trying to 

fool the bees into thinking he is their ally.

so they will not stage a coup de tat and sting him.

I forgot to look deadpan: I broke into a grin for the camera.

Next, we are brought to this hut for royal
jelly tasting

Hot honey tea will be served to us

homemade rice wine in his hands

freshly squeezed lime and jasmine tea

Tit bits which you can buy

ginger snaps, peanut brittle, banana crisps, coconuts twirls and

I forgot what the round one was.

Buxom girl is spooning out equal parts of honey and royal jelly

unprocessed royal jelly which you can buy and bring home

A spoonful of the potent stuff will knock you back a few years (she will become a baby!!)

Look Ma, No Hands!!!!

Is it a boy or girl? (He actually asked this question!!!!)

Buying balancing dragonflies and bracelets

Lots of American tourists

Next to them we look so Vietnamese!!!

This is called seasonal fruits for you to sample

with live entertainment of local and folksy traditional songs where they do a rotation of every table

My little Viet girl

My wannabe Vietcong

How the locals dry their laundry

We walk again through the picturesque quaint islet village

some of them are actually quite affluent

and filial, for they keep their dearly departed in their own compound next to them

Romantic rooster and hen going for early morning stroll, minus their brood

Resting by the many streams which reminds me of my carefree childhood days, before the relentless march of highways.

I am fascinated by their hammock culture

The three of us jumped into one each and had a swinging time

He did not experience a sarong or buaian (swinging cradle) babyhood, so he is making up for lost time.

We have reached the coconut candy factory, and Trien is showing us how coconut is skinned

These girls wrap candy in rice paper almost as fast as conveyor belt machines

the mold for measuring and cutting the candy

Now for the highlight of this part of the trip: a sampan ride down narrow palm fringed creeks

We are provided with Vietnamese straw hats and two row men, or row women or row PERSONS each.

Women power

I think I like the Pagsanjan ride in Philippines is better: more exciting and death defying, rocky and challenging! At the end of it you are rewarded with a view of the Pagsanjan waterfalls!!

Nonetheless, it was safe, smooth, and extremely pleasant to float down the creek

Methinks I was floating down the canals of Venice in a gondola.

Vietnamese girl rowing the boat...

wait a minute,

it is my daughter, as Malaysian as you can get.

Malaysian girl rowing effortlessly down the river

Vietnamese woman muscling and rowing up the river.

This picture is stolen from the web, as you can see, it is taken from the top.

This picture is not stolen from anywhere, you can see my finger up there.

All waiting to disembark

Our boatman is waiting to take us back: Lunchtime!

No sign of our gallant gentleman, so we hop on to the boat ourselves, it is perfectly safe.  Next stop: Lunch on the Mekong River.