We walked for few hundred meters to the border line between the sea water and the beach.  That is a good place to shoot photos with reflection effect on the beach because the beach is not totally dried during its low tides.

Looking towards the land, there are mountains.

Looking towards the sea, there are islands.

The Mount Santubong is not far away.

We can see a resort between the jungle and the mountain, part of the soil of the mountain was exposed.  Someone might be developing that area.

See how powerful my camera is.  :P  This is the side of the resort which is facing the sea.  If I am not mistaken, it is the Santubong Resort.

This was not the reflection, but our shadows.

We could see the mountains in layers.

Right in front of the beach, there are 2 islands.  On the left is called Pulau Satang Kecil (Small Satang Island), and Pulau Satang Besar (Big Satang Island) is on the right.

From google map, I found that there are 2 small islands between the beach and Satang Islands.  They are Pulau Tukung Ara and Pulau Tukung Banun.  I am not sure if they are the rocks in between.

Let me zoom them in.

Pulau Satang Besar.

Pulau Satang Kecil.

Rocks in the sea.  I guess they are Pulau Tukung Ara and Pulau Tukung Banun.  ???

I hope the global warming would stop, and global cooling happen instead, then the sea level will drop, and one day in the future SiewPeng and I can walk to the Satang Islands which are about 10 km away from this beach.

Facing to the sea, the mangrove swamp is on the right hand side at a corner of the Princess Santubong Beach (Pantai Puteri Santubong).

The area of the mangrove swamp is not really big, but there are quite a number of mangrove trees.  Most importantly, it gave us a surprise, we found something special to us because we seldom or never see it in the city.

We found something …

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A pair of crabs in sky blue and red.  They were not big (smaller than palm size).  I took their photos from some distance away, and they walked around under the mangrove trees.

We also found that there were some fish with legs and can walk on land !!!  It might be common to any fishermen, but we have never seen it before.

These mangrove roots look like hands holding together and praying.

When I first found this far from the mangrove swap, I wondered why the beach is smoking on cigarettes.  I kept on guessing what it was.  Later, I discovered the answer when I saw the mangrove trees.  They were the baby mangrove trees.  They have breathing holes on their heads.

The aerial root is not only providing support for the mangrove tree to stand still in loose soil (especially when the waves comes), it is also needed for the trees to breath.

It looks like an army of soldiers protecting the king.

Although this is a swampy area, if you look at it closely, you can find many things that you cannot find in the city.

These coconuts look like big rocks on the beach.

But, they are actually not that big.

These photos are not manipulated with any computer software to make the coconuts look big.

But it is because of the perspective of wide angle lens.

I am sure many of you may have already known about it.  Wide angle lens can make the foreground look big (shoot at a very close distance), but the background is relatively small.  Sometimes, it is good to show the perspective, especially buildings.  It is also a good lens to use when shooting a portrait that includes a wide area of background.

Whereas the telephoto lens is totally the opposite.  It can make the background objects look big, but the foreground remains the same.  The moon (background) can be bigger than a wolf (foreground) if a super long focal lens is used.  This type of photo is quite common in wild life shooting because the telephoto lens is used.

Nowadays there are many high power zoom lens (18X, 20X, 24X, 35X …  etc.)  and many users including me could have easily forgotten the wide angle part of the zoom lens at 24mm, 28mm, 35mm etc.  Some wide angle zoom lens can go down to 10mm which will create a strong perspective effect.

Therefore, don’t forget to include some foreground when you are using the wide angle, and you will get some effects that surprise you.

The standard lens (50mm) is equivalence to our eyes, it won’t make the background too big or too small.

This coconut looks very old.  See, he has made friends with some sea shells that are stuck on him.  He told his friends, “No matter where I go, please follow me.”.

Yes, the coconut can be floated on the water, it travels from one place to another, from shore to shore or even from island to island.

Some of them can find a place to root, but some cannnot and they can even stay in the ocean for ages.

This coconut looks younger.

I am not sure if this is a palm seed or a coconut.

Coconut and palm both can be propagated to another part of the world by the sea water.

In Chinese it is called “Liu2Lang4″.  The coconut does not know where his next stop is when the tides come again, but when he lands on a beach, he will enjoy the sun bath, and make friends with sea shells.

We decided to escape from our busy life to a quiet beach, Pantai Puteri (Princess Beach) at Santubong.

We have been busy for the past two weeks and did not update this blog since our kittens were sick, and later they left us (we will blog about it soon).  Then, SiewPeng continued preparing a lot of documents for her work, and I was busy helping a friend preparing a slide show containing almost a thousand of photos.  Later, I have just got a new phone (Nokia N8), and I do not even have time to fully learn the new features.

We spent about 2 hours last weekend to recharge our spiritual energy on this beach in the hot sunny afternoon.

It might not be the most beautiful beach, but it is full of the legend of Puteri Santubong (Santubong Princess).

It might not be a clean beach (it is muddy indeed), but it is quiet and is a good place to relax, and enjoy the nature.

The Santubong Mountain is just next to the beach.

It was low tide, and we have walked for a few hundred meters before we could reach the sea.

We saw the mini crabs digging a lot of holes on the beach, part of the beach was wet and muddy, but we continued to walk forward to the line between the sea and the beach.  It took us more than half an hour as we walked slowly and stopped sometimes to take some photos.

This is a beautiful house next to the entrance of this beach.

These are the poles build by fisherman to catch fish, they become good elements in photos.

We have left our foot prints there, and we brought back a lot of photos.

…  …  [to be continued] … …

1.  Big-Petal: White + Pink.

2.  Big-Petal: White.

3.  Big-Petal: Magenta.

4.  Medium-Petal: Yellow.

5.  Small-Petal: Red.

6.  Small-Petal: Magenta.

7.  Multiple-Layer-Petal: White.

8.  Multiple-Layer-Petal: Yellow + Light Orange.

9.  Multiple-Layer-Petal: Yellow + Magenta.

10. Multiple-Layer-Petal: Yellow + Orange.

This is the collection of some rose moss or Portulaca that we currently have.  There are many other colours / combination of colours of rose moss which we don’t have them in our garden yet.

Which one do you like the most?