Telaga Air is a Malay fisherman village.  In Malay language, the word “Telaga” means well and “Air” means water, the name of the place means “Water Well“.

Finally I revisited to this place again after a long period of time of at least 15 years.  In my memories, I had never been to this place before because it looks totally different from what I can recall about the last time I was here.  But I did come here before (according to my parents ).

Telaga air is about 35km from Kuching city.  This place is reachable using Matang Road, Kuching.  Its nearby tourist spots are Kubah National Park and Matang Wildlife Centre which is about or less than 10km away.

We saw quite a number of fisherman boats parking by the river on the Sunday afternoon.  This is a great subject to be photographed.

Look carefully, there is a river mouth far away.  If you get out from this river mouth you will reach the South China Sea.  The famous Satang Island (the turtle island) is about 10 km from this river mouth (from what I saw on google map).

Fishing is one of the main activities here but it is not our cups of tea.  We prefer enjoying the scenery and taking photographs.

This is the newly built esplanade.

There are a few benches on the esplanade, we saw a family sitting on the benches enjoying food together, shouting to their children not to walk too near to the river.

The place is not fully done yet as a tourist spot, I think the authority can do more things like put more signs, label the jetty and so on.

The esplanade and jetty.

These are the signboards describing the wetland national park.

Just in case you can’t see the word, the green line is the border of Kuching Wetland National Park.

There is not much information about Telaga Air on the Internet.  I cannot even find it on Wikipedia.  From a website I have learned that Telaga Air has a water well that will never dry even when this place have a drought.  There was no sign to show where is the historical well, that’s why we had missed it out.

It seems that this is an incomplete hut.

From a website I learned that there is a homestay program for visitors to stay in Telaga Air.  The following are the attraction here:-
* Traditional Malay Fisherman Village
* Telaga Air historical well
* Traditional boat making factory
* Replica of Water Taxi
* Diving Spot

For more information you can read it here and here.

A 3-headed thin banana tree beside the river.

This is a type of ecotourism that called agrotourism.

[The concept of agrotourism is a direct expansion of ecotourism, which encourages visitors to experience agricultural life at first hand. Agrotourism is gathering strong support from small communities as rural people have realised the benefits of sustainable development brought about by similar forms of nature travel. Visitors have the opportunity to work in the fields alongside real farmers and wade knee-deep in the sea with fishermen hauling in their nets.] - according to ecotourdirectory.com

Similar to the following:-

[Agritourism is a style of vacation that normally takes place on a farm or ranch. This may include the chance to help with farming and ranching tasks during the visit. Agritourism is considered to be a niche or uniquely adapted form of tourism and is often practiced in wine growing regions such as Australia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and North America. Tourists engage in farm activities ranging from picking fruit or feeding animals, or planting crops.] - from Wikipedia

On the way towards Telaga Air, the is part of the roads located on top of a hill where I can see the scenery down the hill.

  This is the place that I was looking for for years. I remember my father brought us here one time when I was a kid, and I told myself I want to come here next time with my camera.  I asked around, described this place to many people but no one can tell me that the place that I am looking for is the Telaga Air Road.

I only knew that it is somewhere across the Satok Bridge in Petra Jaya, and I even try to look for it up to Santubong (the other way after the Satok Bridge), but cannot find this place.  Finally I found it.  

A typical kampung road (village road).

The place that I have been to when I was a kid…, forgotten…, and found again….

I forgot to bring a compass so that I can know which is the direction of sunrise and sunset.  I can imagine that his place looks nice too when there is a layer of fog covering it.

Time for us to take photo of ourselves.  SiewPeng was carrying an umbrella because the weather was hot.  The haze was very heavy on that day, but we did not wear a mask.

Stay tuned , the stories of Telaga air has not finished yet, more photos and posts coming.

Platform is called “Yue4Tai2” in Chinese.  ”Yue4” means moon, and “Tai2” means stage.  Therefore, in Chinese we called the platform of a train station “the Stage of Moon“.  May be the shape of a platform looks like a moon.

When I come across the word “YueTai” I will recall a Chinese essay called “BeiYing” or “Retreating Figure” which means the view from the rear of someone by Zhu Ziqing (1898-1948) - a renowned Chinese poet and essayist.

“BeiYing” is one of his famous essays.  He mentioned about his father sent him to a train station, but he told his father don’t have to, but….  His fat father climbed across the fence at the platform to buy some oranges for him, when he saw his father’s “BeiYing”, he cried.  He quickly removed his tears before his father returned.  Finally his father said goodbye to him, once again he saw his father’s “BeiYing” gone into the crowd.  He cried again.  He was 20 years old at that time.  A very touched story, and you can read it here (in Chinese).

Nowadays, this type of stories still happen sometimes, especially before the start of a new semester in colleges or universities.  And not limited to the train platform, but in the airport, sometimes at the wharf for a ship or boat may be.  Zhu ZiQing had to write snail mail to his father, but now we can use mobile phone, email, IM, webcam, AirAsia :p etc.  However, sometimes we still cannot stop from crying while leaving our friends and family.

Back to KTM, I noticed that there are at least 2 or 3 Indian temples just next to the a few KTM stations near Ipoh.  Why Indian temple like to be built next to the KTM station?  or Why the KTM station like to be built next to the Indian temple?  It is a good idea because the temple can be linked up with each other easily by the commuter.  Chinese temples, churches and mosques can do the same things too.  Salam 1Malaysia.

I tried to catch the name of the station between KL Sentral to Ipoh, but sometimes I missed it because I fell asleep, and sometimes the train did not stop.

Which towns / cities above have you been to?

The window of the train was dusty and prevented me from taking clear pictures.

This is a bigger train station that allow passengers to walk across to the other platforms using the overbridge.

Time is an important factor for trains.

Another Indian temple behind the platforms at Slim River Station.  Sorry because this picture is not clear, and the temple is blocked by the blue-coloured noticeboard.

<<Who says that words are not as powerful as pictures?  Even I do not show you the pictures, you can understand what I am talking right?  Unless you do not understand the language that I am using.  :p>> - out of topic.

This is how a typical platform looks like, but it may have experienced endless stories there.

Platform and the railway.  Do not cross the yellow lines !!!

The train started moving, we started to see more and more things but in fast motion.  Many things happen just a short moment in our life and we are not be able to remember all of them.  For example, what was the colour of my toothbrush years ago?  There is a weighting scale in our life, some of the things that happen to us are heavier than the other.

Speed limit for train.

This is the special station called Herritage something, it is not far away from the KL Sentral.  I forgot the name of this station, can someone tell me?

From the windows, we can see more things than on the bus.  We saw a lot of palm trees, villages, houses.  We can go to the toilet easier on the train and I feel that train is wider (we took second class seats).  Train or bus?  I still prefer to take train.  We feel that train is safer too.

Now let me show you the dirty window of the train.  :)  Hopefully KTMB will clean it, so the passengers can see a clearer view and enjoy nice scenery on their journey.

We took a different transport to go back to Ipoh instead of using bus as usual, we used the Intercity KTM (Keretapi Tanah Melayu or Malayan Railways).

This is the first time we took an intercity commuter from KL Sentral to Ipoh.  We were excited and reached the platform 30 minutes before the departure time, but nobody was there except two staffs doing the cleaning or checking something.

We were not sure whether we were on the correct platform and I asked one of them to confirm.  He was frightened when I suddenly appeared behind him.  :p  (I wanted to laugh but not in front of him).  While I walked pass the toilet, I saw a filthy toilet in the train.  Toilet are located between the train coaches, I hoped not all of them are filthy.

Before other passengers came on board, we started taking photo of ourselves.  I am getting better in camwhoring.

It is very convinient because we can book our ticket online.  We booked an ASC (Aircon Second Class) seat exactly in the middle of a train coach (seat No. 8 the lucky number).  We did not expect that we actually has choosen good seats because we can put our big big luggage behind our seats.  The seats behind us were facing the opposite direction.  Therefore it creates a space between 2 rows of seats which back to back with each other.  If anyone needs more privacy than the others, this is a good place because the passengers behind you are not looking at you.  The row numbers are 8 and 9 (they are back to back).  Row No. 1-8 faces the opposite direction of row No. 9-16+.

We did not check how many rows of seats in a train coach, nor we did not calculate how many train coaches that linked up the whole train because it was too long.  We took the train coach labelled with X1 which is the ASC.  If I am not mistaken, I did see the other train coaches with the label of Y or X2.

We can put our bags above us.  The compartments are transparents.

However, something happen…
When the train started moving, we discovered that we were moving backward.  Same things happened on our return trip.  Hmm…  I still prefer moving forward than moving backward.  Next time, we will choose a different seat number, but it depends on luck, who know sometimes they turn the train heading backward.

The conductor came and checked the tickets 30 minutes after departure, after he punched holes on the tickets one after another on other passengers.  We have a printed E-ticket stapled together with AirAsia Itinerary.  He used a single-hole punch which look like a scissors and punched our AirAsia Itinerary as well.  So do not put $note$ with your ticket together, otherwise you will get a hole on your $note$.

On our return trip, the conductor did not use a punch but he wrote something on our ticket instead.

A train at another platform.

The train reached a station, the driver saw a red flag, and the train stop.

The green flag shown, the driver honked, and and the train move.

The train moves on these streels and stones.

I am not sure what this is used for, and I had also forgotten where did I took this picture.  It must be part of the train system.

…

…

A week later… we had a return trip using the commuter as well.

Halfway on our way back from Ipoh to KL Sentral, we saw a rainbow in one of the train station.

Again, we have choosen the same seat number where we were facing the opposite direction of the train movement.  This time the train moved south, but we were facing north.  We were moving backward again.

Again, while we turn our head back and looked, no body was looking at us because the passengers were facing the other direction.

We reached KL Sentral again.  Compare to the first photo above, I had taken the photo from the same angle, but without the train.

After taking the photos of the sunrise, I continued to shoot around.  Our location at 3rd floor were just right for all these photos.  If I had more time, I may have captured photos from each floor to see the surrounding scenery from different angles.

The higher the better?  Not really.  From a higher place, the things in the scenery become smaller, but we can see more.  From a lower point, we have limited scope, but things on the ground floor show greater details.

Maybank is an important landmark at LCCT for some bus to stop.  It is located across a road from Tune Hotel.

The plane was landing.

I also saw a large plantation of palm trees.

From the top, I caught a picture of the root of the palm tree.

Since the hotel is not that far from the airport, aeroplanes parked there are easily visible too.

This is another important landmark for buses to disambark and pick up passengers.  This building is the post office.  It is known as Pos Malaysia.

This is how to corridor outside the hotel room looks like.  There is quite a lot of room to move about.

From the balcony, I found the car park of the hotel.  Do you notice the red van in the picture above?  That’s the shuttle service of the hotel that provides rides from various places.  One of it is LCCT to the Tune Hotel and return.  This costs RM 1 per ride.

It must have rained the night before.  I discovered that the handle grip of the fence on the corridor was wet.  The drops of water on the grip created a nice texture and pattern that moved me to capture them.

The picture above is a close up and this is the whole picture of the wet handle grip.  The sunrise (background) in the picture above is out of focus and overexposed. 

Someone might had looked at me while I was taking the photo.  There are security cameras in the building to protect the safety of the guests.

Overall, it was quite an experience to spend a night at the Tune Hotel.  We didn’t order any extra facilities besides the basic ones so I guess we didn’t really have the 5-star hotel experience as promoted in their advertisements.  However, it is a place with sufficient facilities to rest in order to ‘recharge’ one’s battery and prepare for the next journey.

As the night slowly crept away and the dawn came to take place, we had an acquaintance with the lovely sunrise.  It was a refreshing morning and we were fortunate enough to be able to catch this beautiful view at the corridor outside the hotel room.

According to some findings on Wikipedia, one should not confuse dawn with sunrise as dawn is the (variously defined) point at which the sky begins to lighten, some time before the sun itself appears, ending twilight.  Sunrise however, is the instant at which the upper edge of the Sun appears above the horizon in the east.

What does sunrise mean to you?

Couples shown in movies like to stay up all night on the beach just to wait for the sunrise because it is romantic. But to be on the safe side, you have to make sure it’s a weekend.  You don’t want to fall asleep at your desk with your boss standing in front of you. Do you think watching sunrise is romantic?

Well, from another point of view, sunrise is the beginning of a new day.  This is a fact that can’t be denied.  How many of us actually know that it is a new day when it is a new day? A funny but meaningful question. Think about it.

A new day means our lives has become shorter.  Every second that has passed us by will not return anymore.  It is very important to realize what we are doing every second is meaningful so that our lives can be content and not wasted just like that.  Have you called or hugged your loved ones today?

Sunrise can be a new beginning.

A new beginning to a new born.
A new beginning to a new job.
A new beginning to a new project.
A new beginning to a new friendship.
A new beginning to a couple who fought the night before.

Can you tell us more new beginnings that you know or have encountered?

There’s a Chinese saying that goes (translated), ‘A whole-year’s plan starts in spring, A whole-day’s plan starts in the morning.’.  Planning is essential to ensure what we want to achieve be done in a smooth way with possible difficulties decreased to the least.  You might get more brilliant ideas if you are planning your day while enjoying the sunrise.

Do you think the sunrise picture above resembles the sea and the seaside?  I think it looks like the sea during dusk.

If you are still wriggling in bed, you better get up because slowly the sunlight will force itself through your window into your room.  You might have a curtain but you still can’t stop the Sun to pay you a visit every day.  And the Sun is a good doctor because it will ‘roast’ all the lazy worms in us and wake us up to our routine.

Romance, a new day, a new beginning, a new life…the Sun appears and brighten up every living beings with new hopes.  It burns itself without any frustration or complaints.  Let’s not disappoint the Sun and waste its effort.  Be happy! Be positive! Have a wonderful weekend!