Siam House Restaurant at Taman Molek, Johor Bahru.

The restaurant is just open not long ago, I got the info from the Malfreemaps.com Free GPS map. So we decided to try out for our Sunday lunch.

Siam House Restaurant (N1°31.372' E103°47.095') is located at Jalan Molek 1/30, Taman Molek. Opposite of Scotiabank Taman Molek, Johor Bahru.

The entrance and the interior design was Well decorated! Nice ambience!

I'm not really good in ordering the Thai foods, so the photos in the menu was making the judgement! Haha!
Our order as below...

Siam Pineapple Fried Rice

Red Curry Chicken

Steam Squid

Beef Thai Kuey Tiow (Rice noodle)

This...I forgot what's the name of it. But nice!

The Damage : MYR55.00 included drinks (For 4 adults and one child)

The price was reasonable. All of the foods were delicious, I like the squid very much! We all enjoy our lunch here very much except....

The incidents was :-
First, the waitress deliver the wrong food to our table Twice!
Second, my daughter not feeling well that day, she vomited after taking some rice! My wife quickly brought her to the washroom and we were busy clean up the chair. During halfway on the cleaning, I noticed the waiter was just stand behind me and....SMILE at me!! He was Not Even Help to clean the vomit area but just smile and watching us! Suddenly, I felt so pissed off with their services.
The Manageress apologized to us later, the reason given was they are 'New'. I wondering and surprised The Management running their business with all these poor trained employee?!
I definitely not gonna accept the reason given, it's more like an excuse to me! Will you??

Due to the unhappy incidents, I rated : 2.5/5

If you ask me...will I come back again? Hmm...let me consider...there are many Thai Restaurant at Johor Bahru area...

Siam House Thai Cuisine
G-07, Jalan Molek 1/30,
Taman Molek,
Johor Bahru.
Tel : +607-3578113

* Apologies for the poor photos taken by my mobile phone.

Location map of Siam House Restaurant

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Sunday Break: Chinatown's Columbus Park

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
I thought New York City's weather on Sunday was just perfect for a few hours of street photography on Chinatown's Mulberry Street, but ended up spending an interesting time at Columbus Park (Mulberry and Bayard). This is the only park in Chinatown, and is built on what was in the 19th century the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New York.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Now, it's the venue of choice for hundreds of Chinese residents, a few of whom I saw were practicing tai chi, while others (mostly women) were playing mahjong and card games, and groups of men were engaged in numerous games of xiangqi. Many more occupy the benches, socializing with their neighbors or with strangers, listening to the songs of birds in their cages.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
At the corner of Mulberry & Bayard, there was a large band of traditional musicians accompanying a handful of elderly Chinese opera singers, surrounded by an appreciative audience. I had come prepared...and brought my audio recorder to capture its unmistakable sounds. The musicians used a panoply of Chinese traditional musical instruments, such as the yangqin, a sort of dulcimer with a near-squared soundboard, and played with two bamboo sticks, as well as the jinghu, a small two string fiddle, a circular bodied plucked lute called the yueqin and the recognizable gu and ban, a drum and clapper.

I was racking my brains all evening trying to remember the title of the movie that featured Beijing opera characters, and which won the Cannes Palme d'Or. It's Farewell My Concubine, the 1993 Chinese film directed by Chen Kaige, and adapted from the novel by Lilian Lee.

POV: The Old Boys Club Crumbled

Paul Melcher is his blog Thoughts of A Bohemian has penned an interesting and provocative post on the Black Star Rising blog, and one that I am in full agreement with.

Paul Melcher's premise is best summarized by this quote from the post:

"Once upon a time, cameras, processing, access and distribution were the privilege of the few in photography. The business was an Old Boys Club with high barriers to entry. But now, anyone can join."

Actually, the walls surrounding the Old Boys club have crumbled like the Berlin Wall in 1989.

I've taught at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshops in Mexico City and in Manali (India) in 2008 and 2009, and I was struck at how few "Old Boys" there were. The preponderance of attendees and instructors were outside of the so-called "inner circle". Young talented photographers from Latin and Central America, and more from South Asia and South Eastern Asia that I ever thought existed, joined these workshops and demonstrated fresh outlooks to photography and the creativity to break rules, taboos and barriers.

And as Melcher says, it's all about your Point Of View. So forget infantile tribalism masquerading as networking...stop wasting time on Tweeter and Facebook...forget trying to cannibalize other photographers' ideas, projects (and yes, even photo itineraries)...and develop your own vision...your own POV...your own sphere of creativity...ignore the dying throes of the old and go take some photographs instead.

With The Travel Photographer blog, along with many others, introducing the work of talented emerging photographers to tangible new opportunities as it has, and will continue to do, the walls of the "Old Boys" club have indeed crumbled to dust. Good riddance!

Haj & Eid El-Adha

Photo © AP Photo/Hassan Ammar-All Rights Reserved
I wish Eid Mubarak to my Muslim readers, and I refer them to The Boston Globe's The Big Picture for great photographs of the event.

Friday, November 27th, was the start of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim "Festival of Sacrifice", which is based on the tradition that Ibrahim was willing to sacrifice his son Ismail to God.

As I posted in a POV a couple of days ago, Muslims celebrate it by slaughtering animals to commemorate God's gift of a ram to substitute for Ibrahim's son, distributing the meat amongst family, friends and the poor.

Speaking of Islam. I frequently read Asim Rafiqui's blog, The Spinning Head, and one of his latest posts will certainly resonate with all fair-minded persons.

Mount (Gunung) Brinchang Lookout Tower, Cameron Highlands - Pahang

Mount Brinchang Lookout Tower (N4°31.113' E101°22.973') is located the end of the same road from Mossy Forest. I just miss out this post within my Cameron Highlands trip.

After Mossy Forest, we visit this tower which is located just before the Telecom Communication Building at Mount Brinchang. It's situated at the 2032 meter above sea level.

Staircase to the Tower

We were quite fortunate because of the Good weather that day, and we be able to see Ipoh Town on top of the Tower.

Ipoh town from far away. It's on the left of the tower.

On the right, you will the see the Titiwangsa Mountains.

"The Titiwangsa Mountains range starts starts in the north as a continuation of the Phuket mountain range in Southern Thailand, running approximately southeast and ends in the south near Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The highest elevation is the 2,183 m (7,162 ft) Gunung Korbu." For more info, please visit Wikipedia.

Another view from the tower, are few Telecommunication Tower with Full of antenna.

The antenna on the left might be the MARTS National Link Antenna.

We spent about 45 minutes there and continue our journey to the Time Tunnel Musuem.

Location map to Mount Brinchang Lookout Tower

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My Cameron Highlands Trip - September 2009
* Rosa Passadena Hotel at Brinchang, Cameron Highlands (D1)
* Tanah Rata Town of Cameron Highlands 2009 (D1)
* Dinner at Rosa Passadena Hotel - Brinchang, Cameron Highlands (D1)
* The Mossy Forest of Cameron Highlands (September 2009) , Pahang (D2)
* The Sungai Palas BOH Tea Plantation, Cameron Highlands (D2)
* The Time Tunnel Musuem of Cameron Highlands, Pahang (D2)
* Lunch at Cameron Highlands, Pahang (D2)
* Mr Nachimuthu's Strawberry Farm at Brinchang, Cameron Highlands (D2)
* Big Red Strawberry Farm of Cameron Highlands, Pahang (D2)
* Bala's Holiday Chalet at Cameron Highlands, Pahang (D2) - Bad impression
* Traveler Pub and Bistro at Tanah Rata of Cameron Highlands, Pahang (D2)
* The Morning Fruits & Vegetables Market at Brinchang, Cameron Highlands (D3)

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NGM: Martin Schoeller: The Hadza

The National Geographic brings us The Hadza, a collection of photographs by Martin Schoeller. He is a German photographer who assisted Annie Leibovitz in New York in the early nineties. He continued on his own and worked for The New Yorker under contract since 1999 and also for Rolling Stone and GQ.

According to Wikipedia, the Hadza people, or Hadzabe'e, are an ethnic group in central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza number just under 1000, and they are the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa.

The New York Times LENS blog also features Schoeller's work, which was based on an assignment for Travel and Leisure magazine. The Hadza were not re-enacting a lifestyle for tourists, but living in a way that had basically not changed for thousands of years.

POV: Nepal's Gadhimai Mela: Atrocity?

Photo © Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP/Courtesy WSJ-All Rights Reserved
Here's a thought to coincide with Thanksgiving, one of our most hallowed of celebrations.

The Bariyapur festival (also known as the Gadhimai Mela) has been in full swing in Nepal for the past few days. As you can read in the following excerpt, the age-old festival involves slaughtering of thousands of animals as sacrifice to a Hindu goddess of power.

The ceremony began with prayers in a temple by tens of thousands of Hindus before dawn Tuesday. Then it shifted to a nearby corral, where in the cold morning mist, scores of butchers wielding curved swords began slaughtering buffalo calves by hacking off their heads. Over two days, 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons are killed as part of a blood-soaked festival held every five years to honor Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

Animal sacrifice has had a long history in Nepal, an overwhelmingly Hindu country and, until recently, even in parts of India. Notwithstanding, animal-rights protesters from all over the world have decried and criticized this religious tradition as barbaric and atrocious.

My knee-jerk reaction when I saw this photograph on the Wall Street Journal's Photo Journal was one of revulsion, but then I remembered that we, in the United States, will consume 45 million turkeys for Thanksgiving alone...and while the slaughtering methodology may be slightly different, it's still an uncomfortable parallel, isn't it?. If you need to be reminded, you can always look for the clip of ever-hilarious Sarah Palin giving a press conference while a couple of turkeys were being "prepared" in the background.

And for the religious-minded, let's not forget The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis 22:1-24, which is the story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah, but an angel intercedes at the very last minute, and Abraham then sacrifices a ram (who, as luck would have it, was placidly munching grass around the corner) instead.

Similarly, Islam requires Muslims to offer a sacrifice by slaughtering a sheep, cow, or goat during the Festival of Sacrifice or Eid el-Adha. It similarly commemorates Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (not Isaac as in the Hebrew Bible) in the name of God, who sent a ram instead, thus sparing Ishmael's life. To this day, thousands upon thousands of bleating sheep are slaughtered in Muslim countries because of a religious tradition originating from the Hebrew Bible. Interesting, huh?

As I said, just a thought on this Thanksgiving day. Have a nice one.

Graham Ware: Bhutan

Graham Ware joined The Travel Photographer's Bhutan: Land of the Druk Yul Photo~Expedition, and has produced an audio slideshow in QuickTime format of some of his various images made during the trip, coupled with live audio recordings gleaned during the tsechu festivals, religious pujas, the Sangha debates of the monks and a Bhutanese folk song.

A medical technologist based in Chandler, Arizona, his interest in photography started in 2000, with most of his focus at that time on wildlife and landscapes. However, he admits to have discovered photojournalism in 2004, and it is then he joined the "dark side". Last January he joined Gary Knight and Philip Blenkinsop on a photojournalism workshop in India, and professes to have been totally hooked. Some of his photographs from this India workshop are on his website.

Graham's panoply consists of a Canon 5D mark II, a Canon 1D Mark III, a 24-70 L 2.8, a 35 L 1.4 prime, and a 70-200 IS L 2.8 lens as well as a Sony PCM-D50 recorder.

An extremely agreeable travel companion, with a keen sense of cultural curiosity, Graham is hoping to help schools and hospitals in Bhutan.

BURN: Michael Loyd Young: Blues

Photo © Michael Loyd Young/Courtesy BURN-All Rights Reserved

Those of us who love the blues will really appreciate Michael Loyd Young's Blues, Booze & BBQ audio slideshow. It appeared on BURN magazine which is an online feature for emerging photographers, and is curated by Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey.

A foot-thumpin' piece...highly recommended viewing with your loudspeakers turned on really high!!!

The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music in the United States. It's called that because it originated in the Mississippi Delta, famous for its fertile soil and pockets of dire poverty.

Historically, with its history of slavery, racial oppression and discrimination, plus baking heat, rampant illiteracy and poverty, the Delta was a cruel place for many African Americans well into the middle of the 20th century. The blues documented the experience of southern blacks better than any other form of cultural expression.

To this day, the Delta is still the emotional heart of the blues for musicians, fans, travelers, and historians.

For another post on Delta Blues, you'll find the American Diversity Project equally interesting, as it featured the work of 12 young documentary photographers and photography students in and around that Mississippi area.

The sharp-eyed of you will notice that T-Model Ford is featured in both multimedia pieces. He's an 80+ old blues singer, who only took up guitar playing when he was in his fifties. It's his voice and guitar that you hear in Blues, Booze & BBQ.

Pangkor Seafood Village at Petaling Jaya, Selangor

Pangkor Seafood Village (N3°06.876' E101°36.762') located at Jalan SS24/8 of Petaling Jaya, which is opposite of Fatty Crab Restaurant.
Our initial plan was Fatty Crab, too bad it was close that day! So we just had our dinner opposite before we left Kuala Lumpur.

Pangkor Seafood Village of Petaling Jaya

Another reason which attracted us was this banner below... :)

Crab promotion - Eat 2 free 1!

We were there about 6pm, it was not crowded yet. The restaurant was quite clean...

Since this was our first time here, we let the waitress to recommend the foods...whatever she mentioned, we just OK.

Our order as below :-
1) Deep Fried Tou-Fu (Signature Dish)
2) Assam Fish Head
3) Honey Chicken
4) Vegetable
5) Kam-Heong Crab (Signature Dish)

Deep Fried Tou-Fu comes with special sauce

Assam Fish Head

Honey Chicken

Vegetable

Kam-Heong Crab (Signature Dish)
Ordered 2KG free 1KG, look at it! Like a small hill!

Overall the foods were great! Especially the Assam Fish Head, we Love it very much! Taste was different from Muar Assam Fish - Merlin Restaurant and Malacca (Melaka) Assam Fish - Bei Zhan Restaurant. Special!
The rest of the foods we rated above average, but...I just felt the crabs taste just ok...average. But the quantity was scary!! Haha! (We ordered 2KG, and 1KG free cos of the promotion)
We spent about an hour to slowly finished all the Crabs.

The total Damage was MYR155.00 included drinks. (For 6 adults and 2 children). Very reasonable! The crabs cost us MYR65.00.

Overall rated : 4/5

We enjoyed the meal here...
Anyway, it's just because of Fatty Crab Restaurant was close, unexpectedly we tasted another Great Assam Fish at Petaling Jaya! I will still come back for Fatty Crab for another comparison. :)

Location map of Pangkor Seafood Village at Petaling Jaya

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Viewbook: Francesco Giusti: SAPE

Photo © Francesco Giusti/Courtesy Viewbook-All Rights Reserved
Francesco Giusti lives and works as a photographer in Rome, Italy. He recently won First Prize in the Viewbook Photostory competition for his documentary series, SAPE.

SAPE is the acronym for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, which loosely translated from the French means "the society of persons who are elegant and have an 'ambiance' about them"...in other words, dandies. Most of the SAPE members are found in The Republic of Congo.

I won't repeat what is already explained in the blurb accompanying Francesco's gallery, but in essence a member of the SAPE considers himself as an artist, and dresses up in his personal style with the appropriate accessories, for the sake of being unique and original. A real SAPE, or sapeur, is not only elegant but has to be a gentleman and a pacifist. They carry amusing and eccentric nicknames (one of them in the series is named Christian Dior), parade in the streets and congregate in bars.

My thanks to Kate Wilhem of Peripheral Vision who reminded me of Hector Mediavilla, another photographer whose work on the Sapeurs was published in Zone Zero magazine. I had forgotten that I had posted Hector's work here.

Tangentially, this post is also about Viewbook, an interesting and easy to use online portfolio service. It has three options for creating online portfolios and galleries, which can be tried free for 30 days.

I tried the cheapest version "Basic" which only costs $4 a month, and allows one to upload up to 250 images. I tested its Image Manager which works very well, and uploaded about 16 large (1000x667 pixels at 72dpi) images in no time at all. Most of my images are about 0.75 mb, but it seems the maximum file size is 10mb per image, and can be resized if necessary. The maximum length is 1024 pixels. Not bad.

I haven't yet tried the two other options: Standard and the Pro.

For an attractive, simple and quick website for photographers, I found this to be one of the better alternatives available. I was pleasantly surprised at how simple setting it up was. Here's my trial gallery The Dancers of Tamshing Goemba on Viewbook. It took me less than 5 minutes to put it all together. However, my photographs were already prepared and ready to upload.

You can compare that version to the original gallery of my website.

(I am not at all connected to Viewbook, and this should not to be construed as a commercial endorsement.)

Paul Nicklen & The Leopard Seal

I normally don't post about wildlife photography, but this has become so viral on the internet that I had to mention it here. It's an incredible slideshow of National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen's encounter with a leopard seal. Leopard seals are carnivores and munch on penguins like we do on popcorn. On average, females are generally slightly larger than the males, and can weigh between 500 and 1,300 lb, while males are between 440 and 1,000 lb.

This leopard seal "adopts" Nicklen, and tries to feed him penguins for 4 days. I haven't a clue as to how the photographer and his crew have had the fortitude to remain photographing and filming this.

More clips here on NGS' blog.

LENS: Tyler Hicks & The Tabligh

Photo © Tyler Hicks/NYT-All Rights Reserved
It's been a while since I featured a war-related photojournalism piece, so I thought The New York Times LENS blog brought us a couple of days ago an interesting On Assignment gallery from Tyler Hicks on the Tabligh Jamaat.

I like the clever way the photographer framed the above image, as he had to photograph surreptitiously and very quickly because photography was banned from the Tabligh gathering for religious reasons.

Wikipedia describes the Tabligh (which means "conveying of message") movement as an apolitical religious movement, whose principal aim is reformation of Muslims, and was founded in India by Muhammad Ilyas as a voluntary, pacifist and independent movement.

The New York Times reports that it's "a missionary movement that spreads revivalist Islam through its followers, who travel the world on preaching missions. The movement convenes in Raiwind, Pakistan, once a year. Attended by as many as 1.5 million people, it is the largest gathering of Muslims outside the annual pilgrimage to Mecca."

American authorities believe the movement incubates "jihadists".

For further reading, The New York Times has a 2007 article here.

Note: For stereotype busting, have a look at Matthieu Paley's fascinating coverage of the annual Lal Shabaz festival when over one million Sufis, devotees and onlookers, join this chaotic pilgrimage which cannot be more different than the austere Tablighi gathering.

Yes, folks...one person's Islam is not another's, even within neighboring countries.

WTF Department: Do I Look Stupid To You?

I recently got this rather terse but pseudo friendly email the other day (it'll remain anonymous because I'm a nice guy) from presumably a very busy person who cannot find the time to type full sentences:

wd apprec. recg detailed itinerary info (hotels, meals, transportation, etc.) on your India tour.
excellent website.
thanks

What's wrong with this request, you ask? Nothing...except here's the deal. The person who emailed me this is married to a well-known photographer, and they both periodically lead photo tours themselves...and have been to India (and to that specific area) a number of times. That's what Google is for, isn't it?

So this is a rather lame (and arguably unethical) attempt to get the full itinerary I spend a long time researching, so they could either set one just like it (and charge double or triple what I do), or compare it to their own...refine theirs, re-price their costs, etc. A sort of industrial espionage!!!!

Note that the fellow is not asking for just the itinerary...oh no, it's an in-my-face request for details on hotels, meals, transportation and even the etc (just in case he forgot something). In other words, the whole friggin' enchilada.

He doesn't even mention that he's interested in joining my trip, which is what people on the level normally do.

I savored the drafting of my response, and then emailed it to him saying that (1) the Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo~Expedition™ had been sold out for over 4 months (with a long waiting list), and (2) I screen who joins my Photo~Expeditions™, and finally that his request didn't pass the stench test.

I am disinclined to withhold information from peers and friends if and when they ask for it frontally and honestly...and I try to help whenever I can. There's a number of photographers in the photo tour business who can attest to that.

However, that doesn't mean that I will share the one-of-a-kind itineraries and other stuff that I worked very hard to research and develop. Get that, Mr. Husband-Of-Well-Known-Photographer?

WSJ Photo Journal: Street Barber

Photo © Manish Swarup/AP/Getty-All Rights Reserved
The WSJ Photo Journal brings us a daily collection of fine photographs from photojournalists spread all over the globe, and this one caught my attention. It's by Manish Swarup of a man getting a shave at a roadside barbershop, decorated with portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses, in New Delhi...and the poster of the Swiss lodge in the upper left hand corner!

Street (or roadside) barbers are an important profession in India and elsewhere, and they can set up shop virtually anywhere they please. Naturally, many of them have to pay a form of "contribution" to sundry forms of authority, if you know what I mean. Typically, it's almost a hand to mouth existence despite the daily stream of clients needing a shave or a cut.

For more photographs of this profession, you can check my recent The Street Barbers which I made in Manali (Himachal Pradesh).

Tugu Negara (National Monument) at Kuala Lumpur

Tugu Negara Malaysia(National Monument)
We visited this park after our late breakfast on Day 2 in Kuala Lumpur. This was my second time visit the National Monument. It's actually nice to walk around the area...

It's also a nice place for photography

The entrance of the National Monument

You will pass by the Lotus Pool before the monument. I like the design of the iron Lotus in the water.


Once you pass by the pool, the Tugu Negara Malaysia (National Monument) is in front of us!




"Tugu Negara, literally the "National Monument" in Malay, is a sculpture that commemorates those who died in Malaysia's struggle for freedom, principally against the Japanese occupation during World War II and the Malayan Emergency , which lasted from 1948 until 1960. It is located in the Federal capital, Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian Houses of Parliament is situated near the monument.
The monument depicts a group of soldiers holding the Malaysian national flag, the Jalur Gemilang, aloft. Each of the bronze figures symbolizes leadership, suffering, unity, vigilance, strength, courage and sacrifice.
Every year on July 31, Hari Pahlawan (Heroes Day), the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Prime Minister and heads of military and the police would pay their respects to the fallen heroes by laying garlands at the monument." For more info, please click here.

Constructed in 1966, the monument is 15 meters ( 49.21 feet) tall, made of bronze and was designed by Austrian sculptor Felix de Weldon, who was also responsible for the famed USMC War Memorial in Virginia, United States.

In 27 August 1975, the monument suffered extensive damage due to an explosion set off by a communist terrorist. It has since been restored to its original state on 11 May 1977. A fence was then erected and the complex was declared a protected area between sunset and dawn. Every day at dusk, a soldier raises the national flag and lowers it at dawn.


My daughter was happily running around the area and I was busy snapping photos at the surrounding...

The path to walked back to the entrance will pass by this small hall which was full of name on the ceiling.

The names of the Heroes...

we spent about an hour here. Relaxing and refreshing.
Before we leave the park, I noticed this cafe which situated on the small hill. It's named Tuguview Cafe. Looks nice decorated.

Decoration on the wall

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