Palliser Bay & Martinborough

Several of us decided to skip the last day of the conference as the scientific program for that day was rather thin. We joined the Hammonds Scenic Tour’s Palliser Bay Seal Colony & Lord of the Rings Tour. The tour started with a visit to several scenic Lord of the Rings film locations at the Hutt Valley. Our first stop was the fortress of Helm’s Deep where the Orcs battled King Theodore of Rohan to overtake his stronghold, and the city of Minas Tirith. These were filmed at the site of a quarry at the bottom of Haywards Hill and unfortunately, all that’s left to see, is well, the fully operational Dry Creek Quarry. The Hutt River flows for some 30km from its source in the Tararua Ranges through bush, farmland and city before entering the sea. The natural beauty of this river provided an ideal site for filming the Great River Anduin, the largest and longest river that flowed through Middle Earth between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood. Filming undertaken here were mostly of the fellowship travel down the Anduin to Amon Hen on small elven boats. The next stop was at Harcourt Park, where three different scenes of Isengard were filmed. An elevated section of the park was transformed into the gardens of Isengard where Gandalf and Saruman first met after the rediscovery of the ring at Hobbiton. The last LOTR stop was Rivendell where Frodo recovered from the sword attack by the Ring Wraiths, at the Kaitoke Regional Park. Nestled in the foothills of the Tararua Ranges, the park contains some 2800 hectares of mature native forest.

Top: Hutt River and Harcourt Park. Bottom: Kaitoke National Park and the tree where the scene of Legolas getting ready with his bow and arrow was filmed.

Our journey continued through the wondrous mountain ranges of Rimutaka and Tararua, and elegant villages to the charming town of Martinborough, home to some of the country's finest winemakers and packed with charm. Once the destination of choice for early settlers, it is now an upmarket escape for gourmets, wine enthusiasts and boutique shoppers. We had lunch at the Village Café, a quaint café in the centre of town before proceeding to visit one of the over 40 largely family-owned vineyard in Martinborough, most within walking distance of each other, where wine tasting was offered.

Clockwise from top left: Martinborough wine centre and café, hotel, town square, town hall

At the vineyard. Notice the rose bushes at the beginning of the row of grapevines (picture bottom left)? Roses catch plant diseases easily and if there's any around, the farmers will notice changes to the roses and hence take steps to protect their vines from catching the disease.

A journey through rural farmlands finally brought us to the rugged and untamed Palliser Bay, one of the most remote and intriguing coasts in the North Island.

The road to Cape Palliser is very scenic, hemmed in by the sea and the mountains of the Aorangi Range.

Past the sleepy fishing village of Ngawi is the largest fur seal colony in the North Island. We had unbelievably close encounters with the seals, with plenty of them openly living in the grass by the roadside!

Can you spot the seals?

Seals, seals, seals and more seals

Wellington museums

Everyone knows this is kiwifruit, right? But do you know where this fruit originates from? New Zealand? Think again. It is actually a native of Shaanxi, China. The fruit that is intrinsically linked to New Zealand used to be called Chinese gooseberries but in 1959, it was christened kiwifruit and has been become one of New Zealand most famous exports. This is one of the many interesting facts I learnt from Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, New Zealand's national museum.

Lording over Wellington's waterfront, Te Papa is recognised as a world leader in the new wave of innovative and interactive museum experiences, and since its opening in 1998, over 13.8 million visitors have walked through its doors. Among Te Papa’s treasures is a huge Maori collection, including its own marae (a living customary meeting place), dedicated hands-on ‘discovery centres’ for children, natural history and environment exhibits, a re-creation of a European settlement, contemporary art and culture, and many more. Among them, Awesome Forces showcases the massive natural forces – plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides that have shaped the landscapes of New Zealand. Bush City is a living forest with some typical New Zealand plants and landforms, including a cave complete with replica glowworms and moa bones while Signs of a Nation explore the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding documents. Passport tells the stories of those who have migrated to New Zealand over the last 200 years, with stories of why the immigrants left their original homes, how they got here and the new lives they made.

Housed in an historic restored 1892 Bond Store at Queen's Wharf, the Wellington Museum of City and Sea brings to life Wellington rich maritime history and social heritage from the time of early Maori and European settlement. Inside is a reconstruction of the Bond Store of the 1890s, when Queens Wharf was the hub of Wellington’s port activity. As a bond store, it was a holding warehouse for goods that required the payment of customs duty before being released to the importer. Besides the bond store, it also contained the Wellington Harbour Board’s offices. There’s an exhibition titled Telling Tales, in which Wellington’s interaction with the 20th century’s major developments and events including the rise of indigenous rights, mass travel and global communications, architecture, design and the arts are showcased in 101 stories. There’s also a documentary on the Wahine disaster, the 1968 maritime tragedy of the inter-island ferry, Wahine which tried to enter Wellington harbour during a savage storm and successive events led to the loss of 51 lives.

Photo taken from Wellington Museums Trust website

Windy Wellington - Part 2

The Parliamentary Complex comprises four main buildings: the distinctive and well-known modernist Beehive, which is exactly what it looks like, the Parliament House, the neogothic Parliamentary Library building and the Bowen House. Parliament has met on its present site in Wellington since 1865, when it moved from Auckland. There’s a free one hour tour every hour on the hour, and when I was there, the House was in sitting and I took the opportunity to visit the Public Gallery of the House to witness the parliamentary session.

Left: The Beehive and Parliament House. Right: Parliamentary Library

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul is a spectacular building located just two minutes from Parliamentary Complex. The cathedral is known for its distinctive stained-glass windows and many treasures and art works, including a dramatic 9m high hanging of Christ in Glory. The Lady Chapel, built from New Zealand rimu (a native wood), is an historic highlight of this Anglican cathedral.

The historic 1876 Old Government Building, built on reclaimed land in a style imitating stone, is world's second-largest wooden building. It was used by many different government departments and after the 1907 Parliament fire, Cabinet met there temporarily. Since 1993 the building has been restored and strengthened and the Law Faculty of Victoria University is now housed here.

The Old St. Paul Church, constructed entirely of native timber, is a unique example of Colonial Gothic architecture. Built in 1866 as the parish church for Thorndon it was used for 98 years as the cathedral for the Wellington diocese. With stunning wooden arches and magnificent stained glass windows, it is now a popular venue for weddings, funerals, concerts and recitals.

Windy Wellington – Part 1

Wellington is a beautiful city, nestled between a stunning harbour and rolling green hills and bordered by beaches and bays. Houses are built into the hills following the natural landscape, instead of levelling off the hills and cutting down trees to accommodate the houses – truly blending in and respecting Mother Nature. An interesting feature is the use of a small trolley car on tracks running along the hill slopes to transport goods and even occupants of houses located up the hills.

The trolley car, complete with a shed by the side

Wellington's downtown area is 2km in diameter, and takes just 20 minutes to walk across so all of Wellington major sights are easily accessible. One of Wellington’s prime attractions, the cable car is one of the few remaining of its type in the world. It runs from the commercial heart of Lambton Quay and emerges in Kelburn, a suburban residential area. The ride continues past Kelburn Park and Victoria University up to the city's beautiful Botanic Garden for breathtaking views of the city and harbour. Fondly described as ‘relentless red rattlers’, Wellington’s cable cars have transported people between the harbour and the hills for more than 100 years and are an iconic image for the capital.

Just outside the cable car station at the top of the hill is the Wellington Cable Car Museum. It is located in the historic winding house used for the original cable car system, which operated from 1902 to 1978, before making way for an entirely new Swiss designed system, the system running today. The museum tells the story of New Zealand’s cable car system and is home to a nationally significant transport collection including two of the three original grip cars which have been painstakingly conserved and restored to its 1905 appearance. The winding room on its lower level contains the machinery once used to haul the cable cars up the incline.

(Top) The exterior of the cable car museum, the engine room; (Bottom) The two restored cable cars

A walk through the tranquil 25-hectare Botanic Gardens was wonderful, with unique landscape, exotic forests and colourful floral displays. The trail is well sign posted along the way indicating the distance to the next point of interest, and the tarred trail marked with a logo for easy identification. The award-winning Lady Norwood Rose Garden has 106 formal beds each containing a different cultivar, though I didn’t find the rose bushes visually appealing. Next to the rose garden by the waterfall is the Peace Flame Garden, containing the preserved fires from the atomic holocaust at Hiroshima. Other gardens include the Succulent Garden with various cacti and Threatened Species Garden with native plants that are no longer common in the wild due to forest clearance associated with land development.

The beautiful greenery of the Botanic Gardens

One of the many sign posts and the trail marker

The award-winning Rose Garden (nothing spectacular, right?) and the Peace Flame Garden

The Succulent Garden with various cacti

The Museum Hotel

Be warned – you’ll be harassed with a barrage of backdated posts on my trip to NZ two months ago. I was in Wellington to attend a conference on diabetes, and took the opportunity to extend my trip for a holiday in the South Island with hubby and mum. The first few posts are on Wellington, followed by a chrolonogy of our trip to South Island.

I arrived in Wellington on Saturday, March 29. It was a wet day and the weather forecast predicted more rain in the next two days. The rain was very much welcomed by the people of Wellington as they have been hit by a severe draught, the worst in recent years, with not a single drop of rain over the past three months. But to us, visitors to Wellington, the rainy weather was certainly what we had hoped for, though we were prepared for its notoriously blustery winds. After all, it's not called Windy Wellington for nothing.

I stayed at the Museum Hotel, a small boutique hotel with a colourful history. It used to be known as Museum Hotel de Wheels, as it was relocated to its present site on wheel, literally. It was originally located at the opposite site of the road, at the site of the National Museum of New Zealand, the Te Papa Museum (more on this later). When the government decided to build the museum at its present site, the hotel had to be relocated. The whole building was transferred intact onto a "railway carriage", then rolling it to the other side of the road on railway tracks. It was the largest building ever relocated in New Zealand and one of very few in the world. Four months were required for the separation of the hotel from its foundation. The move itself took only 2 days. The building reached its destination in perfect condition and less than one centimetre out of line. Only five months after the project started the hotel reopened in November 1993.

Initially I couldn't imagine how this could have been done but I later learnt that many concrete buildings in New Zealand are not firmly attached to the ground due to the risk of earth quakes. Using a technique called base isolation, something flexible like rubber and lead are placed between the building and the ground. In essence, the building’s structure becomes very much a stiff box on top of horizontally flexible supports. When the ground shakes during an earthquake, the base isolators reduce the transfer of earthquake forces from the foundations to the building above. Instead of shaking severely, the building will move horizontally, thus minimizing the damage and loss of life. As such, moving the hotel simply involved detaching the building from its base isolated foundation. Cool huh?

I stayed at the Residence Wing, in a self-contained studio unit with full cooking facilities – so I've got a fully equipped kitchen complete with oven, hot plates, microwave oven, toaster, crockeries, cutleries and a dishwasher. I even have a washing machine cum dryer in the room and it was here that I used a clothes dryer for the first time in my life.

Birthday celebrations

We celebrated mum’s and younger brother’s birthday last Saturday coz both their birthdays fall in the middle of this week and only 3 days apart from one another. We went to Restoran LYJ Sdn Bhd, all the way in Kampung Baru Sg Buloh for pun choy. Pun choy consists of several different kinds of meat and vegetables served layer by layer in a big dish. This restaurant however, uses a larger but shallower serving dish so the different kinds of food are served in separate clusters. There were steamed chicken, pei pa duck, fish, prawn, and broccoli and cauliflower arranged neatly on top of the dish. Underneath was a heavenly delicious dish of braised sea cucumber, mushroom, pork, fish maw, clams, chicken feet, pig trotters and beancurd skin. The thick and flavourful gravy was so good and you can practically just eat your rice with the gravy alone. We also bought a Mango Delight cake from Secret Recipe and had that as dessert to round up the wonderful meal.

The birthday boy and birthday girl

(L) The whole clan (R) The two kiddos excitedly "helping" to cut the birthday cake

Weekend at Shangri-La Rasa Ria Resort

This is sunset at the beach of the Shangri-La Rasa Ria Resort, Tuaran, Sabah.

I was there for an endocrinology meeting over three days starting from Friday, and managed to steal some time to visit the beach and catch the sunset. The beach, with its fine brown sand, stretched along the South China Sea as far as the eyes could see but compared to Nexus Karambunai Resort, a similar beach resort in KK, I thought Nexus scored higher in terms of its natural beauty.

A blowpipe demonstration taking place

A range of games is arranged by the hotel, traditional music is played to welcome guests to the hotel

We went to Salut Seafood Restaurant, about 20 minutes away from the hotel for dinner on Friday. We had three seafood combination, fish maw soup, steam prawn, spicy black pepper crab, steam grouper, spider conch shell with dry chili, stir fried Sabah vegetable with belacan and seafood fried rice. The food was mediocre, with the soup and fried rice almost tasteless. The only saving grace was the steam prawn, spider conch shell and Sabah vegetable. Portions were small and the 40 of us didn’t really feel too full despite having pre-ordered food for 50 pax. At a cost of RM65/pax, I felt we got a raw deal.

On Saturday night, we went to Gayang Seafood Restaurant and this was WAY better than Salut. We had fish maw & fish lips broth, steam tiger grouper, baked pearl lobster with wet butter sauce, steam prawn, deep fried soft shell crab, fried Sabah vegetable with belacan and Japanese beancurd with diced chicken. All the dishes were good and came in generous portions. I would definitely recommend Gayang over Salut, though the set caused us RM75/pax.

Since the food was so good, we went there again for lunch on Sunday before leaving for the airport. We ordered ala carte, and repeated several dishes from yesterday such as steam grouper, baked pearl lobster with wet butter sauce and steam prawn. We also had ‘tong fung’ snail, a different type of vegetable, coz they didn’t have the Sabah vegetable, and fried Tuaran noodles with seafood. It was yummy, as expected, and was a nice end to our working weekend.

Short updates

Since I stopped updating Yiu Yiu’s monthly developments, I have not really been keeping tabs on her developments. Anyhow, most of her developments in the last couple of months are more on her verbal and memory skills, rather than physical ones. Here are some of them:

Physical
She can climb up the steps to the slides in the local playground. I was quite surprised when I saw her climbing enthusiastically up the steps when I brough her to the playground sometime last month.

Memory
She has two peek-a-boo books on animal which I read to her almost every night at one point. Once, while I was taking my bath, papa read to her and purposely left out the last word of each sentence and she promptly completed those sentences. I was quite amazed that she could remember all those words and placed them in the correct sentences, as there are five sentences in each book.

Verbal and comprehension
Mummy scolded Yiu Yiu at lunch (for something which I can’t remember now). Yiu Yiu retorted, “I’m angry, mummy no manners”
Mummy has stiff neck and complained to Yiu Yiu that mummy’s neck pain-pain. She came over, stroked mummy’s neck and said, “Yiu Yiu sayang mummy’s neck”.
Mummy has headache and complained to Yiu Yiu. Yiu Yiu said, “Mummy headache take medicine lah”

Her all-time favourite phrase now is “you know”. Most sentences will end up with “you know”.
Yiu Yiu wanna watch Barney, you know
Yiu Yiu wanna drink milk-milk first, you know
Etc etc…

The why’s have also started coming, though not fast and furious just yet. Her all-time favourite question is, “Why your nen-nen so big one, why my nen-nen so small one?” - PENGSAN

Weekend at Hyatt Regency Kuantan

I had to work (AGAIN!) last weekend. This time, it was a workshop in Hyatt Regency Kuantan, similar to the one in Parkroyal Penang two weeks ago but for a different group of customers. Several of our guests pulled out at the last minute, leaving us with extra rooms so each staff was given a single room instead of twin sharing. As hubby’s cousin was getting married over the weekend, he decided to make that drive back to Kuantan and came over to stay on Saturday night. The next morning, after a late and leisurely breakfast, we took Yiu Yiu the pool and the beach at Teluk Chempedak. This time, Yiu Yiu was a lot more at home in the water and didn’t need to hang on to me the whole time. She even floated on her own on her two arm floats, and was thoroughly enjoying herself.

At the hotel lobby

Can't wait to jump into the cool water

Happily frolicking in the pool

Wanted to do a Houdini on mummy

Sigh! This weekend is going to be another working weekend. Am leaving for Kota Kinabalu tomorrow and will only be back on Sunday. At least the meeting will be at a hotel which I've not been before, Shangri-La Rasa Ria Resort, and I'm also looking forward to some cheap and good seafood.

Chief Minister of Penang

I got this from a forwarded email, checked out Mr Manager’s blog, and thought it’s a really nice story to share, though many of you may have read it elsewhere. Ning Baizura and her manager, Vernon Kedit Jolly aka Mr Manager were traveling to Penang when they saw YAB Lim Guan Eng, Chief Minister of Penang traveling by himself without an entourage as would be expected of a Chief Minister. What surprised them even more was that the Chief Minister flew Economy, instead of Business, in line with his calls for cost-cutting. That’s leadership by example in every sense of the word. I salute you, YAB Chief Minister of Penang.

Photo taken from Mr. Manager's blog