Autumn decorations

Because this week's theme was autumn!

These were the decorations at Queensbay Mall. The leaves have fallen off rather quickly, huh? :P

This war is getting serious

There have always been a lot of birds hanging around my porch area. I have hung CDs on my laundry rack to keep them away, but they still go to the other areas of the porch.

I had been putting up with them, but some time ago, two birds came into my kitchen. Even though that isn't directly related to having birds on the porch, I was afraid that the ones from the porch would one day come in as well (they have already come as far as the front door grille), and this triggered me to take action!

I have seen these at Daiso before, and now I bought them! One is a cat that you hang 5cm from the ground, so that birds (and other cats) would see it and not approach. The other one is plastic spikes, mean to stop cats and birds from walking around in your garden.

I bought these on Tuesday, and upon reaching home, I put the spikes on the roof of my car (where birds like to land), and hung the cat out for a while.

Then I took the cat in (yep it's my pet cat now), because the instructions said not to use it in strong winds, and I had read online that we need to move it around so that the birds don't get desensitized to it.

The next day I only saw one bird on my porch wall (shared with next door, so I didn't put my spikes there) and chased it away. After that I didn't see any more. Now I have removed the spikes from my car, and up till now I haven't seen any more birds. I hope they have spread the news that this porch is no longer comfortable!

But I do wonder, which deterrent was more successful?

Kledang Saiong Forest Eco Park

I have been wanting to visit this park for a long time, since it is just nearby our place in Meru. However, we always had something or other to do in the evening, and did not have the time to go and explore it.

During our last trip to Ipoh in June, the park was closed, probably due to MCO. This trip, the park was open, albeit with limited hours. So I finally managed to visit it!

The entrance fee is RM2 for Malaysians, and free for senior citizens. My ticket had the date stamped on it, so I expect I could have left the park and returned later, using the same ticket.

Note: We visited the park in the morning at 8:30am when it opened, but I didn't take this photo until we were on our way out, which explains why it is so sunny in this photo!

a playground, closed at the moment

a description of the plant called "lemba", which I have never heard of before!

the aforementioned plant

They have a nepenthes park, which was closed as well.
(I would never have known that it was the pitcher plant without the numerous fake pitchers around the park!)

this area was also cordoned off

and then, the river!

The river is probably the main attraction of the park. The day before our visit, we had driven to the park in the afternoon to check whether it was open. There were so many cars there! (it was a Sunday) Most likely they had all come to picnic at the river.

Looks like a bathroom for the workers at the entrance office?

There is a 1.8km-long forest trail. What's more, it is a digital forest trail, with an app that allows you to identify trees along the trail!

the rules
(not allowed to hike in bad weather, only allowed to start the hike before 1pm, need to report back to the office upon returning, etc)

what the trail looks like (not for the faint-hearted!)
There are yellow strings on the trees to mark the path.

Zooming in, you can see the sign marked 1750m in the bottom-right corner.
Did you notice the first sign that said 1800m, right at the foot of the signboard indicating the forest trail? I guess this was 50 metres in!

Fake downtown

Last week's photo theme was downtown.

What? You expect me to go downtown when there's a red zone there? (not that I would have made the trip especially for a photo, even if there were no red zone :P )

So I took a photo of something that we would probably see downtown: Traffic.

The idea was also to get the shops on both sides of the road, but it was a little difficult from my angle. And I didn't have much choice of where to stop at a traffic light!

I do like how the sun is shining from behind the leaves, though.

More food from Ipoh

Quite by accident, we discovered good Japanese food in Ipoh!

We were in Starbucks Tasek Jaya, and while searching for nearby food, we found Gozen House (Tasek KS Food Court) on Google Maps.

unagi don, RM17.90 (it cost RM15 when we were there...a special offer?)

tori karaage don, RM8.50

Both dishes were extremely yummy. The unagi was good, and the egg that came with the dish meant that we had enough to go with the white rice. The karaage was very well-seasoned and well-fried too! Only the miso soup that came with the dishes was not so good. However, it did come with quite a generous quantity of tofu pieces and seaweed!

We also went to Tong Sui Kai. We meant to try some of the food there, but it was raining heavily on the day we went, so we changed our mind and went to Ipoh Parade instead (where there is an indoor car-park!) We had Boat Noodles at Ipoh Parade (my first time trying it), though I did not take any photos because it didn't look that special.

After our dinner in Ipoh Parade, the rain was less heavy, so we went back to Tong Sui Kai and had dessert there. This is one of the most famous desserts: fruit ice with ice cream. (the photos are of the same bowl, from different sides)

At the back, you can see another bowl, of hot leng chi kang. it tasted good too, and was probably the better choice for a rainy day, but it was nowhere near as spectacular as the fruit ice. :P

Taste-wise, the fruit ice is pretty good... since the fruits were at room temperature, the whole dish was not too icy. But it was hard to eat...we had to be careful not to knock the fruits off! But then it would look less spectacular in a bigger bowl. :P

Agro Park Kamunting

This will be another photo post, since there is not much to say about this park. We expected the park to be bigger, but probably the rest of the park is still in construction.

As our (bad) luck would have it, there was an event at the park on the day we were there, so the place was really crowded. Those people are performing on stage!

Australian iced chocolate

Today we had a workshop, and I ordered an Australian iced chocolate (sponsored by the workshop). Seeing it on the menu, I was wondering what was Australian about it, and was surprised when it came with ice-cream! The barista came out from behind the counter to the ice-cream section, and scooped what looked like three scoops of ice-cream into the cup, then went back behind the counter to continue making the drink.

The chocolate was also quite thick, and with the vanilla ice-cream it tasted great. I actually would have ordered milkshake if they had it, so this was a great substitute for milkshake.

Upon getting home, I did a little research, and guess what, Australian iced drinks do really come with ice cream. This is an article that talks about Australian iced coffee. The simplest version would be to pour cold coffee/chocolate onto ice-cream. Yum!

Photos of the Taiping Lake Gardens

As mentioned in an earlier post, we went to Taiping. This post will be mainly photos... because what is there to say about the Taman Tasik Taiping?

a huge tree, held up with steel structures so that it will not fall further

I took a few panoramic shots, but they didn't turn out very well. My photos seemed to all be rather greenish; I am not sure whether it was because the AI camera showed a "leaf" icon... maybe it detected greenery and decided to enhance the green colours! This one is the best of the panoramic photos, because there is at least a blue sky! The other shots look rather moldy (all green :P ).