Kabuntei

As mentioned in the previous entry.. when i was in japan, during sightseeing around shenba lake, came across this old castle..named kabuntei.. or something as i remembered it. It was built during shogun era. Consists of many rooms for the shogun or dignitaries and the maids or geisha? Have different rooms for different functions. The rooms have sliding doors with paper screen. This was good to notice any would be intruder as the shadow will be reflected on the screen. The way the rooms were arranged in such a way that an intruder will find as if entering a maze... the intruder will easily lost and giving time for the shoguns to take actions. There is also a 2nd floor rooms.. to get upstairs, have to scale up an almost 90 degree stairs. There is also a shaft with pulley mechanism to bring food or other things up and down. There is a big room where the shogun chose the maid he would spend the night with. The garden was very nice like typical japanese garden.

Shenba Lake

The swanlike boat is for Shenba Lake sightseeing. I did'nt have the chance to try it since it is already late, I had to walk back to my hotel before dark. I had the oppurtunity to enjoy the scenery around the lake during 2 weeks training in Japan. The lake is very big as I could see the buildings and trees were so far away across. However, I managed to went around it and able to visit a few parks around it. I also visited an old castle... will talk about it in other entry. The hotel i stayed was in mito. There are several web pages about mito you could surf... i will put the address once i found it. Mito is a nice small town. Have a few shopping malls where i bought my ration, tuna , rice, bread & biscuit. No McD no KFC, have a fastfood restaurant much like McD. All the cashiers and salesperson did not speak english. Even if you try to converse in english they will reply in Japanese. You just have to guess and use signage - have to be creative... to survive. But there are a few shops selling clothing from US and the salesperson was black, i am not sure from where... but they could speak Japanese quite well.

Pantai Balok, Kuantan, Malaysia

Pantai balok is in Kuantan on the way to Terengganu just a few kilometers after Swiss Garden Hotel. Went there during school holiday and we didn't book earlier and guess what... the Swiss Garden was full. We managed to rent a motel called Cwaci, located a few kilometers after Swiss. Quite nice since we have direct access to the beach. The beach scenery was very tranquill and we could go far out to the sea beach during small tide. But watch out you might get occupied exploring the beach and get trap in high tide.

Introduction

Hi ! Welcome to BALALAH page. Hope you will enjoy all the entries. I will fill it with my thought, encounter and most of all when I go Balalah. Balalah may means roaming... Thus when I go balalah and found something interesting I would put it here to share with the world..The word is from etnic Malay especially from Johor, Selangor & Perak. Enjoy... my ramblings..