During my recent travels to the Maldivian islands (read my earlier post here about where I was), I took a tour around the main city of Male. The city is extremely small but it is the most populous city in the Republic of Maldives and it is also it's capital.

We were provided with a personal guide to walk us through the city and explain to us about it's rich culture.



Male itself seemed to be a nice and quiet city, filled mainly with motorbikes and a couple of cars about. The streets were busy with children coming back from school and people just going about their daily lives.





One of the cars that I first saw in the city was this little Toyota IQ or what Aston Martin would have called a Cygnet. Was rather surprised that they had a car there in the middle of the ocean.



The citizens of Male are mainly muslims and hence we were brought about to the many mosques here on this island.









I think this was the president's house or home or home office. Can't remember exactly but yeah, these are one of those places that we were guided through.



Then there is the Sultan's Gardens which was a nice patch of garden in the middle of Male.



Last place of visit was the mosque, the largest mosque in Male located very close to the sea front. Then again, because Male is so small, everything is close to the seafront.



Center square located right next to the harbour. One thing about Maldives is that, the country is made up of thousands of islands. Because of that, you can pretty much guess that the fishery industry should be one of it's key. And you aren't wrong.



The harbour was filled with huge boats like these. They aren't the type that trawls along the sea with huge nets behind. No, they are actually huge fishing boats with 20-30 crew members on board who fish using fishing rods. That's right, FISHING RODS!



Apparently fishing with fishing rods are a better way to sustain the environment and to also prevent them from catching the young fishes hence sustaining the cycle of man catching fish. But according to my guide, they catch fishes with rods almost as effectively as catching with nets.



From the fishes above, I can really believe him. Look at the size of the TUNA! It's almost as large as the guy squatting by them. If in a weird bizarre world, I would have guessed the guy was bait for the fish instead.



Right next to the harbour was the market which was filled with fruits. So you must be thinking, where do they plant their fruits or are these imported? Well since Maldives is made up of a gazillion islands, some of these islands are used to be agriculture islands where just fruits and vegetables are grown there.



Well lots of bananas and mangoes though. There were these little chilli stuff as well sold there.



And right outside the fruit market was the fish market. Boy, you could actually smell it a mile away.



It was packed, surprisingly with people just staring at the fishes that were sold there. Heck even the guy above was carrying a fish around like his pet.



But the one thing I wasn't prepared for is that they sold all their fishes on the floors. Huge tunas and marlins were displayed on the floors which I can say doesn't look too clean but then again they cut the fishes and descale them all on the floor.





Notice the guy wearing his shoes on the same floor where the fishes are sold? :P



Still, fish there was extremely fresh and I ate raw fish and fresh steamed fish on a daily basis. It was absolutely the bomb.



The guy selling fish above looked like a bouncer, probably pissed off that I was there just taking photos and not buying any fish.



This guy decided to sell his stuff by the entrance of the market instead of being in the market. I could say that is a smart choice considering the stench coming from within the market.



After the whole guided tour, we decided to walk around the place to check out some stores about. Nothing really special, sundry shops and coffee houses littered the place. Till I chanced upon the shop below.



Yes it was a shop selling the iPad! This was the time when the iPad wasn't even launched in Malaysia. Speaking of which, most of the stuff that we saw at Male was imported from Malaysia. Furniture, computers and heck, even souveniers. If you are there, just look at the souveniers and you can see a price tag behind them in RM.



Anyhow, it was a great 4 hours spent at the capital city of Male. Lovely place and I would say the fish market was one of the highlights of the tour for me. Never seen such huge fishes up close before.

I was rather lucky to be able to go on two trips to Langkawi in 2009 and both of them were complementary. This time round, I stayed at the Sheraton and I was quite surprised by how nice it looked. Instead of flying using AirAsia, this time we decided on flying by Firefly which was a bit more convenient for me because it flys off from Subang Airport.





Because they were propeller planes and do not have jet engines, the flight takes longer as compared to Air Asia or MAS flights and the one thing that was quite unbearable for me was that our flight was the very first flight of the day and the airplane was extremely hot and stuffy inside. I was literally sweating bullets throughout the flight and it was the most uncomfortable flight.

Thank God the moment I arrived at Sheraton in Langkawi, the atmosphere was totally different. I was literally blown away by the service we received and the size of the chalet rooms we had.

The chalet's were a little different than usual, it was located a bit of a distant away from the lobby so everytime you needed to go back to the lobby, you can either walk or call a buggy to pick you up. But of course, being a little bit further away from the lobby meant that you get a little bit more privacy and you also get larger rooms.









The view outside the chalet was quite nice as well.





Definitely one of the nicer hotels to be at in Langkawi. If you get the chance, I would definitely recommend staying in Sheraton hotel.

I previously blogged about my trip to Chicago here and here. Actually I was on training for a week before spending the weekend in Chicago. Right after spending a couple of days in the windy city, I journeyed towards east together with my mate, Jamie. I learned a lot about flying in the US. First of all, when it is stated that you need to be at the airport an hour earlier before your flight, that really means you need to actually check-in at the counter an hour earlier. This doesn't include the time it takes you to line up (it took us about 45minutes, so we kinda missed out flight).

Anyway, by the time we landed in New York, we both took a cab towards Manhattan Island only to be greeted by what some people might call a New York cab experience. We didn't get conned but the experience was somewhat disheartening. The cab driver did get cut off but he didn't have to wind down his window and started cursing non-stop for 15 minutes. He didn't get a tip from me.

By the time we reached our hotel (we stayed at Sheraton Manhattan), there was a street fair going on.



From all of the movies I have seen, I always had the mental image of how New York would look in either sephia or black and white.

The fair was in full force with plenty of vendors selling trinkets and souveniers as well as plenty of food.





This was my lunch, a mixed version of a kebab with plenty of filling and vegetables. It tasted fantastic, maybe because I was a little hungry at that time hence that could have been an added bonus factor.



The corn dog was really calling out to me and they had like 1 foot sausages. Jamie could tell that I was drooling all over them!



And what is New York without the guys handing out flyers or street baskers.



Times Square was extremely packed. The queue to get theater tickets were extremely long. We wanted to catch the new play called "Shrek". The hotel wanted to sell us tickets at USD$175 but if we spent about 2 hours queuing up,  we could have bought it at a much cheaper price.

After walking about for a bit and enjoying the view of the city, the two of us felt sick and it probably was that we might have been too worned out. But with the current crisis of swine flu, we were a little paranoid and after checking into the hospital, we ended up all bandaged up as shown below.



Ok, I was lying about the bandage thing.

Find out more in my next post :)

To be honest, after being to islands like Phuket, Bali and even Singapore (no, I am not talking about people with an island mentality), I have come to realise the vast difference between Langkawi and these other tourist destinations. Seriously, the place could definitely use something to spruce it up but then, what does Langkawi really have to offer?



No, I don't think the escaped Ian is always there in Langkawi as captured above!



No, there aren't that many escaped jumping humans about. Perhaps you might catch a glimpse of some other interesting life forms there.



No, there aren't that many beggars sitting by the sidewalk waiting for their other halves while they shop for 4 hours. (ok I was just kidding about the 4 hours).



I don't think people usually come to visit the water bottle carrying man from Penang who hides in the deepest of alleys in the streets of Langkawi as well.



Like every other island, the relaxing sound of waves hitting the shores whilst the cool breeze skims through your hair is enough to melt away all of our tensions. Perhaps that is what people might head to Langkawi, to catch a little rest and relaxation. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was in Langkawi for a shoot and then for a little bit of R&R with the WeddingStory team. After a very very tiring first day, I totally overslept and skipped breakfast. That aside, I woke up definitely in time for lunch :)

After lunch, we all decided to walk along the beach and after several sessions of banana boat rides and watching Nigel and Lai Yeen defy gravity and got dragged across the ocean on a para-sail. It just took me 15 minutes standing under the bright sun to note that I was being cooked alive! Yes it was that hot so our time on the beach was cut short because we were heading out for our own photo shoot!

Yes, Grace and Alex planned that we needed to all dress up for a private shoot and did I really come unprepared. Whilst Munz brought a nice dress, I wore a polo shirt and shorts which she definitely made me change into something a little more formal. Oh well, I guess I had to suffer in the hot sun with slacks and a long sleeved shirt. After the whole fiasco with my clothes, we arrived at our destination.



We started off shooting and shooting and trying out various types of shots with various techniques. Personally, I was trying to utilize the natural lighting as much as I can and to use it to my advantage as well. Here are some of my shots from the session.





Took a couple of photos with Munz for a while whilst trying to figure out how to pose her for a couple of those shots. Not easy trying to pose your girlfriend especially when I am sweating like mad and my sweat was stinging my eyes! I must bring a towel on my next portrait shoots.



I liked this photo of both Alex and Grace because of Grace's expression.



Now who says you can't do some serious shots in padi fields?

After taking even more photos of the rest there, the sun was setting and we quickly headed back to our hotel (which was conveniently next to the beach). Since we were on the west coast of the island, we wanted to capture some sunset shots by the beach. This was when I could change back to my shirt and shorts which was much cooler!





Ok, we arrived there a little too early and it was still extremely bright. Good time to shoot a couple more portraits on the beach while waiting for light to diminish.



The sunset was totally awesome. One of the nicest I have seen around Malaysia. The other occasion was when I was in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, atending Louis Pang's workshop.



I even managed to get the sunset as well as the crescent moon as well. Was a tough shot to take because I had my 50mm attached with me at the moment.

After spending two days in Langkawi and eating overpriced food which was still good, I guess the main attraction over here was the statues on the beach. Some say that orcs erected them up to celebrate the crescent moon, or maybe elves wanted to erect landmarks to guide their ships correctly.



All I know is that, these statues have a story to tell.

Now try and guess what they are saying,