Laguna Condo Resort at Port Dickson

2 weeks before, I was trying to book a hotel at Port Dickson. After 5 to 6 hotels I called, all fully booked! Until I called this Laguna Condo Resort. There were 2 units available, every unit has 2 bedroom (with air-conditional), 2 washroom, a living hall and a kitchen. So I made a reservation with them and requested the 2 units side-by-side, but the girl said they cannot provide both units on the same floor because of "Fully Booked". Without a choice, we agree to have one unit on the fourth floor and another unit at second floor.

They will 'text' me through my Cellular Phone for me to bank-in a MYR50.00 for the reservation, I agree and waiting for '2' days! I'm started to suspect...why they need 2 days to text me the bank account number...seems like they are not serious about the customer reservation, I think to myself...

On the day (26th December 2009), 2 families were happily drive towards the Resort to have a 2 days 1 night holiday at Port Dickson.

Once we reached our destination - Laguna Condo Resort, we felt a bit disappointed of the 'Rundown' outlook! But no choices, because the hotels nearby almost fully booked on this festive season. It doesn't matter, we check-in and we drove out the resort to search for some excitement around...

The rundown outlook of Laguna Condo Resort - Port Dickson

We went to the Blue Lagoon Beach and I will blog about it in my following post...

Went back to the resort around 6pm, to have some rest and will be out for dinner. Then we noticed, the two units we got are slightly different setup...one with grilled and the other don't. And one unit short of pillows, so I called up the office to request the shortage and the girl told me : 
"Please look around what are not complete in your unit, I will prepare and bring it over. Because after 7pm, the office will be close and there will be no maintenance guy around until next morning !!"
I was totally SHOCKED! No more maintenance after 7pm?! What if anything goes wrong with the electricity, you gonna wait till morning! Oh! My goodness! This was the WORST Resort I ever stay in my life!!
Ok...we stayed!

Poor maintenance of the garden

I noticed the floor SANK at many area around the building! I wondering will this become dangerous building and threaten to human life??

The floor sank...

I realized why we CANNOT get the side-by-side unit because we are the ONLY unit available on that floor! The rest are all abandon units! Some of the doors and windows even broken! Many units also have the 'Notice' attached on the main door...It shows, this is the area where peoples already Give Up for their investment!

The Notice on the entrance

Why the town council doesn't take any action on the building? Like I said, it can become a threaten to human life? Or there are so Lose about this? Or...maybe all because of the Great Kampung (Villagers) Spirits and the Typical Malaysian Attitude!

But inside the apartment, Everything were OK! It was clean. As you can see from the photos below...

The Living Hall

The Kitchen

The room with queen bed

The Bathroom attached to the room above

Another room with 2 single bed

During night time, there were no 'Lights' on the corridor! Only the lights from our unit! It was looks like HELL to me! Never see the security guard patrol around, No Security!! No privacy!! Bunch of youngster from outside ramp their bikes around!
Oh! no! I stayed in the Hell!

The corridor without lights

So I have to get some Tiger beer to keep me company for that night! We locked the door before midnight, full of worries because of the kids around...Totally NO holiday atmosphere at all! And wish tomorrow sunlight come as soon as possible!

At Last, we made it! Haha! 
I noticed there are few abandon houses just opposite our units, it looks really like a Haunted house to me!

The abandon houses in front of our unit

Roots are everywhere on the wall

We packed our luggage at the Fastest speed and Check-out! During check-out, I found out the employees here are only Part-time workers! Oh! I never step in to this "Hell Gate" anymore!

What a experience to us!

If you Love your family or friends, please stay away from this So Called Resort at Teluk Kemang of Port Dickson!

MY TRIPS - Home

Walk in the Farm - Eden Eco Farm of Saleng, Johor

Continue from the main post.

We started our relax walk from the left of the building, there was green everywhere...we came across this Passion fruit garden.

Passion Fruit

"Passiflora edulis is a vine species of passion flower that is native to Brazil and northeastern Argentina (Corrientes and Misiones provinces).^[1] Common names include Passion Fruit, Maracujá/Maracuyá (South America), and Lilikoʻi (Hawaiian). It is cultivated commercially in frost-free areas for its fruit and is widely grown in India, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, California, Florida, Haiti, Hawaii, Australia, East Africa, Israel and South Africa. The passion fruit is round to oval, yellow or dark purple at maturity, with a soft to firm, juicy interior filled with numerous seeds. The fruit can be grown to eat or for its juice, which is often added to other fruit juices to enhance the aroma." Source from Wiki.

Follow the path, we came to the back of the main building...


There were many type of plants, but I only can recognize the corn (below)...

Don't worry about this big area to explore, you can have a rest anytime at the area below...

I attracted by the small animals beside the rest area...where the tortoise pond, cattle ranch, duck pond and many more...

The Bull from the Cattle Ranch

The duck pond

The turkeys

After the duck pond, we came to an area looks like a function hall and it also serve as a basketball court...


I like the Dragon Fruits area, as you can see the photos below...




There are also many type of flower around here like the photos below...but I'm not sure with their name...


Then the path lead us to the 'Worm World'. I'm not really dig the worm from the soil, but the 'small creature' below got my attention!
I think they are from the Lizard family...


The rabbits was Cute! They are in the Rabbit Farm just next to it...


We took almost an hour for the tour, it was a pleasant walk in this scenic farm. During the night fall, all the path will be lighted with this unique kerosene lantern...oh! I love it very much! Never expect to see this type of lamp after so long...

Kerosene lantern at Eden Eco Farm

Mr Steven said, it has nice ambience around the farm during night time! I agree...

Please visit it if you happen to be around this area, it's nice! And I will find a suitable time to group with few friends to have a night at this Eden Eco Farm.


For contact and location, please refer here.

Related post :-
* A Paradise within the City - Eden Eco Farm of Saleng, Johor

MY TRIPS - Home

A Paradise within the City - Eden Eco Farm of Saleng, Johor

Eden Eco Farm is located at Saleng (across the railway). It's about 1.2KM from the Main road, you gonna drive into some kind of small village then you will notice a small signage pointing the direction to Eden Eco Farm. (N1 38.410 E103 38.455)

One simple way to identify the road is...It's not a 'Tar' road, but just un-paved road. The slogan was 'Earth road, back to nature'.

I never expect this peace of Nature Beauty exist between the busy city, so I called it - 'Paradise'.

I was actually follow the group of children having their activities at the farm, what a coincidence! I discovered this nature.

Un paved road that lead to Eden Eco Farm

The owner of the farm - Mr Steven Seow was a very friendly guy who welcome us once we step into the area. We had a chat with him (and his wife) and understand that he took over the farm just about more than a year...

Entrance of Eden Eco Farm

"We provide services for Eco educational tourism, farm stay, retreat, conference facilities and camp site. Also supply organic fresh vegetables, fruits and eco-friendly products." said Mr Steven Seow.

Beautiful Land Rover from the farm

I love the environment Very Much! It full of greenery, fresh air and relax!

You can even have a day trip by enjoy the walk in the farm, escape from the busy and hectic city life! Understand from Steven, the farm welcome any group activities and they have rooms that be able to cater for 30-50 peoples in the main building. The charges are very much depend on the number of peoples, so please call them to confirm (roughly about MYR100.00 per person for 2 days 1 night).

The main building of the farm

Simple meals & drinks will be provided from the management. The charges included dinner and breakfast...but all of this can be pre-arrange and flexible.

The first floor of the building, where all the rooms located.

Some of the common activities like Karaoke Singing and Mahjong will NOT provided. Because all this will destroy the Peaceful Farm during the night. I'm TOTALLY agree with this!
Honestly, I think to myself...if you wanna sing, please goto KTV Center and if you wanna play Mahjong, stay at home.

Big hall at the ground floor

Beside the building, there's also a home to an Owl. According to the Business Development Manager - Mr Eric Tan, the Owl will back to the home every night...

The night ambience is great within the farm. The insect will perform the concert every night with some guest from the Mini Zoo...it's nice to have couples friends gathering here, enjoy the farm stay with the rhythm...as for me, of course will be company with 'Tiger'. :)

The home to the Owl

The Cute little Parrot will greet you when you step in to the building

After the chat with Mr Steven, I had a walk into the 20 Acres farm...It was so peaceful and relax, that's why I called it the Paradise of Nature Lover.

Because of the too many photos, I need to break it to the next post...but it was cloudy on that day, too bad the photos didn't turn up to the expectation...

Related post :-
* Walk in the Farm - Eden Eco Farm of Saleng, Johor

EDEN ECO FARM Sdn Bhd
Lot 4119, Saleng,
81000 Kulai,
Johor.
Tel : +6012-7776084, +6013-7038017
Email : info@edenecofarm.com
Website : www.edenecofarm.com

Location map of Eden Eco Farm


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MY TRIPS - Home

Second attack on Hania synagogue!

 

Pictures courtesy of the Etz Hayyim blog.

Nikos Stavroulakis writes that there has been a second arson attack at the historic Etz Hayyim  synagogue in Hania, Crete -- just ten days after vandals broke in and set the interior alight on Jan. 5. The second attack  took place just hours after Friday night services and destroyed the archives of the synagogue, gutted the offices and damaged the sanctuary.  See more pictures at the synagogue web site/blog HERE.

On the night of Friday, January 15, after more than a week of work on the sanctuary – newly scraped, primed and re-painted; the wood-work oiled with lavender and the marble floor polished – we met for Erev Shabbat prayers and Kiddush. Later we locked the synagogue and returned to our homes feeling that we had set our steps forward. Saturday morning at 3:30 AM however the Synagogue’s director was wakened by the alarm that had been set off in the Synagogue and rushed there accompanied by two helpers to find the entire main office ablaze. They began putting out the fire with the garden hose as the firemen had not yet succeeded in getting their hoses connected. When the mains were finally connected the firemen set to work – by 4:45 the fire was only smoldering and all that remained of the upper and lower office was completely gutted. Also about a third of the wooden ceiling of the Synagogue itself was burnt, the benches covered in soot and broken wood, the floor a mess – but the EHAL was not touched! Everything in the main office – e.g. two computers, complete Talmud, Midraschim, 2 sets of Rashi lexicons (Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew) plus many reference books and the entire archive of the Synagogue have all been destroyed.

By noon the Siphrei Torah along with all of the silver ornaments (rimonim, tassim, yads etc.) and a precious early 17th century illuminated Qur’an were removed to a secure location. It was a sad moment to see them being taken away from the Kal as it was a joyous moment when they had been installed in 1999. But we are determined that they will come back!

My latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column -- on the arson attack at the Hania synagogue

In my latest Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, I discuss the implications of last week's arson attack on the synagogue in Hania, Crete.

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN
Attack on Crete synagogue carries special meaning

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · January 13, 2010

ROME (JTA) -- The vandals who torched the historic Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania, an ancient port on the Greek island of Crete, left no doubt about their motives.

After breaking into the building on the night of Jan. 5 and setting its interior alight, they threw a bar of soap against its outer wall.

A bar of soap? That's because, explains the synagogue's director, Nikos Stavroulakis, "I'll make you into a bar of soap" is a common anti-Semitic taunt in Greece. Since the Holocaust, there has been a persistent belief that the Nazis made soap from Jewish corpses.

Even though scholars have disproved the idea, bars of soap have been buried reverently in some European Jewish cemeteries under solemn memorials.

"In this place lie the remains of Jewish martyrs exterminated by German fascists and turned into soap," reads the inscription on an obelisk in Piatra Neamt, Romania.

The power of this belief was examined in "The Soap Myth," a play by Jeff Cohen that ran last summer in New York. Based on a true story, the play focused on the efforts of an elderly Holocaust survivor "on a one-man mission to get the 'soap myth' reclassified as fact," Marissa Brostoff wrote in Tablet magazine.

But at the heart of the story was something much more.

What was at stake, Brostoff wrote, was "the way we choose to see the past, a struggle between a dispassionate approach relying on facts and figures and another, much more subjective one that holds survivors' testimonies to be unarguably true and ultimately sacred."

Anti-Semitic violence is anything but dispassionate.

The bar of soap hurled against the desecrated synagogue in Hania was a diabolically mixed metaphor: Soap usually symbolizes purity and godliness, but in this twisted context it spelled hatred and death.

The attack on the Hania synagogue was not just an assault on a building. It was an assault on the ideals that had transformed the structure from a wrecked relic of Holocaust destruction to a new symbol of community and compassion.

This transformation was accomplished largely through the efforts of Stavroulakis, a remarkable man who has devoted much of the past two decades to restoring a Jewish presence to a city made "Judenrein" by the Nazis.

I met Stavroulakis when I visited Hania in 1996. An artist, author and scholar who had co-founded and directed the Jewish Museum in Athens, Stavroulakis had returned to live in his family's rambling house in Hania after many years away.

The synagogue, which dates back to the 15th century, was in ruin. But over the next three years Stavroulakis made it his mission to raise funds and, with the help of the World Monuments Fund and other donors, oversee the building's rebirth. His aim was to make it a living spiritual presence, not simply a restored reminder of the past.

The synagogue now functions as a museum, and it hosts exhibitions and cultural events.

It’s also an active house of worship. A small Havurah community whose members include Christians and some Muslims -- as well as Jews of all persuasions -- regularly assembles there to celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

Stavroulakis himself leads daily prayers each morning, whether a minyan is present or not.

Prayers were held as usual at 9 a.m. Jan. 6, the morning after the arson attack. The fire had gutted a stairway, wreaked havoc on the synagogue library, and covered walls and precious furnishings with a thick layer of soot.

"Fortunately," Stavroulakis said, "the fabric of the synagogue was and is intact."

He was referring to the physical structure of the building, but I think he also meant that the symbolic identity of the synagogue also had survived -- and would be maintained.

"We must be angry over what has happened to our synagogue," he told the small group of worshipers gathered for prayers amid the soot. "If we were not, it would be an indication that we were either indifferent or morally numb."

But, Stavroulakis asked, just where should the anger be directed? Local indifference and the ignorance that promotes racism had to be addressed.

"We have tried at Etz Hayyim to be a small presence in the midst of what is at times almost aggressive ignorance," he wrote on the synagogue blog. "We have done this to such a degree that our doors are open from early in the morning until late in the day so that the synagogue assumes its role as a place of prayer, recollection and reconciliation."

There is, Stavroulakis wrote, little if any sign of overt security.

"This character of the synagogue must not change and the doors must remain open," he wrote. If not, that means "we have given in to the ignorance that has perpetrated this desecration."

A week after the attack, the Etz Hayyim blog posted pictures showing that thanks in large part to volunteers, the walls of the sanctuary already had been painted and other clean-up work was well under way.

"The impact of this [attack] will be wider than simply an act of terrorism against Jews," Stavroulakis told me. "Already it is being seen in a much wider social context that has to do with civic responsibility and care."

 Read story at JTA web site