Thursday, August 31, 2017

Black bread is the new trend?

There were a some bakeries chains with French name in Busan : Paris Baguette, Tous les jours...they were everywhere and quite popular among the locals. So I figured they must be selling French baguette. One day I went inside a bakery in the biggest shopping center in Busan and my eyes were caught on these breads.

Well, these black color breads didn't look too appealing to me. 

 A black baguette with foreign filling, it must looked weird to French people.

But no, France also selling black baguette, bake with charcoal. Saw this here.

It must be the new trend.


Thursday, August 17, 2017

Busan Trip : Lost in Translation

After Perhentian, we had one week trip to Busan, leaving the kids with my mother and my sister. I heard that in some part of Korea, only Korean is being used. It was very true, sometimes we landed in restaurants that only had Korean menus, buildings that only had Korean signboards...What caught my attention was the translation, either in English or in Chinese. Sometimes, it was poorly translated, or when you read one language to another, they just don't match.

We were in Gamcheon Culture Village, and we saw this "No Way" sign. I think it wanted to indicate "No Outlet", but I'm not sure anymore. It could mean "No Entrance"?

Still in Gamcheon, I think this sign asks the visitors to put the umbrella outside. I got the meaning from the drawing, as I think the sentence in English was not complete, and the sentence in Chinese had grammatical mistake.

I don't read Korean so I could only understand this signboard by reading English or Mandarin. 
The translation in Mandarin sounded weird to me. It didn't really match what it meant in English.

I'm still confused about this mailbox. It looked like a mailbox but it seemed that it was not a real one. The Chinese sentence on the right hand side indicated "The only mailbox in the world that doesn't deliver letters". We almost dropped a postcard there, why would they put a mailbox as decoration in a tourist spot?

I had the same confusion in Guangzhou Airports. What does this mean? "The Exit of Flight Cancellations"? I have not noticed this kind of exit in other airports. They made a specific exit in case flights are cancelled? 

I wonder if all these were the results of Google Translate. It could be.

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

A little big of privilege

When we pass through the Malaysia Immigration once we touched down in Malaysia, we usually use the little privilege we have : passing as Malaysians even though I'm the only Malaysian. I just need to tell the officer that they are my family, and the officer would nod his head, no question asked. There were several counters for Malaysians and it usually went very fast. Different story for the foreigners lines, it could take a lot of time if several big flights arrived at the same time. When we got back from Busan, there were huge lines for foreigners, and I just told the officer that my husband was with me and we probably saved one hour. Thanks Malaysian officers for granting us this little privilege.

I said it is a privilege because it was different story going through immigration in French airports. I was always asked to queue in the foreigner line. Even when my daughter was 18 month old, she was crying seeing mommy queuing on the other side, nobody took pity on us. Since France is one of the most visited countries in the world, the foreigners lines could be long. Once we asked to queue as a family in the EU line but it was refused. I don't remember what happened later, another officer told my husband that I was allowed to queue with them. Anyway, this time, the privilege was extended to France because both times we went through the EU line.

Malaysia is a country that practicing price discrimination between locals and foreigners in some tourist destinations. For example, to visit the Petronas Twin Tower, a Malaysian adult would pay RM30 whereas a foreigner adult would have to pay RM85. Hubby was quite annoyed by this practice, sometime he refused to go to a place just because he had to pay higher price than Malaysians.

When I book our trip to Perhentian, I was warned that we needed to pay a Marine preservation fee, and foreigners had to pay a higher price. Tourists were paying in Kuala Besut jeti before going on the boat. When it was my turn, the officer asked if the white man beside me was my "suami" (husband in Malay), I nodded, he gave me two tickets for adult and one for kid. He just applied the local price to hubby because he was my "suami". Thanks for giving this small privilege!

Friday, August 04, 2017

Perhentian Escape : Another form of burkini

In Perhentian, we met a lot of French Muslims. They probably feel comfortable having beach vacations here as no one is going to tell them wearing burkini is a form of provocation to the society.


In perhentian, not only the Muslims are covered up. The Chinese from China too. I didn't dare to take a photo of them directly. Just checked out the photo above, the woman on the top right wore a black swimsuit that covered her whole body. Her kid in the middle wore the same type of swimsuit. In fact, my mother told me that my nieces and nephews also wear them. The only difference is they don't cover up their hair. I'm not sure if French are going to protest if Chinese tourists wear these showing in any French beaches. I grew up wearing T-Shirt to the beach, as we didn't use sunscreen. It could be the natural protection from sunburn. So covering is really not a big deal in the water, unless you want to show your body.

Perhentian Escape : The sweet burden on the back

This day, we paid for a half day trip to Pulau Rawa. The girls took turn to ride on husband's back. Aelig has been going to swimming classes, so from time to time she was comfortable enough to stay in the water by herself, with life jacket on.

 We went to snorkelling in Perhentian 4 years ago. This was Aelig riding on hubby's back.

Aelig 4 years ago.

And he had Awena on his back, the same age as Aelig 4 years back.

Three of them snorkelling around while I waited on the boat.

We brought with us some bread to feed the fishes, but she decided to eat some of them.

I stayed most of the time on the boat as I didn't feel like doing snorkelling. At one point I saw that hubby wanted to go further and deeper, so I went into water and put Awena on my back. As a non swimmer I didn't know how to well control myself in the water so I bumped into some corals and stones and hurt my foot and ankle. 

There were other people on the same boat and by chatting, I realized they were from the same hometown as me. They both had a girlfriend from China who enjoyed Perhentian very much. They were jeolous hearing that we could took one month off work to travel. It is true, annual leaves are usually one or two weeks in most of the Asian countries.