Kek Lok Tong Ipoh ( Cave of great happiness )

This is my second trip to this temple. The first was during a team building outing with my R&D colleagues from Wireless Semiconductor Division for a 1 day outing trip to Kek Lok Tong and Gua Tempurung.

The temple is set in a huge limestone cave surrounded with natural stalactites and rock formations. At the entrance of the cave, there is a huge statue of "kuan yim" beside the waterfall that greets the visitors.

Pic 1 : Entrance to Kek Lok Tong

Pic 2 : Statue of Kuan Yim and waterfall located on the right of the cave

Pic 3 : Scenery looking up at the cave

Leading to the cave, it is beatifully decorated with very well upkept bonzai's plants.

Pic 4 : Rows of Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 5 : Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 6 : Bonzai leading to the temple ( Great Wall design ?)

Pic 7 : Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 8: Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 9: Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 10: Bonzai leading to the temple

Pic 11: Bonzai leading to the temple

Below is the main section of the temple. You would be able to see various statues all around the cave as you explore.

Pic 12: Temple main sections

As you make your way through the cave, it opens up and emerges to a garden surrounded by hills.

I highly recomend to pay this temple a visit if you happen to be around Ipoh town.

Tokyo : Getting there and F&E itinerary

Since small , I have always been amaze with Japan and one of my wishlist is to visit the whole of Japan and experience it's culture. I was fortunate enough to visit Japan ( Tokyo ) when I was 7 years old but I hardly could remember anything from that family trip. It was not until 2006 where I manage to visit Japan again ( experiencing winter, spring and summer ) for work but what I could remember from those trips were ...........

Waking up ->WALK->train ->WALK->business meetings ->WALK-> train ->WALK-> business meeting ->WALK->train ->WALK->HOTEL->sleep ( Lunch and Dinner is slotted between the WALK )

Pic1: My First Shinkansen (Bullet Train) experience

Pic 2: Another Shinkansen Series

IF we are lucky to have a weekend, it will be only time for sight seeing and on one of those trips, we tried to do Tokyo in a day and another day to Nikko. But I was glad to be able to meet up with my counterpart face to face, given a preview trip of Japan and also trips coinciding with best friends business trip.

Pic 3: Odaiba Park


Pic 4: Tokyo Tower


Pic 5: Dinner in a Costume play shop in Shibuya


Pic 6: Dinner at Sumitomo Building at 59th Floor


Pic 7 : View from Park Hyatt Hotel.


Pic 8: Shibuya


Pic 9: Takinogawa


Pic 10: Odaiba

Pic 11: Raw Horse Meat experience. ( I did not take it mainly because I don't eat myself )

Pic 12: Nikko shrine


Pic 13: Hard Rock Yokohama

It was not until 2009 Feb, that I manage to plan a vacation to Tokyo ( 7 days/6nights Tokyo + Hakone ) and fulfilled part of my wishlist ( Note: wish list is whole of Japan eg Osaka, Kyoto,Nara, Hokkaido etc ) and I will share with you how I planned out my trip. Let me first share with you a bit about Japan.

Japan has a land area of ~375km2 but have a estimated population of 128M people in 2009. It is an island located on the pacific ocean on the east of China and Korea. Though physically small, it has manage to carve itself into the world as the 2nd largest economy in the world in terms of GDP.

Just in Tokyo itself, there is ~35M people living in the city and it has been recorded as the worlds most populous metropolitan and the worlds most largest metropolitant economy. In 2009, Tokyo is recorded as the world's 5th most expensive city in the world.

However travelling to Japan for Malaysians might not be as expensive as you think if you are on a budget trip. A lot of planning to be done upfront to know which season do you want to visit Japan & location where you plan to go to as you will find out later that transportation around Japan contributes to one of the highest portion of the trip budget.

I have decided to travel to Japan in Feb2009 ( Winter and also low season ) partly because I love cold weather and also it falls in the YJW ( Yokoso Japan Week ). Normally, you will get discounts ranging from hotel stays to transportation , entrace fee and also food. However if your trip objective is to see Sakura ( cherry blossom ) then, you will need to plan your trip around late March Early April when it blooms. Normally the Sakura's will bloom from West Japan towards North Japan in Spring.

Pic 14: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park

Pic 15: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park

Pic 16: Sakura Full Bloom at Ueno Park

Early this year (2009), my intention was to have my vacation in Macau/Hong Kong but I was amaze on the package offered from Hong Kong to Japan by Cathy Pacific (CX), Japan Airlines (JAL) and All Nippon Airways (ANA). (Note: Back then, the economy impact was not fully felt and fuel was all time high but then I do recomend to survey packages from HK since Air Asia flight kind of cost ~ RM300 return if you catch it during promotion when you book way in advance). I highly recomend the package because it includes 2 nights accomodation which could be quite pricy if you plan to stay in a 3-4 star hotel in Japan. Secondly, most of the flight from HK to Tokyo arrive at Haneda airport which is located much closer compared to Narita.

Pic 17: Odaiba Tokyo Feb 2009

To ease your planning, attached are some of the links I came across during my research.

Packages from Airline Companies includes

ANA Sky Holiday

CX Holidays

Travel Agencies offering Packages from HK to Japan.

Farrington American Express

Priceline

If you decide to travel directly from Malaysia to Tokyo, you could also go with the airlines below
Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Cathy Pacific, Japan Airlines which most of them will arrive at Narita

My Itinerary : ( Feb 13th to Feb 19th )

Day 1 : Tokyo Tower, Odaiba

Day 2 : Tokyo Imperial Palace, Sensoji Temple Asakusa, Shibuya

Day 3: Tsukiji Fish Market, Ginza, Harajuku, Shinjuku

Day 4: Hakone ( Stay overnight)

Day 5: Gotemba, Gotemba Premium Outlet ,Disneyland Hotel

Day 6 : Disneyland or Disneyworld

Day 7 : Shinjuku Metropolitant Government Building, Shopping in Shinjuku, Roponggi

Did I make it to all? ....... I had to skip of the places for this trip since we decided that we do not want a rush trip like what we have experience for our Korea tour. Stay tune for more posting on the Feb 2009 Japan Vacation.

Tokyo: Day 1 Odaiba

Feb 13th 2009
Most flight from Malaysia/HK will arrive in Tokyo early in the morning. I really mean early (eg before 7am). The flight I took arrive in Haneda airport (Tokyo) on schedule at 6.30am. We took off from HK at 2am and given that the flight was only 3 hours, we barely could sleep on the flight. The food serve on ANA airways was quite delicious rice with fish, cold soba.

With all the planning done upfront, we know we had to take the JR line from Haneda to Shimbashi followed by a short walk to Daimon and take the "dark pink" metro line from Daimon to Higashi Shinjuku. It will aways be handy to carry both the Tokyo JR line and subway map with you whereever you go as you you will most probably be taking it quite frequently.

Pic 1: Tokyo JR East map for download.

Pic 2: Tokyo Subway Map

For this trip, I have converted some of my hotel points for free stay so I had to move around during my few days in Tokyo. The first 2 days, we were putting up at Sunrounte Higashi Shinjuku. For your planning purpose you can check out the best ways to get from one location to the next through this Train Route Finder website.

Hotel check in time in Japan is normally at 3pm. Most hotel will not let you check in earlier but you could place your luggage at the concierge, go for a walk and check in later in the afternoon. Alternatively, some hotel will let you check in earlier for a nominal fee if they have rooms available. Somehow, we were too tired so we paid ~1500yen (USD15) to check in at 9am.

Once we were fully charged up, we headed to Odaiba, a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay which is located across the rainbow bridge from Central tokyo. Located there is the Fuji Television Studio, Aqua City Shopping Center, Decks Tokyo Beach Shopping mall to name a few and it has very nice night view ( very romantic especially if you capture both the rainbow bridge and statue of liberty at the background)

To get to Shibuya from Higashi Shinjuku, we have decided to take the Fukutoshin metro line towards Shidome and change to the Yurikamone line from Shidome to Daiba.

Close by Odaiba there is Ooedo-Onsen-Monogatari (hot spring hotbath) and Tokyo Venus fort (venice theme shopping mall ). To fully see the Odaiba, do allocated at least 4 -6 hours to walk around.

We decided to have our dinner at the Aqua Shopping Center and found a okoyomiyaki shop on located on the 4th floor. The price for the okoyomiyaki was around 1200yen per person

After dinner, we decided to drop by at Shibuya before returning to the hotel.

Direction from Odaiba to Shibuya

Take the Yurikamone from Daiba to Shimbaishi and change to the JR Yamanote line from Shimbaishi to Shibuya.

Shibuya is one of the major shopping and nighlight area. The intersection in front of Shibuya 109 building location is normally selected for movie filming. Here you will find a lot of pubs, pachiko machine and lots of dining shops.

After walking around for 20minutes, we decided to head back to the hotel to rest as we have been out the whole day. For our journey back, we took the JR Yamanote line from Shibuya to Shinjuku and change to Fukutoshin line from from Shinjuku to Higashi Shinjuku. Sunroute Higashi Shinjuku is located just across the metro exit.