If you happen to visit Pangkor Island at Lumut, you will be missing another awesome nature preserve if you do not pay a short visit at Manjung’s Mangrove Swamp Park or locally known as Taman Paya Bakau, Manjung. The mangrove swamp is  located a couple of minutes drive from Lumut town or more precisely located at *Desa Manjung Raya, Sri Manjung.

You may be asking, what is so special with this mangrove swamp?

I am no geoscientist or a geologist but I do know that mangroves are not easily found anywhere except around the coastal wetlands of the tropical and subtropical regions. Mangroves are known to survive in both salt and fresh water. They play a major role as a vital provider of the habitat for animals and plants. Mangroves too help a great deal to protect the mainland from damages of the hurricanes and tidal waves besides working to avoid shoreline erosion.

With that said and  I am sure I have bore you peeps down just a little bit ( I hope not ) with a tiny history of a mangrove swamp, so let’s just check out the pictures from this beautiful, mangrove swamp of Manjung.

The mangrove type is known as "Bakau kurap"

The nicely built pathway surrounding the mangrove area

This is a mangrove tree with its roots sticking out

More views of the mangrove swamp, Manjung

Another view of the mangrove swamp towards the end of the pathway

A new edition of the park which is the hanging bridge

Hanging bridge from the top view

Hope you enjoy the pictures and do pay this mangrove swamp park a visit if you happen to come down to either Lumut or Pangkor Island or Sitiawan. =)

* To find the exact location of this park in Google map, simply set the direction to Taman Paya Bakau, Manjung.

As I am writing this so-called quiz, I am straining my eyes just a little bit because I am so exhausted. The internet connection has been a real pain in the butt lately and TM you suck big time! Boo! It’s a love-hate relationship when it comes to dealing with them. Enough about my lament and let’s get to the quiz shall we.

If you think you want to try traveling for the very first time to just about anywhere, you will most probably need a travel partner. Unless you are a true gutsy person and cannot stand traveling with another person or in a group, you can skip this quiz altogether. Let’s cut to the chase and get on with my all time top 8 – “Are you the perfect travel partner quiz?”.

1. When you are booking for a hotel, do you only look out for a

A : 3-5 star but preferably 5 star hotels.

B: anything with a clean bed and bathroom for shower will just do.

2. When you pack you luggage, do you pack them in a

A : the largest, huge-ass suitcase that you  can buy in the store to carry all your different type of day wear, beach way, dinner way, shopping wear, casual wear, club wear, night wear so you’ll look like a real fashionable tourist during your travel.

B : pack as light as possible in a back pack so that you don’t have to check in your bag and with the thought in mind to rotate the pants and tops a couple of times during your travel.

3. The whole point you bought your plane tickets for your travel is because

A : you want to shop, shop, shop, and shop some more and look like the perfect tourist so that you can get ripped off by the locals.

B : you just want to discover the particular country’s beautiful flora and fauna,culture, language, food and tradition to discover about people other than yourself with the only souvenir to bring home is the new experience gathered through out the travel.

4. When you are looking out for food during your travel, you most likely will visit

A : either the Chinese/Indian/Indonesian- Malay restaurant in that country of your travel because you cannot eat without having a taste of your Malaysian food.

B : eat like the local and be adventurous with your taste buds just for the sake of experiencing a totally new cuisine from what you are used to back at home.

5. When you and your travel partner(s) ended up getting  lost in a foreign country, you will most likely be

A : yelling at everyone, be totally irritated because no one can read the map properly and resorting to fidget more and complain because you are too tired and have started to think of the worse to come because hey, you are lost in a country you have no idea about.

B : pull over to the side of the road and take 5 since everyone is tired, get your bearings correct again by reading the map over and over again, and keep going back on the road and use whatever gut feelings that all of you have to get back on the right track. The whole idea is to be calm and keep a positive thought that you will be on the right track pretty soon.

6. Since most travel involves a lot of walking, sometimes running too to catch a bus or train, you are

A : the least fit person ever. The only fast walk or run you have ever done is walking fast to chase the store in the malls.

B : always the type of person who walks fast and simply loves walking what more running just for the heck of it.

7. During your travel, something in the culture of the country you are traveling you find specifically odd and stand against your principle. So, you ended up:

A : bad mouthing the locals out loud in English without knowing that some of the locals do understand what you are saying.

B : just look, mouth zips shut and only speak about what ever that had happened once you and your travel partner are together with yourself.

8. During your travel, your travel partner just found out about a really must-visit place in that country which is not in your initial travel itinerary and the fee you have to pay for it costs a bomb but is boasted to be worth all your money. You choose to:

A: skip it right away because you would rather spend the money on something you can buy and bring back home.

B: ditch your initial itinerary for the day and go head on with the must-visit place ever in that country because it is a total waste to travel all the way without doing this one must-do thing in this country.

Okay, now you are done questioning yourself, which answer did you get the most? If you answer mostly A , frankly speaking, I won’t even want to travel with you because let’s face it, me and you have a total different meaning and mindset towards what travel is all about. Instead, if you answer mostly B, say, Yay! Let’s travel together shall we?

* I was suppose to write 10 questions for this quiz but I was running out of idea for the 9th question. Hey, if you have other questions to add on to this quiz, why don’t you share them in the comment. Probably if we have more question, we can help to filter ‘unlikely’ people to be your travel partner. You do not want to have a disastrous travel just because somebody else in the group has to ruin it. Hehe.

Hey peeps,

Okay I admit that previously I was bragging about putting on more thoughts for a quality content in  my posts; guess what, all those things I’ve said are up for trash. Haha. Well at least just for today though. I’m currently facing one of those connection hiccups and I’m racing against time before this internet connection goes way to slow which means I can’t load up my WP page.

Anyways, I’ve been meaning to write a post about a little mangrove park over at my place but I’m going to let pictures do all the writing and with this kind of internet connection, I can kiss that thought goodbye for tonight. Hence, I’m just putting up a trashy post for now just to keep up with my at least three posts a week regime. Haha.

In case you are reading my posts from Facebook, thanks for reading and guys, drop a comment or two right at the comment button. I know some of you tend to leave a comment right under the link at my Facebook which is okay and great. But, think about it, if you post your comments over at this site, other people get to see your piece of thought or comment too. Sharing is caring, no? =p

Okay peeps. Gotta stop here before this laptop starts acting up with more of its annoying antiques. Til better posts to come!

If you are on a look out for a good read to generate your new travel ideas, here is a list of sites that I frequently visit or have subscribed in my reader:

1. Matador Network – boasted as the “World’s Largest Independent Travel Magazine”. There are so many things to offer in this site from travel tips, to living a life as a travel journalist, a travel blogger, and reading endless amount of travel journeys and discoveries especially if you can’t literally travel to a particular place. This is one travel magazine that every traveler has to read and by far is among one of my favorites.

2. Briefcase to Backpack – a great website for those looking for a career break or a gap year where you will get brilliant travel ideas and list of things you can achieve and accomplish within your gap year.

3. Travel Channel.com – what easier way to get more ideas from none other than the Travel Channel. If you can’t quite catch the channel on the tv, have a quick go at their site and you won’t be left disappointed for missing that favorite Travel Channel show of yours on tv.

For local travel  or more like Malaysian outdoor adventure travel,  I have subscribed to these favorite bloggers of mine:

1. Jamie Soon – I bumped into her website after googling for Sg. Kampar white water rafting event and sure enough her blog comes on the first page of the Google search. Besides topping the rank in the search engine, I’m supposing Jamie is an avid traveler and outdoor adventurer girl. You got to check out where she had been to and I must say, I want to go there too!

2. Teoh Yew Aun – this guy is an all out , outdoor adventure junkie. His writing was recently published in the local NST if I’m not mistaken. I’m also sensing he dreams to become the Malaysian version of Bear Grylls which I think is quite possible with his kind of ‘enthusiasm‘. It’s really interesting that he takes the time to video and document his jungle discoveries. That takes a whole lot of effort man and the videos are cool too.

3. My dad’s Ride a bike travel blog! He’s on a mission for a Round The World trip (RTW) by 2012. If you are into bikes,go check his blog. I do hope he gets to write more though and let’s hope he can document his biking journey well. FYI, my dad christened his favorite RTW bike as Camel which is a Kawasaki KLR 650. We still think Camel is a funny name to call a bike. =p

4. Zue’s Cerita Travel blog. Zue is my old time friend from Penang and a true Penangnite she is. She’ll be going for a Euro trip next month and I can’t wait to check out on her itineraries because Euro trip is not a bad idea for this year travel ain’t it? =p

Yep. There goes my list of where I read to get my travel ideas. So I want to know, where do you read to get that crazy, wild travel ideas of yours?

Hi peeps!

If you have noticed, most of my recent posts (which you can check out on my sidebar on the right or go straight to my Archives page that I’ve created just today!) are listed under the Outdoor Adventures, Travel and Sports tag. I can’t help but writing about those three categories because guess what, my life is currently whirling around planning for my next travel or outdoor escapades and ‘dreaming’ about my to-dos travel list for this 2010. I suppose you guys are doing the same thing too yourself!

Also, I’m working to create and publish only quality contents for YaszAmzah.com and currently my weekly target is to have at least three publish posts per week. I know top bloggers have a post published for everyday of the week but for the sake of maintaining that said ‘quality content’, I’m sticking for just three personally written, original content as for now for this blog. You know, I do have a couple of other blogs to maintain at the same time too. However,my primary focus will be YaszAmzah.com because I’m thinking, I just need to establish that much needed self branding first. =)

With that said, I just hope you guys will stick around and check out my blog’s update from time to time now. Currently, I do have a couple of travel or outdoor adventures topics that are pending for writing and do stick around to check it out.

If you have not subscribed to receive YaszAmzah.com latest updates, you can do so by clicking on this link or by clicking the subscribe to my rss feed right at the last line of this post.

Alright then, catch you guys soon!