Oh Madrid!

MADRID. At last..

Read my departure post here.

After the painstakingly long journey to Madrid, yours truly finally touched down at the airport.

Waiting for my shuttlebus to come

No time to unpack, yet. Gonna get going!

Took my bus no.115

The sceneries I will pass by everyday to IFEMA

My transport ticket

So how I got familiarised with the metro starts with bumping into a stranger who taught me how to buy the ticket with all the words all in Spanish, then taught me how to take the metro and stopped me from getting into the wrong line. Feeling so lost for the first time and gradually getting a hold of it.

The metro is an underground train. So when you come out from the metro station underground, you'll always be taken surprise by the new world you see...

THE SQUARE OF PUERTA DEL SOL

This is the square where people will come for countdown eating 12 grapes interestingly.

The landmark of Madrid, El Oso y el Madrono, literally the bear and the strawberry tree

Checked!

And come here to step on this. Does that means I will come back again to Madrid? *hmmmm*

Monuments

And the crowd

When you can have a full body picture by yourself, why not?

Love the prism design of the station

The buildings are too cute!

Football crazeee!

On my hunt for food

The buildings that I never get tired of.

Next stop:

MUSEO DEL JAMON

Bumped into a Jamon shop. Basically it's pork ham. Listed it as one of the food that I must try here and...

....if you are on a budget trip, a promo will always surprise you. 1 euro is ain't cheap but I don't know if you can get anything lower than which can fill your tummy.

FYI: 1 euro approx.= RM5

1 euro for 1 phone call
1 euro for weighing your luggage
(cases differ in everyone)

But for a Jamon sandwich, I suppose it's reasonable?

But I tell you this French bread is freaking as hard as a stone 

The jamon hohoho

Talk about traumatic bites..

Went into their McD to see what they have to offer...

Hola McD

Happy meal. Emoticonss!

And you can order using this huge touchpad :)

Out and about...

Getting some of my inspirations from the buildings, people, life, culture...

... and stories we exchanged for my future writing.

CHOCOLATERIA SAN GINES 

That church!

Basically all the alleys here look about the same. And to look for a shop that you already have in your mind with the scant directions you got from the locals and a little from your research, you should still be able to get out from the maze. And here's my haven...

The ultimate....

super uber delicious...

CHURROS! And you'd have to queue up for it!

Chocolateria San Gines Churros is the most famous place to have your churros here. If you have got better places to recommend, ohh well please pm me I would fly there again just to eat it again hah. *okay don't burst my bubble* 

6 churros + damn thick hot chocolate = 4 euros

approx. RM20

RM20 for a cup of heaven with crunchy unicorn horns is worth it.

No?

(Anyways, I got 7 churros. I think everyone gets 7? Ahhh try your luckkkk) 

Hot and crunchyyy churros dipped into the rich chocolate I can't forget it forever. This is true love.

Apparently it's so famous that so many celebrities and renowned people have paid a visit here for their churros

Feeling happy getting fat

Dreamy place

MERCADO DE DAN MIGUEL

Spot the food market

A little gothic in design but it's lovely. So elegant

Tried my paella and tapas here. Photos up later..

Another place checked.

PLAZA MAYOR

Another interesting square here

And I particularly like this façade

The crowd

Some street performers

CALLE DE ALCALA

You can take a metro or a bus to the places around Alcala. But I think I didn't realised I was out of Sol after the walking around there. All the buildings were too beautiful to be missed :)

Engraved words

Any random gate also damn nice

PLAZA DE CIBELES

The Cibeles Plaza

Keep your bag in front, always

PUERTA DE ALCALA

Yeah, this is the landmark we see from FDI :)

FUENTE DE CEBELES

Sun-kissed 

And spotted more cool buildings...

Or gates....

PRADO MUSEUM

If you enjoy history and art, here's the place for you.

The church near it immediately caught my attention. Looked at it with awe..

I like this

Redeemed my evening free ticket

Going in!

You are not allowed to bring your bag inside so they will keep it in a room for you

SAN JERONIMO EL REAL

The colour-stained glass

On the way back...

Banco de Espana

That's the end of part one. 

it's still impossible for me to write every single event that has happened at this blog. There are too many details that I fail to provide here as I can't afford to write all here, yet. 

But still.. Thanks for reading! I will try to include more when I can afford more time to share my stories with you :)

Thanks for reading and..

Stay tuned!

xx

Madly in Love with Madrid (Departure)

Hola! Am back here again to clean up the spider cobs and dusty blog of mine. Glad to be able to share some of my experiences with you readers again with my latest trip to Spain. I would definitely prefer to narrate the stories actually; there are so many things can only be expressed in spoken words! Nevertheless, I will try in words here and let the pictures to do the talking as well too! *winks*

If you find the writing loaded with too much of information, please just skip it coz I'm writing it for my future record use as well :P

Travel tips:
Top 3 essentials to check before you leave your home
1. Passport + boarding pass
2. Money
3. Handphone

So one day, woke up at midnight to take the midnight shuttle to Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Jakarta. And...

Caught a glimpse of the beautiful dawn breaking into the morning sky.

Slept throughout the journey but only woke up to this. Well, what is sleep when you have something so magical and beautiful to feast your eyes on? Approximately after 3-4 hours, yours truly arrived at the airport to wait for the luggage check-in.

Immortalising every moment.

Boarding passes! 
Airlines might be freezing cold! (or sibeh hot) Well just keep a jacket in handy. Travel tips: Travel light. Bring only the absolute necessities!

I think I'm breaking fast on this. 

Upon my arrival to Changi Airport, the marathon begins. For all the kiasu people who scared their flight will fly off without them, then you may run. (Just kidding, however it's not forbidden to run at the airport 😂)

But on a serious note, before your flight do check how much of time you have in the interval. Ensure that the terminal you are about to depart is the same as the terminal of your arrival. If not, check the ways to change your terminals. For my case, I had to change terminals using the skybus. The terminals might be far from each other. Even if you are within the same terminal at certain airports, the distance to your boarding gate might be far as well! So do your research carefully.

In the skybus

Hello Singapore! ;)

So beautiful! 

In Changi Airport

Sfen and Grace; Singapore - Abu Dhabi

Welcome to my VIP seat :D

Actually,

Just kidding.

This is my seat.

My long awaited food yumss! I don't know what dessert is that but it sure tastes so nicee! En route to Abu Dhabi.

Refreshments. 

Sue; Abu Dhabi - Madrid. Finally

Glorious enough for me. 

Till we reach Madrid.

32 Days of Community Service

As promised, here's the post to share about my experiences in the community service that I have followed a month ago. I might not be able to tell you the full story of it, but I'm just going to highlight some of the things we have done there. Hopefully you will be able to get the essence from my experiences and learn something too :)

Sooo, here we go!

1. The House
 

"If you want to find yourself, get out of your comfort zone first."

Majalengka was where we have been following the community service at. We lived in a house which was owned by an old man and his wife. I was grateful that the house was overall clean.

So every morning, this is what we have been waking up to. Bare ceiling with all the crisscrossing canes and spider cobs formed at the corner of the roof. Water would leak occasionally when it rains. But having a roof over your head is really something one should appreciate enough already.

The water supply in the house was also powered by the electricity. And that is to say, when you have your electricity supply tripped in the house, you will be trapped in the washroom with your halfway shampoo-lathered hair in a complete darkness and... an immediate "water-boycott" until you light up the electricity again. So it's no surprise if you came out from the bathroom after one hour after getting the electricity tripped for 7 times during your shower. Hah.

Going through all these, it did made the experience a little less fun tbh. But I think I was wrong. Instead of that, I think it actually made my stay at this village more meaningful to realise how blessed are all of us everyday. One should be grateful to have a roof over their head and have basic supplies to sustain our human basic physiological needs.

Most parts of the house are actually DIY-ed by the house owner and I'm quite fancied this uber cute bell nailed to the door by a spring and so whenever anyone goes out or comes back, we would be alerted.

The house owner's wife washing up pots and pans behind the house on the first day we arrived. We also help and wash our own plates and utensils too. Was quite intrigued by this corner of the house because don't you think it's just a "painting-perfect" place?

Drew some caricatures for the 3 sweeties who always come to visit us at our place.

2. Food Connoisseur

"Can trying out different food can be a whole new knowledge?"
 

 A variety of Indonesian cuisine

LEFT; Soto (typical indonesian food)

RIGHT; French fries made by our team head and they taste so close to the ones in Mcd like, seriously!

The grand list of other food that we have cooked here (hah!):

Fried tempe (goreng/tumis=oseng/mendoan), tofu, bakwan, soto, kentang balado, nasi lengko, nasi goreng, bihun (beehoon) goreng, telor dadar, telor balado, nasi lemak/uduk, omlet (dengan mie instan), terong balado (eggplant), kacang teri balado, ikan goreng, ikan asin, sayur asem, ayam goreng kecap, sop sayur, tumis sawi, kerupuk, sardine, tumis kangkung, rebon dan kacang goreng, oncom, mie ayam, kentang goreng, lodeh, rujak...

And to name some of the food that I have tried here:

Basreng,  pisang goreng, martabak, roti bakar, jus alpukat, onde-onde, es buah, seblak...

And my all-time favourite tempe! Many people do not appreciate its taste but yeah, it's actually a really healthy food! (Minus off the oil..)

Rp3000 to satisfy my craving for fresh milk.

3. Jogging

"Run for your life, literally."

So the 6 of us people decided to go jogging one evening from our village. I personally enjoyed the lane that we took for a jog. The sceneries were picturesque and the place was tranquil. Not many vehicles passes by the road and the lane was wide enough too. We also jogged to the paddy field too.

Feasted our eyes on this golden field basked in the lovely sunlight on the sides of the lane we jogged. It was windy and the sun was setting too so we stopped by to take some of the photos here :)

4. Paddy Harvesting

"Blessed are the ones who have rice in their plates."

When it comes to muddy stuffs, never had I ever been enthusiastic about the idea. But this time was an exception.

 Reaping > Threshing > Drying

Paddy harvesting is never a clean job but also a dark job. Ermm I mean, you get at least fifty shades darker after exposing yourself under the scorching sun in the afternoon (just exaggeration, chill :P). And getting in contact with the hull of the rice grains may also cause itchiness to your skin.  But yeah, no harm of experiencing it for once in your life right?

So, everything was done manually. As you can see the picture from the left, you will have to walk through the thick muddy soil in order to get to the paddies to do the reaping with a sickle. Next after we have cut the paddies from the bottom of straw (above the mud), we collect them together aside and do what it's called the threshing. So this is where you will hold a bunch of the paddies and just hit it onto this wooden grain separator. The paddy grains will fall off from its crop and the grains are later collected into the gunny sacks and voila! Until the grains are being dried in the sun, the paddy grains would then later be dehusked and packed in sacks for sale.

So much of effort just to obtain the rice we consume for everyday.

 At their so called "Brick Factory".

After the grains are being deshusked, the husk are then collected to be reused as burning materials. At here, people collect and use them to "cook" the bricks at the factory.

5. Harvesting Onions

So on the other day we went onions plucking at the field! Not so keen with the idea of getting sun-tan under the weather but yeah, if not now then when again? After harvesting, the head of the village even gave us some of the onions for us to bring back. Just look at the loads of onions we have harvested! :P

We found this while plucking the onions. And if you have been following my instagram, I guess you already know what is this :) 

6. To Schools

"The name of the best gift you can give your children is called Education."

We made some of the dental models to demonstrate the proper way to brush our teeth for the children at the kindergarten. The kids were surprisingly cooperative, and needless to mention super adorable because they didn't cry and create troubles :P

Also, we went to the elementary school to teach basic subjects. We were welcomed with opened arms, enthusiastically by the kids especially but..

Sometimes.. a little too "excited" for them. When we were teaching the kids at the class here, we caught some mischievous ones from the other classes sneaking and peeking by the window and above the door.

The children we taught in our class.

Another group photo of us with the bigger gang again! Look at their smiles!

7. Wanderlust

"If not now, when then?"

Yeah, that's how we travelled. We mastered the art of cramming.

 A tranquil lake

Serendipity  

Boat rides, wanna join? :)

Trees, plantations and meadows up the hill in the breezy weather.

Photo taken by my teammate. So in love with this!

And this too :)

Of caves and waterfalls.

8. Independence Day

"A little passion will work its magic in your goal"

In conjunction of the independence day,  many traditional games were held for both the children and villagers.

Panjat Pinang aka Pole Climbing. The contestants will have to climb up the greased pole in order to get to the top to get the prizes up there. This game inspired me so much.. it's like getting to the top to your goal but you might bumped into some nasty obstacles along the journey first before being able to attain to your goal :) Just do not give up!

At night, we had this event where it was organised by the head of the village. Unexpectedly all of us were called up the stage to do what they call "berjogeg" in front of the villagers of our place. Hahahahah can I like say nooo but... of course cannot. Although it was embarassing but it was another new crazyy experience again.

That's basically the highlight of the days we spent at the village. So much for today and..

Thanks for reading!

Till then,

xx