Our Local Train Adventure!

Talking about flower gardens, not all flower farm trips turn out good. This post is one such case. Here goes!


Khirai Railway Station, West Bengal, India

How It Started…

“Honey, we have to visit our banks in India. We have to reactivate our accounts. Can’t bloody transfer or touch our money!”

(They’re dormant because the banks need us to update the KYC documents, and it ain’t our fault. That’s because when we visited Kolkata a year before i.e. in Mar 2022 to do our banking stuff (yes, that trip’s ONLY for the banking stuff), which was our first such visit after the long pandemic lockdown, the bank workers decided to hold a 2-day nation-wide strike. Why they decided to time it to the exact day that we visited, beats me. Maybe, they have a bone to grind with us, for ignoring them for the last errr… 3 years. (Hey, it’s the pandemic, OK?) We didn’t wanna hang out in Kolkata for an extra 3 days, staying in a hotel, with nothing to do. (We’ve been to Kolkata countless times, and have seen just about everything there is to see). So, we left and went home to Assam. Bye HSBC, bye SCB. See you when we see you!)

“OK darling. Are there any interesting places we could stopover on our way home? Like this place (shows a photo of a hill station in Karnataka).”

“We could. Let’s see. Ooh, that Karnataka hotel is fully booked. What about Cochin, Kerala? It has more or less the same stuff, and has both banks that we need to visit, and you’ve never been there. Then, we could fly to Silchar via Kolkata or Guwahati.”

“How much are the flight tickets? … … Whoa! That’s not cheap. Besides, Kerala is hot and humid. Aren’t there any places with nice, cool hills like Kullu Manali?”

“Ummm, let me see. That’s even more expensive, and we can’t do our banking stuff. Kerala has some nice waterfalls! And hills. And we could stay in the backwaters in a houseboat. Watch some Kathakali, huh? What say you?”

“Ummm…” (looks at some pictures, but not convinced, primarily because of the increased costs). “Hey, there’re some flower farms near Kolkata. Do you think they’re in season?”

Google shows only photos and info from the winter season. There’s nothing much about how it is in late March.

The Trip…

“OK, we’re here (Kolkata). It’s Sunday. Banks only open tomorrow. What do we do today?”

“Darling, shall we go to the flower farm???”

“OK honey. But you do the bargaining for the car, OK?”

And so, we got an OK deal with the first car that came along.

“Madam, good car, good AC.”


Good car, good AC leaving Kolkata. Namaskar Madam Mamta Bannerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal

Good car, good AC, started heating up even before we got out of the city-proper.

“Hey, where’s the AC?”

“No problem, madam.” (No problem for him, but big, sweaty problem for us, because there was no more AC! What more about ‘good’ AC?!)

After some time, the driver stops. Opens his bonnet and puts some water into who-knows-where. And then, he drove on.

“Are you sure you can make it? If not, just stop and we’ll get another car.”

“No problem, madam.” (My foot). And he keeps calling someone on the phone (yeah, while driving, no police around) to discuss about how bad the car is, I think…

He stopped a couple of times and repeated his water-filling rituals.

Finally, … “Madam, small problem, madam. Car need repair!”

FUCK! I knew this was coming. Luckily, we were in some sort of a town and we saw a car workshop, so our good car with good AC, pulled into the workshop. We were also lucky, because not too far away, we noticed something that looked like a restaurant. Lo and behold, it was indeed a restaurant, a dusty one which only had us as customers. (I think it was way past their lunch time by then). Halfway thru our lunch, the driver came and declared that his good car with good AC will not be able to go further, but could take us back to Kolkata. We said he could go fly kites. And paid him a fair share (which, of course, he disagreed), but he brought us out to the middle of nowhere, I mean somewhere, but nowhere that we wanted to be in, and it was only halfway to the flower farm location. Plus, earlier, the missus had been having a chat with the restaurant proprietor, asking for ways to get another car, and learnt that there was a railway station in town and that the easiest way to get to the flower farm, or back to Kolkata was by train!

The Train Trip to Khirai…

And so, after our late lunch, we took an auto-rickshaw to the Bagnan Railway Station, and bought tickets to Khirai Station, where the flower farms are. The tickets are a fraction of the cost of a car. It’s like riding on a public bus. Heck, that train rides to Khirai, and back to Kolkata eventually, for the 3 of us (Justin was in Singapore, lucky him), was cheaper than the public bus fares in Dubai City! I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.


Bagnan Railway Station – See those people in fancy dresses? That’s what everyone else in the station think we’re in


The train’s here! One small tip – the only thing to watch out for here, are the Hijras, the eunuchs of Indian trains. (For the Malaysians who don’t know what these are, they’re the pondan’s and akua’s). They’ll hop on the trains, harass people for some tips and leave. You could oblige, or just pretend to be deep in dreamland, how ever much they goad you… Good luck!


Hey, it started to rain… the countryside near Khirai, I don’t see no flowers?!?


Khirai Station – We’ve arrived, but let’s go get our return tickets first. We dunno what time the train to Kolkata’s coming. Huh? In 20 minutes’ time? (It’s either this, or the next train in 2 hours’ time. Shucks, better not risk it. It’s getting late, don’t wanna wait here in the dark).


Is this Khirai? It’s not even a village… A few shanty huts with a dirt track and acres and acres of farms


Finally, we see the flowers. Hi Khirai! Bye Khirai! We gotta go, no time!


Our train’s here! In our 20 to 30 minutes in Khirai, we’ve managed to cross the pedestrian bridges umm… 4 times? 6 times? Getting to the platform, then going back to look for toilets, getting to the platform again, then went looking for my sunglasses which I dropped, near the toilet (we found them, ahem), and rushing back to the platform, just in time for the train to come. Whew, what an adventure!

A Flower Farmer’s Delight

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day people.

Whoever created Valentine’s must be a flower farmer. It’s that time of the year for them to make a fortune. “It’s Valentine’s or never!” I don’t know how flower farmers survive. Sure, I see people buying flowers, but 1 bouquet for the home ain’t gonna make a difference, does it? Maybe, it’s the hotels. Or the restaurants? Oh yeah, there’re birthdays, funerals, weddings, people falling sick… Anyway, that’s not my business. I’m just here to show you our trip to a flower farm. Anu loves flowers. So, when she spots a place with flowers on TikTok or Facebook, …here we come, flower garden!


This is the Cameron Highlands Flora Park, or in Malay, Taman Bunga (meaning plain ol’ Flower Garden), in Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia


The missus spotted this place on TikTok (or was it Facebook?) while we were in Malaysia, and off we went on a road trip to Cameron Highlands from Ipoh


Fancy a ride on a farm pickup truck? Due to the narrow and steep access into the farm, visitors had to park at a car park near the main road and hop onto pickups arranged by the park. That pickup in the photo above, was our transport, believe it or not? …Is this even legal??

Here’re the rest of the photos. Enjoy!












Flora Park, Cameron Highlands, Malaysia


Don’t you just love hate the plastic sheets they use for farm shelters??? (Top of the photo above). I call it the blight of Cameron Highlands. They’re all over the place! You can see green hills interspersed with rows and rows of ugly plastic sheeted shelters. Yecch!


How's the view, boys? Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands, Jul 2022


Time to go. Bye-bye Cameron Highlands!


Some of the apartment buildings (or is it a hotel?) in Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands

Remembering My Hometown

Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia – Jul 2022

It’s Chinese New Year! The biggest festival of my childhood years. How I remember those times, when the whole of my father’s side of the family would converge in our house in Ipoh for CNY (because my granny and grandpa were staying with us, hehe).

There’d be all the silly games we kids played (I have lots of cousins, growing up. My father has 5 siblings, and then there’s mom’s side, and my parents’ cousins’ families), firecrackers, card games, etc. We could eat till we gag. We could break ‘curfew’ and stay up late. Gamble a little, and drink a little (when we were older). And we could get loads of ANGPOWs! $$$ Ka-ching! We’d be festive for at least 2 weeks (CNY is 15 days, OK?) and our biggest day isn’t actually the first day of New Year but the 8th and 9th day, being Hokkiens. Those were the days.

Sadly, the Ipoh house is an empty house now, and not many of the family still reside in Ipoh. Many of the old folks have left us and gone to the world beyond. My siblings and cousins have all gone their separate ways to make a living elsewhere and start families. They’re all over the world now. But Ipoh still brings back loads of memories.

Here’re some photos of Ipoh from our last visit in Aug 2022. Happy New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Koung Hey Fat Choi! Kiong Hi Huat Cai! Etc, etc, etc.

We decided to climb (walk up, to be more precise) a hill near Ipoh, from my childhood years – Kledang Hill, in Menglembu. The last I remembered climbing this hill was with my mom when I was a kid. That may be 40 years ago, because my mom passed away in 1985. To climb the hill, we’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning and get there before sun breaks. We’d walk as much as we could, then head down to Menglembu town to get an early breakfast at 7+am! if I remember correctly. We’d do this to avoid the relentless midday sun. Malaysia has a hot and humid climate after all, being a tropical rainforest.


Canning Garden, our suburb – That hill in the background, is Kledang Hill


We’re there! A view of Ipoh City from Kledang Hill. We got there before sun break! It’s full of clouds. It may rain at any time


It’s raining. We forgot to bring umbrellas. Anu’s smart. She brought a rain coat. “There! That’s the summit. Let’s go on”


The road at Bukit Kledang


We’re drenched. I think we’d stop here. We don’t know how much more there is to go, to the summit. Can’t check maps because there’s no coverage and it’s bloody raining… (Later on, I checked and found out that we were only about 1.4km short of the summit. We could’ve got there in 30 mins!)


Let’s head down. Whew, the rain’s stopped. Anu at a mini waterfall






Someone’s made a garden here! Fancy that


Monkeys out to play, at the car park


Back in Canning Garden. This is our neighbour, Auntie Nancy’s house. She loves leaves, as you can see


More of Auntie Nancy’s garden. We have the same swing in our house, next door. I think it comes with the house as all of our neighbours have the same swing. And that big urn which Jayden is looking at, we used to have one in the Ipoh house’s bathroom that I took a bath from when I was a kid. We took baths with a mug. It’s nice!

One sad news from our neighbourhood recently – our other next-door neighbour, Mr Leong, passed away last month. He had been sick for some time. The Leongs were teachers in my school, the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. Mr Leong was once the head-master. Mrs Leong lives alone now in the house. But one of their children lives in Ipoh and visits regularly. God bless them.

Anyway, Happy New Year! May your Dragon Year be filled with success, joy, good health and prosperity!

The Road to Hell

You’ve seen the Road to Paradise (my last post). Here’s the Road to Hell, for contrast.


The road across the Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan

This post is about a trip we took recently (Dec 2023), across the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan in Central Asia, from Turkmenistan’s northern border with Uzbekistan to the Darvaza Gas Crater (aka the Gates of Hell) in the centre of Turkmenistan. The Darvaza Gas Crater (also spelt Derweze) is a continuously burning gas crater. I’ll let the photos speak.

We started our journey at Dashoguz city, near the border of Uzbekistan.


Dashoguz (also spelt Daşoguz) capital of a region with its namesake, i.e. Dashoguz Region of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a strange country. People call it the North Korea of Central Asia, (I heard this from a Turkmen himself, in Dubai, and he’s not wrong). No one can enter Turkmenistan without a visa, and you can only get that with a Letter of Invitation issued by the Turkmen government*. The easiest (and I suspect, the only) way to get that is thru an authorised Turkmen travel agency (like Owadan Tourism, which we used). Media in the country is strictly controlled. And no, there is no social media!!! No WhatsApp, no WeChat, no Telegram, no Facebook, nothing, (except IMO, …shhhh), at the time of our visit. And if you think you wanna bypass that with a VPN, hard luck! Turkmenistan is well-known for shutting down VPN’s the moment they find out about them, like swatting flies in a clean room. Hell, Turkmenistan has one of the worst internets in the world! (Just Google ‘worst internet in the world’ and you’ll see Turkmenistan hovering at the top, or at the bottom depending on how they’re sorted). Of the 2 days that we were there, we had no internet or Wi-Fi connection whatsoever. (But our Uzbek SIM card works at some areas near the Uzbek border, hehe). The country’s leaders have their own eccentricities, especially its first president after independence, like renaming the names of the months and days to names associated with the leader’s family or things of interest, and requiring all and sundry to read and memorize his book, to pass school and university exams. Stuff like that, OK? Interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, this is not a post about the quirkiness of Turkmenistan. Go Google Saparmurat Niyazov if you wanna find out more.

* Some people claimed that you can get a transit visa, if you are entering and exiting Turkmenistan from one country to another country. No, I didn’t try that. Enter from Uzbekistan and exit to where? Afghanistan? Iran?

Anyway, after crossing the Uzbek border at Shavat into Turkmenistan, and spending an hour and more in Turkmenistan Immigration with our travel agency’s representative, we got our visa! Yippee! A visa costs a whopping 110 USD for adults, and USD 85 (or was it 90) for kids. (And they will accept ONLY US Dollars). (What? The costs include a mandatory test for COVID-19, OK?) Yeah, COVID tests are still around in DECEMBER 2023! Maybe, that’s why Turkmenistan is the only country in the world (excluding some small Pacific island nations) that officially had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 during the pandemic! Unbelievable, isn’t it? Well, that’s Turkmenistan for you!

Anyway, first stop, lunch, because after that, there’d be a 5-hour journey across the Karakum Desert to the Darvaza Gas Crater aka The Gates of Hell, and we wanna get there before sunset.


Lunch at Baytown Restaurant, Dashoguz with the very helpful Ms Aygul from Owadan Tourism

One tip for money in Turkmenistan. Don’t bother trying to get Manats (the local currency) from outside (except maybe from the Uzbek border crossing at Shavat). They’re not available as they aren’t convertible. And the official rate is a sham. Officially, it’s 1 USD to 3.50 Manats, but the going rate inside Turkmenistan is actually 1 USD to 15 Manats. Change it in the country. Ask your travel agent if you really need some.


Off we go. A wave off from the President of Turkmenistan, His Excellency Mr Serdar Berdimuhamedow. Good day sir! You have a nice and ‘interesting’ country


Leaving Dashoguz and civilization. Clear road ahead… (there’re not many cars on the road even though this is the main road that connects Dashoguz to Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat. Is there a catch?)


A stop before we head into the Karakum Desert. Toilet here, anyone? Or bush toilet further onwards! (Bush toilet ain’t such a bad idea after looking at the conditions of the toilets, ahem)


Fancy a pishme?


Welcome to the Karakum Desert. Karakum means ‘black sand’. This desert is a cold desert (and believe me, it was freezing when we were there), that takes up 70% of Turkmenistan’s land area! The road, as you can see, is full of cracks and potholes, to add some excitement and body massage to your journey. (Maybe that’s why there’s not much traffic…)


Baa baa black goats, have you any wool? I wonder where the shepherds are. I’ve not seen a single human (except for drivers and a few policemen) or settlement (except 2 tea shops) in the whole 3-hour journey across the Karakum!


A woolly one-humped camel in the desert (and I thought only 2-humped Bactrian camels had wool)


Getting off the main road to get to the Gates of Hell


Finally, the Darvaza Gas Crater, nicknamed the Door to Hell or the Gates of Hell! It is a gas crater that has been continuously burning since 1971, when some Soviet engineers decided to set fire to the crater to prevent the possible emission of poisonous gases from the crater. It has been burning ever since…


The freezing Karakum Desert from the top of a hillock near the gas crater


Cool crater, looks just nice for burning rubbish, from the top of this hill. If only it could heat up this hill, brrrrrrr… (I’ll leave more photos of this interesting hole for another post)

That’s all for now.