World Cup 2010 @South Africa

South Africa divided into 9 provinces namely Gauteng, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Free State, Kwazulu-Natal, Northwest, Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The major cities of South Africa are Pretoria, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Johannesburg, Polokwane and Port Elizabert which are also the World Cup stadium city.

Let’s spice up the article with World Cup city and World Heritage sites of South Africa where I will focus closely on Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg. I never been to South Africa but because I am watching the World Cup game during this period and I am going a extra mile to understand better of South Africa and looking forward to visit these cities in the future.

Cape Town is one of the city that host the World Cup 2010 where the stadium is called Green Point. Cape Town hosts the group stages and at least 1 match of Round 16, Quarter Final and Semi Final. Cape Town has 2 World Heritage Sites namely Robben Island and Cape Floral Region. Robben Island just off the Cape Town coast where Nelson Mandela was imprison for many years. It is indeed an island rich with history. Cape Province made up of eight protected areas, covering 553,000 ha, the Cape Floral Region is one of the richest areas for plants in the world. It represents less than 0.5% of the area of Africa but is home to nearly 20% of the continent’s flora. If you like flower and this is the place to visit in the world.

Bloemfontein is another city which hosts the World Cup during the group stages and also the famous encounter of bitter rivals Germany and England in the round of 16. One of the World Heritage site, Vredefort dome are located at Free State where it remnants of the largest and oldest meteorite impact crater in the world.

Johannesburg is the final city that I am focusing which is also one of the World Cup host city. The stadium soccer city in Johannesburg which is put to host the opening ceremony, the opening and final matches to the 2010 World Cup. And Johannesburg is located at Gauteng province together with Pretoria. It also host one of the World Heritage site, cradle of humankind where large collection of caves rich in hominid and advanced ape fossils.

Huanglong Trekking

Here is my final trekking about chengdu trekking specific on Huanglong mountain or yellow dragon mountain.

On the third day of our chengdu trip after Jiuzhaigou, then we proceed to huanglong in the morning from Jiuzhai Valley and take about 3.5 hours to reach the national park. It suppose to take 2.5 hours but because of the road and whether condition, 1 hour more are added into the schedule. Firstly the road are still developing with many trucks and construction area. The worst are the mist that make visibility very low which make the journey even longer. This road to huanglong are passing through the Jiuzhai Valley airport.


Anyway we start the trekking at 11am and expected to finish between 3 to 5 hours of trekking at huanglong. We take a 1 way cable car up to the huanglong middle intersection and then trek all the way down to enjoy the national park sceneries. Cable car take about 10 to 15 minutes to reach peak station and we start to trek to the middle-junction about 45 minutes walking in the rain.



From the middle-junction to multi color pond take about 30 minutes. We have a photo session and a little stop at the multi color pond for about 30 minutes as well before proceeding to descend at 1pm.



The descend from huanglong pass through some interesting pond, golden sand structure and waterfall rock formation. Too bad the rain make the visibility bad and scenery not amazing but it is definitely a beautiful forest with natural formations.



After walking down about 20 minutes then you will reach a junction where you decide which descend way to go down and it is indeed the same either left or right to witness the beautiful pond in between. This 2 trek route will meet at a point where the wave rock located.

The descend journey took 2 hours and the whole trekking took 4 hours to complete.

Diving @ Tioman Reef Divers

My last dive was last year June 2009 and I need to log my dive for this year. I have choose Tioman again for my periodically dives. This time I selected Tioman Reef Divers and stay at Babura Resort. Akemi from Tioman Reef Divers help me to organise a night at babura and I manage to dive twice with Tioman Reef Divers. Akemi is very helpful and friendly too.





I been to Tioman twice and most of the time I dive at chebeh and this time I have a chance to dive nearby Tioman Island like Renggis (1st dive) and Soyak (2nd dive). Both diving are really a skill refresh for myself even I dive for 50 times as diving are really an on-going sports recreation. Diving would be diffcult if not dive for more than a year as advised, cause some of thing like environment and weight might change that cause buoyancy to be out of control.


Hope to dive more at Tioman in the future.