Saturday 19 June 2010

A Day with Nature; Agarwood Plantation and Bird Park

My parents' cell group had a cell outing yesterday. It was basically a family trip consisting of about 25 of us (adults and children) to get back in touch with Mother Nature and spend time together. I took a ton load of pictures and I finally finished filtering through all of them, picking the ones I would like to show you and uploaded them here. *wipes seat off brow*

We went to two places. The first one was an Agarwood plantation somewhere in Gopeng. If you are not familiar with Agarwood, try Google-ing it and read about this evergreen, highly useful and valuable tree. It's used for perfume and incense sticks among the many things. Apparently the latest discovery of the nutrition value of its leaves has made Agarwood plants prices soar.

Agarwood leaves


The plantation belongs a to friend of one of the cell members and we were taken for a tour by the boss himself. Judging by the sign at the entry, this was a tour not just anyone can go on:-
Since it was only safe for four wheel drives to drive on the rough terrain of the plantation, we all condensed ourselves from five 7-seaters into 3 four wheel drives. Since it was a squeeze, my brother, Uncle Hock Hin and I squeezes into the vehicle's back. Let me show you and illustration of how we sat:-
The yellow is Uncle Hock Hin, blue my bro and pink,me.

It was a bumpy ride and we had to brace ourselves in our places. We went up several high points in the plantation and was shown trees in various growth stages. Let the pictures do the talking:-

One of the steepest dirt roads up the plantation hills
Dad pointing at some durian trees amongst the agarwood trees

One of the very tall durian trees
where if you look closer has many weaver birds' nests hanging from it's branches:-

Tags on the trees to indicate years I assume:

Mum showing how happy she was at the peak:

So was I to get out of the truck:-

Meet Emily!!:-

One of the oldest agarwood tree in the plantation:-
It's worth RM500,000++!!!!

The boss burnt a little of the trunk to let us smell it's fragance:-

There's a huge bee's nest in it:-

Finally around 11a.m. we left the plantation:

The sun was already high in the sky and the sky was a clear blue. Super hot!!!
Shelter under one of the big trees:-

Next, we went to a Bird Park in Batu Gajah. It is actually an old tin mining land but now some parts have been turned into fish farms, duck farms, prawn farms and the like. There are many lakes there for fishing and it's a good place for bird-watching. It is also scenic and good for pictures. Let me show you the pictures from there:-

From the entrance
(if you click on the picture to see the full size
you'll see the white specks on the ground are actually birds)


The bird-watching tower:-
surrounded by a vast lake..

The lookout point next to the lake:-

Some of them brought binoculars and as I was looking through them and spying on the birds, I really wished I had powerful zoom lenses to take clear pictures of the birds. Haha!! I was quite envying a few of the DSLRs around me which were busy snapping snapping. Anyway, I did the best I could with my Canon Compact. Click on them to see the full size and see if you can spot birds in the pictures:-

Some random pictures after I was tired of bird watching:-

After the bird watching session, we got back into the cars and went to Tanjung Tualang for a seafood dinner. But I will have to update that on my next post since this has been a super long post. Keep an eye open for my next post (click here to read) alright. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!!

10 squeaked:

TOLANIC said...

I wish I can have my own big land for agriculture!!!

Hilda Milda™ said...

What a lovely day to have some bonding w/ mother nature. Nice photos you have there btw (:

Lindy said...

Awesome pictures you got there! :D

JoYce said...

@TOLANIC
same here!!Earn big $$$$$!!!

@Hilda
yea it was fun. thanks. :D

@Lindy
thanks!! ^^

Dori Lukey said...

wow and i was complaining that there's not many places to visit in ipoh... those places look fun!

Dropped by from Lukey's Rantings

FiSh said...

wow so many pichas to be editted huh? awesome one!

JoYce said...

Hi Lukey. I guess we must explore more around our home. :D

JoYce said...

@FiSh
Thanks. :D

SuFang (Careen) said...

nice family outing^^

JoYce said...

hi SuFang (Careen) :)

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