Colmar.

I'm blessed to have friends who tell me about cool things they found out. One of them was about a trip to Colmar Tropicale organized by INTI's Sociology and Philosophy Club in which a friend told me he stumbled upon last month. Being a forever victim of deceit by google images, I was entirely hooked up by the prettiness of that place and the can-do attitude that was conveniently absent at the time of attempting sports brusquely appeared for me to agree on going with a "HELL YESSS!"

I was kidding about being the victim of deceit. The place was as pretty as it looked in internet pictures and perhaps even better. Deceit, however, was dawned upon me by my own wishful thoughts and fairy-tale expectations of the place. From the descriptions of several sources I googled on the net, one of them of course Wikipeedia, the place was modeled after a 16th Century french-village of the town Colmar in France(which I think scumbag google mixed their image searches of the real colmar and the re-modeled colmar). So my fallacious expectation of it was a beautiful Village where the morning sun shines on the rooftops and through the windows would be women making home-made jam with help from their daughters and all were adorned in pretty country-life-like gowns. I also imagined the windows of the houses to be entwined with morning glories and real horses would neighh from their carriages PLUS a built in village river where men play accordions in boats. But, as a result of ignoring the keyword "RESORT" and "RE-MODELED"(almost never exact in their replication), reality shattered those dreams after seeing the place with my own eyes. Everything looked like it had been a paint-job, a pretty good one for that matter. Sadly, I didn't feel the country-like, cottage-house-warmth I thought I would. Nevertheless, the trip was wonderful and peaceful...and it was nice that I got to spend it with one of my current favorite people :)

Sorry but you looked too awesome while sleeping that I HAD to post this.

Now to put all ramblings aside, here's the part where I actually tell you how the trip went.


We first went to Batu Caves, it was sooo verry boring. I mean really there's nothing to do there except to gawk on huge Hindu Statues which clearly gave me the creeps most of the time.

The Man-Monkey, one of the two huge Hindu statues there.

The souvenir shop was entertaining, but only for a little while. Due to being indifferent, and mostly, miffed at looking at clothes and other things you sell in shops except for food, I knew I couldn't stay long and instead sat near the pavement with that friend of mine, okay I'm just gonna call him by his blog name, NA-Z where we talked peacefully in light rain about my antics and how I'm going to miss that friend of ours who went to Jordan. And after all of that, I bought a henna design for my right hand. (which is displayed in my icon)

Identical, right? Too bad we got scolded by the shopkeeper for taking pictures. I REGRET NOTHING.

Now here comes the main course of this trip. I present to youuu, Colmar!

Beautiful, ain't it?

I'm kinda tired of typing right now, so I think I'll just put up only the pictures I took and leave captions to describe them :p

First view of Colmar :  "OMG IT'S LAWAAA. lol those lines really looked painted-on."

Too wet, couldn't sit there.

The bridge looked much more impressive up front. And probably better in the night-time.

Photo of a photographer photographing the Resort Sign.

Me: Zawier! Act like a tourist!
Zawier: A whaaat??

Almost empty street and fake horses. Oh look! Pink window doors!

No, it's not a Unisex bathroom where we do our businesses together. There are separate bathrooms behind that door.

So far, this is my proudest shot. I freaking love century-old-looking armor and sword hanging on walls. Put them on and you're a Musketeer!

Camera for eyes.

Think this could make a cute family vacation ad picture, if the family looked a bit more jovial.

LOL from google images, the fountain looked a bit more majestic with the water shooting out more rapidly than the situation given here.

Meal that cost me 50 GRAND. Well, it was pretty tasty, and we had caramel pudding for desert which regretfully I didn't take a picture of.

Black and beautiful.

Not to sound feather-ist but I prefer the black swan more.

Well with the time constraint, we didn't do much there is to actually do in the resort. To name a few, there's horse riding, Rock-climbing, mountain hiking(if I remembered correctly) and unless we spend the night there,which costs a large sum of dough, doing those seem impossible. Oh speak of the cost, the entrance fee for visiting is 12MYR so I guess it was worth it. And we did actually manage to visit the Japanese village (not really a village, more like a park) and it was dreadfully soothing. You can actually rent a kimono there for 20MYR, which I didn't because I might be embarrassed and the price actually covers a good two days of my eating expenditure. The koi fishes were huge there! and DAMMIT I didn't take any pictures of them.

Serene rest in a Japanese hut.

Overall the experience was pleasant. So I guess I'll just end this post with a big fat T H A N K S to NA-Z for informing me about this trip. It shall be a favorite memory :)

But before that, any of you curious of the real Colmar as I am??
If so, here are pictures I found on google:

 

Built in village-river, Check. All we need is an accordion whiz.