Tanjung Aru Beach

Tanjung Aru Beach is one of the place you can visit in Kota Kinabalu. There is Tanjung Aru Resort which is another luxury resort but in this post I’m going to show the public beach in Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu. This beach is only about 5 minute from Kota Kinabalu International Airport Terminal 2(KKIA Terminal 2). It is public beaches where you can see a lot of people enjoy their weekend here.

Do you notice an airplane is preparing to landing in the picture? The Kota Kinabalu International Airport is located at the seaside.

This is the lounge in Tanjung Aru. During night time, you can find quite a number of people having drinks and chit chatting here. It is located beside the beach. Besides, you can also enjoy the song sung by the workers here.

The path way along the beach.

This Beach BBQ only operates during night time. You can have all kind of BBQ sea food here.

The Mediterranean Bar & Restaurant is located beside the lounge.

At the very end of the beach, you can find different type of food compared to the front part of the beach. Here, there are many hawker stall where you can eat local food like nasi Lemak, fried Kueh tiaw, fried noodles and many more. Besides, fresh fruits and junk food are also sell here.

You can find this little crab all over the beach.

Freescale Smart Car Malaysia 2008

Freescale Smart Car Competition is held in Dewan Sirim where it is somewhere near UITM in Shah Alam. There are all together 28 teams from 11 university in Malaysia took part in this competition. During the first day of the competition, we were given a chance to do a trial run on the “real track”. The “real track” I mean here was not really the real track they going to use on the competition but a small track that build with the same material as the real one. All the participants do not know how the real track is before the competition because the track is confidential. Below is the video Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) teams’ trial run.

You can notice that everything going well during the trial run on the small ‘8’ track.

The second day, 13 December 2008 is the day of the competition. Every team had done their full preparation for their smart car and all the cars were being place in the pit. The real track is very challenging.

The person in charge is trying to block the sun light that shine through the window into the track. This is very important because the bright light will influence the performance of the sensor or the camera use by the smart car.

This is the video that show my team’s smart car going off track.

Well, sorry that I can’t show the video of the wining team's car because I don’t have the video with me. So here are some pictures taken when our UMS team becomes champion.

Freescale Smart Car Competition 2008

Freescale Smart Car Competition 2008. This is what I have been doing after finish my final exam during this semester. Well, just come back from Kuala Lumpur yesterday and now can start to blog again. This is the first time this Smart Car Competition being organizes in Malaysia and hence we are all new here. One good news is that we Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) got the champion for this competition. Congratulation again to my course mate Justin Yap and also Wong Cheok Liang. They really spend a lot of time and effort for this competition so they deserve to be Champion.

Well, what is this Smart Car Competition about? Freescale provide us the model of the car, dc motor, battery charger, battery, Microcontroller, and also a programmer. Then you have to use what you got and add in what you wanted to add in to make the car run on the track in the competition. The winner will be the car that finishes a lap with the fastest time. Sounds easy but the process is not as easy as you thought. Below are the product of UMS team and one of the video of our test run in ums lab during the night before we packed up.

That is the track we build ourselves for testing. Due to insufficient of funding, this is the best we can do. However, everything going well on this track.

Gunter's Gasthaus at Kota Kinabalu

Gunter’s Gasthaus is a Germany’s food restaurant in Kota Kinabalu Sabah. Well, I never try or even see a germany’s food but from the name of the restaurant, Gunter’s Gasthaus mean Gunter’s Inn in German. Gunter’s Gasthaus is a home style restaurant. It is decorated with lots of flowers and leaf.Some of those is real but some are fake plants. I feel that the environment of this restaurant is good and relaxing. It is located along Jalan Tuaran.

You will see this huge signboard at the road side. So don’t worry that you can’t find it.

Home style restaurant.

Inside the restaurant.

So what is the special thing about this restaurant? At Gunter’s Gasthaus, there is a pakage that you only need to pay for the most expensive dish but limited to 3 dishes per person. Below are some of the dishes I have tried.

The vegetable salad is free. You can take as much as you like while waiting for the dishes you order.

Mushroom casserole

Spaghetti

Serbian Style Sausage

Grill chicken

Fish fillet

Fish fillet with oyster

Among all those 6 dishes, the grill chicken and the Serbian Style Sausage are the most expensive dishes which cause RM20.00 each. So the total for this meal is RM40.00 excluded government tax and service charge for two person. My opinion is that the food worth the price and you should give it a try when you visit Kota Kinabalu.

Sea Turtle In UMS

Seem that in my previous post, I have fail to show my readers the sea turtle in Universiti Malaysia Sabah’s Aquarium (UMS). I have walk to the back of the aquarium and take some close shot on the sea turtle. Here is the back of the aquarium.

There are few sea turtles being raise here. Personally I think this is just a temporally place for them because it is impossible to raise sea turtle in such a small area.

baby turtle

In Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), there is a hatchery. A hatchery is a facility where eggs are hatched under artificial conditions, especially those of fish or poultry. Well, no student or visitor is allowed to enter the hatchery so I can only take pictures of it far away. Wonder what sea creatures are being hatch inside.

Coral in Aquarium and Marine Museum

Universiti Malaysia Sabah Aquarium and Marine Museum also have various type of coral. Corals are marine organisms that exist as small sea anemone. Typically they are in colonies of many identical individuals. The group includes the important reef builders that are found in tropical oceans, which secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.

Below are the pictures of coral that I have taken. They are really beautiful and attractive. There are many tourist came to Sabah to dive or just snookering to see all this living things. If you don’t have to change to dive at Sabah, you still can get the chance to see them here.

Do this look like our human brain?

Nemo swim near the coral.

There are also a few types of star fish in the aquarium. This is the Linckia Laevigata or also known as Blue Starfish. Sometime it is also call the Comet Sea Star.

Protorester Nodulosus or also known as Chocolate Chip Star. The spike on the star make it got the name of Rhinoceros Sea Star. I didn’t touch it so I don’t know whether it is a hard spike or soft.

This is another type of starfish.

In Sabah, you can get to see a sea urchin almost at every beach or sea side. You can take a look at my Sutera Harbour Resort‘s post where I got take a picture of sea urchin from the jetty. This is the Diadema Sabignyi or known as Black Sea Urchin. The spike of the urchin is poisonous. It is common in shallow water (about 0 to 70 meters) of tropical coral reefs. It can grow to a maximum width of approximately 23cm.

I’m not sure how to call this creature but I think it won’t be wrong to call it sea snail even though it doesn’t have a shell behind. This sea snail really looks cute but lonely because it is the only kind in the aquarium.

Well, these are all the coral in Universiti Malaysia Sabah Aquarium and Marine Museum. Maybe someday in the future, there will have more kind of coral raise here.