If there is one thing more uncertain than predicting the weather before a hike, it is coming up with a blog title that differentiates one from the other. We hiked the 9 Pondok trail on the first day of the new year and three days later we’re back hiking the same trails. Another day, another adventure through the forest and rocky terrains except with fewer company than our last hike. Also, Jong (red tee) a Miri resident who trained exclusively on these hills for his successful 2014 Mount Kinabalu climb joined us for the first time this year. Our morning began with a drizzle as we left our house in Seria that quickly escalated to a heavy rainfall by the time we reached the Seria By-pass. There was turning back or changing of mind because of bad weather — we remained positive, optimistically hopeful that the weather would clear up by the time we’re near Jerudong — it did, to everyone’s delight :)

A group photo here at the intersection to Pondok 7. This trail is very popular for hikers that prefer a slightly less intense hike, by passing the more challenging and often slippery trails (when wet) that connect Pondok 4, 5, and 6.

A cloudy morning makes for a dramatic photo moment. I am not too fond of dark clouds but I’m far less fond of environmental portraits with washed out sky. Lighting the subjects here is another matter with the PowerShot G11’s tiny flash just isn’t up to the task. I had to meet things halfway by exposing for the clouds to retain as much detail as possible, setup flash for slow sync and shooting RAW to pull brightness from the otherwise underexposed faces. You only need to look at our shadows to see direction and intensity of sunlight. Click on image to view larger version.

Jong who was once upon a time the face for Muffin & Co. is incredibly fascinated by Shahbandar’s flora, in particularly the pitcher plants or ‘monkey cups’ as they’re commonly called, or even “somboi-somboi” as they’re called in local Bruneian context.

Whether you choose to hike 7 or 9 Pondok trail, Bukit Shahbandar offers trail runners and hikers a variety of terrain to keep things interesting. I would get bored rather quickly if there was only one kind of terrain — an hour to get there from home and another hour to get home — would be quite the buzz kill.

The short rocky trail between Pondok 6 and 7 has some amazing scenery with Pondok 7 offering a higher vantage point overlooking the rooftop of two (maybe three) huts in the distance.

Descending from Pondok 8 the hike to the last hut, is met with a steep, rocky climb all the way to Pondok 9. Alternatively, there’s a by-pass side trail for anyone who wishes to give this a miss.

see MapMyHike for trail map and workout stats of this hike.

If this part of the climb looks vaguely familiar to you that’s because it is — scroll up to see my blog header image and that’s a wider perspective. Quite deceptive to think that’s the top of where Pondok 9 might be when in fact it’s only the start of the climb. Like the Pondok 5 lookout photographing people and exposing them correctly here is also quite challenging considering the camera is aimed directly at the bright sky the natural tendency of camera’s automatic metering is to underexpose rendering shadow areas (of trees) and faces dark. Once again, the G11’s DSLR controls saved the day! Click on image to view larger version.

Friends who are fervent Instagram (“IG”) users have urged me countless times to share more photos on Instagram. I signed up an account sometimes in April 2012, shared my first photo I took at a client’s dinner and dance party. Fast forward three years to present day, I have shared a lowly total of 80 images. Here’s the thing: it’s not that I don’t want to share more, it’s that I find the lack of direct upload (Instagram does not provide an API for such purpose) from Windows a major inconvenience for me. I manage a huge repository of images in the Windows desktop environment and I’m not fond of the tried and true method of emailing myself the image files each time I have images to upload.

After several years of on and off hiatus, I found what I consider to be a very convenient method to quickly get my images from desktop to the iPad where I have IG installed (big screen and all). Between the PC and iPad, I use an incredible free networking app called Dukto that lets Windows/Android/iOS devices effortlessly see each other for the purpose of text and file transfers (I like it so much I paid for the pro version on iOS).

The left screenshot is my Windows 7 desktop while the right screenshot is the iPad. Once the images are prepared on the desktop for Instagram upload, it’s just a matter of dragging them to Dukto container. Within seconds the images are wirelessly transferred to the iPad.

Because Instagram doesn’t provide an API for any third-party app to play nice with it, there is no direct sharing to IG. Next best alternative is a free and highly popular companion app called InstaSize. Within the Dukto iOS container, clicking Open in InstaSize immediately loads the image for customizing options before it opens in Instagram app for take off.

You can do loads with InstaSize but I use the app mainly for transit to IG. Non square images are automatically “instasized” to fit in the window and I usually just choose black for border colour where appropriate. Click on the red arrow and image opens in IG where you enter your caption and hashtags — within seconds it’s published.

I am hopeful that someday soon we can do away with the intermediary steps to easily share images. Meanwhile this is my account https://instagram.com/janshim/ 

April 2, 2015 | If you haven’t already read about this, Google has released a Chrome app Arc Welder that lets Android apps run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS. As you can see from my Facebook post right below, I tried running Instagram on my Windows 7 64-bit and everything worked as though it’s running on an Android device.

Normally, Saturday morning is one of the busiest days of the week when we juggle school runs, tamu (fresh market) shopping, breakfast, more shopping when the supermarket opens. But because it’s the last weekend of the school holiday and shopping’s done a day earlier, it meant we were able to organize what we couldn’t since the start of the year — an extended Bukit Shahbandar hike, which is basically twice the distance of the regular 9 Pondok trail but a lot more intense. But it’s not just the extended hike that I am writing about. It’s also that on the same day, after hiking an exhausting 6 km jungle trail, there was an hour’s drive home, leaving us about 3 hours to grab lunch, shower and rest, before another hour’s drive back to Bandar Seri Begawan to attend a Chinese wedding banquet.

See larger version of photo: Group photo at Bukit Shahbandar Lookout (Canon PowerShot G11)

See larger version of photo: Group photo on extended trail of Bukit Tangahan (Canon PowerShot G11)

11 hours later, with barely an hour of shuteye, we were on the road again for another hour’s drive to the Centre Point Goldstone Ballroom for Sharon and Yazid’s wedding banquet. It was a great opportunity to catch up with so many people we hadn’t seen in a while. We reached home close to midnight, ending a very productive day collapsing in bed super exhausted.

Having a bit of fun with props posing for the photo booth camera.

I almost always make it a point to have a camera with me when I hike, regardless if it’s a short hike at Sungai Liang or half the morning in the Shahbandar forest. Being a photographer, I think it’s a habit to do so but more importantly, as you’ve seen from the two group photographs above, you just never know who you’re going to meet during the hike and what better way to remember these chance encounters than to have them photographed and shared.

In the year and a half that I’ve been hiking the hills, both solo and group, there were three separate occasions involving 6 visitors that had lost their way in the Shahbandar forest. Since then, there have been more reports (along with cases that went unreported) of hikers getting lost within the 10 km trail. Together with my hiking buddy Rizan, founder of the Beach Bunch and Shahbandar Volunteer Group, we took on the task of mapping the established trails that connect the entire Bukit Shahbandar, for the purpose of providing all visitors access to accurate and reliable map. I highly recommend anyone planning a trip for the first time to download this map to their phones either as a JPEG image or a PDF document, or print a copy in colour in A4 size to ensure legibility. We understand that the Ministry looking after Bukit Shahbandar is in the process of updating their map so until the new one is available, this is probably the best one you have immediate access to. Created for hikers by hikers — it’s our way of giving back to the community :)

Download in PDF format: Bukit Shahbandar Trail Map
See also: Aerial View of Bukit Shahbandar

A visitor in the US came across my blog while browsing the web for a turtle photo she wanted for her bathroom wall. In her email, she saw this image and asked if I had others similar to that one she could look at. I promptly recommended my favourite piece from this blog post and it didn’t take long for Bernadette to confirm her order and in time made payment via PayPal.

“I am looking for a picture of a turtle with bubbles, or happy in water (esp. getting clean, etc) as I have one amazing one near my kitchen sink and I would love to find one for my bathroom!” — Bernadette, USA.

While having my first shot of espresso of the day and checking my emails, an email from the World Food Programme immediately stood out, requesting donation to help victims of the Nepal earthquake, I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of duty to give. Growing up in Kuala Belait and more so in Seria where the Gurkhas serving with the British Garrison have lived among us for decades, I have had the occasional and memorable interaction with the Nepalese community, even sharing lunch with them, during a day-long photoshoot at the Hornbill School. And, who can forget their participation and support during this world record attempt, British Garrison Open Day, Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla visit, the list goes on.

Seeing PayPal’s logo on World Food Programme web page I decided there wasn’t a better time than now to put that payment from Bernadette to good use. If you too want to make a donation, click on the image below.

I am a huge fan of Nik Collection professional photographic tools and have only Google to thank for making them really affordable when they bought over the company. It began with the Viveza plug-in that made local adjustments possible (Lightroom offers a similar tool by way of the Local Adjustment Brush but early implementation isn’t nearly as smooth as Nik’s U Point technology. I’m writing this post not to review this tool but to highlight a problem I’ve encountered sometime back (visibility pronounced under the right conditions) with the Viveza tool, and how support staff resolved the (annoying) problem in less than 48 hours, over two emails.

The problem I’m talking about are the spiral artifacts after I’ve applied local brightness and contrast adjustments to the white and red coloured part of the helicopter body. You can see the spiral patterns (“banding” being the technical term to describe this occurrence in digital images) radiating from the chopper to the rest of the image.

Because the raw converter (not Lightroom) I used to process this photo doesn’t have local adjustment capability, I exported the image to 8-bit JPEG before making final adjustments using Viveza 2 as a Paintshop Pro plug-in. There’s no banding when I applied the same editing using a 16-bit image file — yay! If you’re noticing the strange white halo around the helicopter, that is the result of a more aggressive than necessary editing done intentionally as an attempt to provoke banding but there just wasn’t any!

Photo of Brunei Shell Petroleum’s Sikorsky S-92 SAR helicopter

On a typical Friday morning, my wife and I would stop by the Seria open market for our weekly grocery shopping before she starts her day at the office. Breakfast usually follows at one of two of our regular haunt: Nam Wah or Soi Heng restaurant — it’s all fairly predictable. On this day, however, we decided to patronize the Seria food court for a change. Waiting for my noodles to be served, I looked around and saw this beautiful moment — quickly captured with the only camera I had with me, my trusty Samsung Galaxy S3 that just recently had its screen replaced. The phone gets to live another day until the day I make up my mind to have it replaced — possibly with a Note 5.

On 6th December 2013, two weeks before my first Mount Kinabalu climb, we took a family cruise vacation on board The Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Sea in Singapore.  Pictured here is the Mariner’s main restaurant that spans three decks and features a music-themed design. Each of the three levels has an appropriate musical name — Deck 3: Rhapsody in Blue, Deck 4: Sound of Music and Deck 5: Top Hat & Tails). I traveled with my trusty PowerShot G11 and brought along a 5D Mark II with EF 17-40mm lens for wide shots. For this shot alone I am glad I packed the 5D. Fast forward to present day, it’s been one and a half years since the cruise and there are pictures from our trip I haven’t found the inclination to share. I have however found the time to share these ones on Facebook.

Since my Please Send Me A Postcard post from over 4 years ago, I have received box full of postcards from family and friends who traveled the world and took time out of their precious holiday itinerary to buy and mail me a postcard or two. It’s not the easiest thing to do, I know, to find a post office or a willing hotel reception when you’re overseas. Which is why I also tell them it’s not necessary to find a post office if one is out of convenient reach — pass them to me in person or if you live overseas, as do some of the cards I received are from, mail them from your local post office.

I collect postcards regardless of whether they’re stamped or not. I’m happy to reciprocate with a postcard from Brunei if you would like one (just leave me your return address on the card). I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with the cards once I have a lot of them but I welcome any ideas you may have.

Last week, I had one incredibly productive day like I sometimes do when schedules go haywire! But this time it was planned that way — a bit ambitious maybe — it wasn’t impossible to pull off, it was just be incredibly exhausting. The morning began with a drive from home to Bukit Shahbandar along the way picking up my cousin and hiking buddy Daniel at his Lumut residence. Drive took slightly over an hour, got there in time to meet our guest hiker for the first session at 8 AM. Daniel and I had two hikes that morning starting with short (warm up) hike with Lili Yong, owner of Lili Lingerie (she said to take things easy first before attempting longer ones).

6.50 AM: Left Seria to reach Shahbandar by 8 AM
8 AM to 9 AM: Bukit Shahbandar Hike 1

9 AM to 11 AM: Bukit Shahbandar Hike 2

11.30 AM to 3:00 PM: From Thien Thien takeout after hiking to Mr Baker’s Residence for lunch and Tapak Kuda photoshoot before an hour’s drive home to Seria

3 PM to 4 PM: An hour’s drive home to Seria from Kampong Katok with only an hour to shower and rest) before leaving Seria at 5 PM for Pondok Sari Wangi’s crab feast.

By the time we reached home after an hour’s drive (for the second time), it was close to midnight and my eyes could barely open. What an eventful day!

The night before yesterday morning’s Bukit Shahbandar, my family and I were having dinner at Nur Wanita when a former classmate who’s back from Taiwan to visit his family asked if I would be hiking Shahbandar any day soon. It didn’t take much for me to quickly discuss this over the dining table including shooting a quick text to a regular hiking buddy on the opposite end of the country if he was up for it the next day. Everyone on this side of the table was confirmed to go. Fast forward 12 hours to the next day, the morning was met with scattered showers with some parts of the country experiencing heavy rain. Rain quickly stopped while the weather remained overcast — we went ahead with the trip, reached Shahbandar in time to greet a car full of regulars: Eric Pui and his whole family who came on very short notice. For personal reasons my former classmate couldn’t make it so the 10 of us went ahead with our hiking plans.

Additional photos not published here can be viewed in Facebook Comments

For majority of residents in oil town Seria, Millimewah Department Store is their go-to place for everything — although mostly catering for the budget conscious, they’re the only complete department store in town. While it’s debatable whether Soon Lee or Millimewah had more inventory, Millimewah was the only outlet that had a floor dedicated to selling clothing for kids and adults, men and women. At least they were up until the moment the entire premise was burned to the ground in a matter of hours. Electrical overload is believed to have been the cause of the fire according to Fire and Rescue’s assessment. I happened to be in the vicinity when fire broke out though I wasn’t anywhere near enough to hear what passers-by described as an explosion.

I had a busy afternoon shuttling the kids to and from tuition classes so that explains the near and far photos I shared on Facebook during the drive to and from home several times. The intensity of the billowing smoke seen from the Shell refinery and the field opposite Anthony Abel College (I took those routes to get home) very quickly turned turbulent increasing in volume and density.

Related: Seria landmark fire causes total loss of over $7 million

All images: Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

Quoting my Facebook post:

“After years of speculative yes, no, maybe, Brunei’s largest and most popular Japanese eatery Excapade Japanese Cuisine has officially opened in Miri, much to the delight of loyal and insatiable Excapade sushi and sashimi fans in Miri, maybe even across Sarawak.”

“When I first saw this place, I fell in love with the view” — Michael | Owner

The following selections are my favourite shots of the new Excapade Miri establishment

The first time I visited and hiked Canada Hill in Miri was 20th October 2013 when I was group training for my first Mount Kinabalu climb in December of the same year (our group successfully made it to Low’s Peak). It was expected that we would return to Brunei and that life would return to normal with some of us having nothing ever to do with hiking again. How wrong an assumption that turned out to be! Bukit Shahbandar hills became a norm for me, I was looking for every opportunity I could find to hike the 9 (3.2km) and occasional 14 hills (6.2km). Cut a long story short, I am not (yet) a runner but often and easily mistaken for one because of the the accumulated distance I’ve logged and the times I’ve clocked hiking, running and occasionally gunning the steep Shahbandar hills.

Fast forward two years after my first Canada Hill hike, friends who learned that I had registered for the 3rd Canada Hill Trail Challenge asked what made me decide to sign up for the race (I’m not known in my circle of friends to join races) to which I replied, “I have unfinished business to settle at Canada Hill.”

Those who have never driven up to Canada Hill, check out the magnificent view of Miri City photographed (on a haze free morning) from a spot adjacent to Hazard Bistro.

Looking at the left log below, 1.93km is hardly the sort of distance to drive to Miri for. We stopped short of however much more we could have gone because a member wasn’t feeling 100% so we all decided to stop. Thought that was the end of it until a fellow hiking buddy Marilyn Graeme told me about the Miri event. If someone had asked if I would be interested to participate two years ago, I would not even have given it a second thought. So much has changed in the two years since I began working out — I’m better prepared today, mentally and physically, for such demanding races — a long way to go before I find comfort in racing tougher and longer trail distances!

Anyone thinking of hiking Canada Hill trails have a choice of two routes to import into their MapMyFitness App
Canada Hill Leisure 1.93km Route  |  Canada Hill Trail Challenge 2015 4.7km Route

I observed that many participants were dressed light in that they were competing in the same Men’s Open 4.7km category and were entirely reliant on the water stations for hydration; they brought no water bottles of their own to speak of. Quite a number of them were dehydrated with one or two around me were suffered fatigue and cramps because they ran the Curtin University Warrior Run just the day before. If organizers happen to be reading this (and I hope they pick up on this important feedback), the first water station was unnecessary (too close to the start of event) and the second (which is also the last) one too far apart. Fortunately I had 2L of fluids on my back and was taking sips throughout the hike due to the stifling heat and exhaustion.

Now that I’ve hiked a distance more than twice that of my first attempt what do I think of Canada Hill? Coming from someone who according to my friends is a sucker for pain, I can see myself going back for leisure hikes. It’s not as hike friendly as Bukit Shahbandar or Tasek Lama trails but man, Canada Hill is one attraction that will also give you an upper body workout. The only question is finding like-minded buddies to join me.

Thanks to my wife who drove me to Miri, and my Miri buddies for changing their minds about participating, I got to earn my first trail medal, second only in my collection after Mount Kinabalu climb. Will I be back for the 4th Canada Hill Trail Challenge next year? It’s too early to say with any degree of certainly but I don’t see any reason to not sign up! :)

Now, for those who have never visited Bukit Shahbandar in Brunei and would like to find your way around the trails (first-time visitors getting lost is not uncommon) be sure to you have the Bukit Shahbandar Trail Map with you at all times. Even better is downloading MapMyHike App, import a route and hike with GPS assistance.

I did say I was going to come home with a medal …

and did exactly that — a Men’s Open 4.7km Finisher Medal (completion indicated by the three coloured strings around my neck collected from three checkpoints). Out of a total of 580 participants, there were 30 Bruneians who pained our way through the forest to finish on a high note!

Three shades of tan from three separate runs while training for The Most Beautiful Thing 50K Ultra Trail Marathon the darkest of which a result of 8 hours under open sky covering a 40K distance between Agro Park and Bukit Shahbandar.

“This virtual race is brought to you by the official SCKLM and 42Race. You can now run anytime, anywhere, with anyone on 21 May 2017 to earn the exclusive Standard Chartered KL Virtual Marathon medal. First 1,999 Entries will be awarded with Free Running Bandana (worth S$9.90, posted with finisher medal).” — 42Race.com

You can forget about the free running bandana offer. At the time of this posting, 2078 runners have signed up for the virtual run. You can also forget about the Free Medal Engraving because the offer was valid till 16 Apr 2017. Good news is you can still register for the run which closes a minute before midnight 16th May 2017, and earn yourself an official SCKLM (Virtual) 5K, 10K, 21K or 42K Finisher Medal and Certificate. Head over to 42Race.com to sign up if you haven’t already done so.

Here in Brunei, I have a small group of participants comprising of family members and friends that have registered for the half marathon distance and we’re going to accomplish the mission using the 21km route that I’ve mapped, taking us on a Padang Arena Seria to Panaga roundabout to Mumong roundabout loop with specific turns on the return leg as detailed on the map provided below.

Yesterday, on 23 April 2017, we had a route familiarization practice run to experience the route first hand and we had a great time and along the way learned a thing or two that morning about our route, parking venue, hydration needs among other little things such as sun protection. We welcome anyone who wishes to join us on 21 May regardless of whether you signed up for the race event or not.

The idea of completing two loops of Bukit Shahbandar ’14 Hills’ had crossed my mind more than once previously but it was only recently I decided to actually do it — together with two other runners, one of whom my #TMBT2016 50K buddy. Rather impromptuly, I initiated the idea and there was no objection and that’s how we rolled, began the first loop in the usual anticlockwise direction and proceeded with the second loop with the more challenging clockwise direction where the route is more climb oriented. This activity on Strava.

Download Bukit Shahbandar Trail Map | See also: Aerial View of Bukit Shahbandar

Some four and a half hours later, we got back to civilization, changed out of our sweat soaked gear and fulfilled a post-workout mandate: cold serving of refreshing fresh coconut water. Briefly rested somewhat we grabbed lunch at a nearby Thai Restaurant, MOD, which happens to be also our go-to place for ice cold Lime Frappe along with favourite Ginger Chicken rice.

Among runners in the local trail running community the term ‘heat training’ is often used and understood to be nothing other than heat acclimatization or quite simply, getting used to the heat. But when I Googled the term, it turned up something completely different and out of context:

“Heat training is the gradual process of changing the texture of your hair with heat styling tools such as a flat iron.”

Because of my freelancing hours, I get out on the trails to run at all odd hours and being in the tropics that usually means most people are cocooned in their air conditioned office the entire time I’m out in the sun. Except on days when it’s raining, typical temperatures range from 33° to 40° Celsius.

Truth be told, I’ll take warm to hot over cold any day — I’ve come to accept that my body just isn’t built to handle cold. I’ve lost count the number of my doctor has had to put me on antibiotics to treat my condition (bronchitis) each time I’d been exposed to extreme low temps such as after my Mount Kinabalu climbs (both times in 2013 and 2016) or drinking cold fluids immediately after an intense workout. So, no Base Camps expeditions for me anytime soon or ever — it could very well be a one way ticket for someone with a low cold threshold like me.