"Surrounded by hills, somewhat rainy and no mediterranean sea..."

Exactly not the first thing comes to mind when you think about Spain in general.
It applied the same to me before my visit to Galicia, a beautiful autonomous community in Northwestern Spain.

I used to think that Spain is a country surrounded solely by the Mediterranean sea. But after this trip, I discovered that Galicia is not your typical daydream of Spain.
Oh, did I mention that when it comes to their traditional music, Galicia share more similarity to the celts' (yes you're right, the bagpipes). So, just forget about Flamenco :)

You can find cruceiros (stone cross) and Horreo (granary) almost everywhere, especially on country-side neighbourhood . It is also interesting to know that the churches here look different from those that built on the southern.

Cruceiros (left) and Horreo (right)

However, despite of being not-typical Spain, it is blessed with fantastic seafood and hours of sun exposure on summer! 

I arrived on the 15th of July at OPO airport in Portugal. This is my first trip to Spain, and my second country to visit in Europe after Belgium in the cold February. The trip took around 1,5 hours by car to Pontevedra. I arrived midnight at 2.30 AM.

I split my stay between Pontevedra and O Grove. I spent three nights in Pontevedra before move to a camping called Os Fieitas in O Grove.
During these three days, I explored the city of Pontevedra and visit Combarro.

The Old Bridge, Pontevedra

One can find Pulperia (a place where you can eat Polbo á Feira) almost anywhere, easily. I even saw four at a festival in the capital city Santiago.
Pulpo. Mmm... I like it.
It is basically just a boiled octopus, cut with scissors, with olives oil, salt and sprinkles of pimentón dulce y picante. But it is que rico! Try to find place that serve some young red wine and drink traditionally using a bowl.

And.. please don't make me choose among churrasco (the pork ribs), puplo or Nécoras. Cos I can't!

Pulpo at Pulperia Ruzo

Pulpo and Churrasco at Pulperia Garcia, Santiago

The second day, I visited Combarro. It is a touristic village which previously was a village of fishermen. The trip took 30 minutes driving from Pontevedra. Combarro is a unique and interesting place. It has many narrow streets.

Most of the building are houses of local people and some of the rest are souvenir shop or bar and restaurant. When you keep waking straight, it will eventually lead you to a beach where you can see the complete look of the village. Oh, and there's a vineyard too.

Have some little fun by allowing yourself to get lost a little in those alleys.

The following day, I moved to O Grove. The weather was perfect throughout my stay there (except for one day).
Everyday was a beach day, but water wasn't always involved, though.
Yes.. Atlantic water can be too cold to bathe in sometimes. But the sun was great and it were perfect days for sunbathing!

The camping where I stayed is within walking distance to many surrounding beaches. Perfect for strolling and enjoying my daily dose of paseo.

The sunset view from Camping 

One the most unforgettable beach I encountered is Pedras Negras (literally means 'Black Stones' in Galician). This beautiful beach offers impressive panoramic view provided by the clusters of gigantic rocks. There is a wooden walkway, but I chose to walk on the wild side and climb the massive rocks instead.
I took occasional stops to watch and enjoy the endless cloudy sky and the blueness of the Atlantic ocean. When you look closely, you can find small trapped little seafood sea creatures.

Pedras Negras

Pedras Negras is one is a calm quiet beach, perfect for getting lazy, resting and having a little siesta perhaps. Anyone?? :)

Nearby, there is a Bar and Restaurant named El Pirata where I had my caña and squid tapas before return to the camping that day.

Una Caña en El Pirata

I am a big fan of traditional market. Whenever I travel to a new place I make sure I pay it a visit. The very next day, I visit the central area of O Grove.
Being a little town by the coast his place has its own unique charm.

I also notice a very interesting coincidence between Galicia's witch/ witchery folklore from the past with the fact that there are so many black cats in present Galicia (at least around Pontevedra and O Gove).
At one point, I was wondering if these cute black felines are purposely released to give more witchy kind of atmosphere for the tourist.
But I am sure it is just me being a little loca. Jejeje... :)

Pheww...! Enough of this one long post!
Kindly check my my next post about Illa de Ons and Santiago which I put into two separate posts.

All in all, the trip to Galicia is very satisfying to me. People are friendly --despite of me being one of only a few Asian in town, people greeted me, "!hola¡".
Not to mention, I also experienced priceless satisfaction from eating Churrasco and Pulpo!

Photo enquiries: jenniferganphoto@gmail.com/ www.photographerjennifergan.com

Here we came again to Kuala Sepetang. We usually drive here for a restaurant called Lemon Tree. I always love to walk around the dock areas to watch the children, people, birds, boats, etc.

We came two days ago only to be disappointed that the curry me and laksa stall didn't open. But I definitely had many luck this time because not only I got to shoot these photos but also a photo of three cute puppies I put on Instagram.

KUALA SEPETANG

Kuala Sepetang is a coastal town located in Perak, Malaysia. The town was formerly known as Port Weld after a former Governor, Frederick Weld. It is a thriving fishing village, and the main jumping-off point to the river mouth community of Kuala Sangga, which is a Chinese fishing community at the river mouth which specializes in fish breeding in cages. The Port Weld railway station was located at the centre of town. The whole railway line from here to Taiping, which was the first railway line in the Peninsular, is now dismantled, and now only the ticketing booth and the Port Weld railway signboard remain. The ticketing booth is now a Chinese coffee shop, and the shopowner has been maintaining the railway signboard.
Kuala Sepetang has excellent seafoods and it has a famous restaurant situated on the upper floor of a shop lot overlooking the river. Kuala Sepetang is also well known for its mangrove swamp reserve park which is open to the public daily. It has a boardwalk built over the swamp for tourists, and chalets in which tourists can rent to stay the night on the riverfront. There are also charcoal kilns, some of which are open for tourist visits.
The village is very popular with its Curry Mee (Only sold at afternoon time) and Baozi.

(source: wikipedia)

Some houses in the neighbourhood


Kids play wrestling (both were winners, nobody got into the water :((() 


Ahoy!


 The catch






You can tell from the smile on their face that they caught plenty


A cute boy 






Prawn. Fresh off the boat!

www.photographerjennifergan.com

Hutan Mati, Papandayan

I've been into weekdays getaway lately. Beside my awesome sister, my travel girlfriend is this one cool Polish girl, Sylwia. She's a cool travel buddy. Tough, non-complainer type (though her tolerance towards cold is lower than mine --which is very low).

This time we had one week trip, to the mountain and to the sea. The trip began with a trip to Pulau Pari (Thousand Island, DKI Jakarta). She introduced me to a group of people who were looking for more people to make the trip more economical. We took a ferry from Muara Angke. The place stinks (no joke). But what can you expect? Its a fish market. Anyway, it took around 40 minutes to reach this island. It stopped once at another island but just for a little while.

Once we reached, we go right away to Pak RT (thats what a head of neighbourhood called in Indonesia) house and yes, we stay there. The house is conveniently located. In the middle of the island, and the best beach is just 10 minutes away walking.

On Monday the 31st, it was Nyepi (a national Hindu cultural public holiday. Curious enough? Google it) in Indonesia. While most people were driving back after a long weekend, we catch a bus to Garut and arrived there at 10 PM. Took ojek and met our guide Robby and then the next day we started the trip. Cold, cold, cold, but awesome. Finish with the mountain, we took angkot to get to Garut city. We bought some arak and oleh-oleh (souvenir) and we ate and continue the trip with bus and reached BKN terminal at East Jakarta at night.

me, mountain, sylwia and tongsis

For Papandayan trekking information contact: Robby +62813 3214 2675.

Finally, after months without update here I am posting a work. Black and white. Non-fashion.

About the lack of update, I had been busy three month until September doing a non-fashion related work and last week I went to Cambodia to give myself a nice outro of this project. So here are some of the pics.

There are so many sides of Cambodia but I want to have a series from every place that has a link to each other so I chose these photos that has children in it. Generally, I don't really like children (except the arty one whom I can draw and play playdoh with for hours without he/ she throw any tantrum), but I somehow like the Cambodian children (the food and people too!).

I'll be in Malaysia until the 29th and be back again to Jakarta. I probably will post 2 spread from Marie Claire Malaysia and Indonesian Cleo next week, but we'll see.
I'm going to Sydney next year if you want to have a shoot you can contact me by e-mail/ whatsapp (+6281384673782) and line/ instagram: jenniferganphoto.

Well if you excuse me, I'd like to go to the corner of my room bitching out and complaining silently about how bitter I have been lately.

So yeah, enjoy the photos!!

(Ask me if u want to use/ feature/ purchase my photos: jenniferganphoto@yahoo.com,).