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PULAU LANGKAWI

Langkawi, officially known as Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah is an archipelago of 104 islands in theAndaman Sea, some 30 km off the mainland coast of northwestern Malaysia. The islands are a part of the state of Kedah, which is adjacent to the Thai border. On July 15, 2008, Sultan Abdul Halim of Kedah had consented to the change of name to Langkawi Permata Kedah in conjunction with his Golden Jubilee Celebration. By far the largest of the islands is the eponymous Pulau Langkawi with a population of some 64,792, the only other inhabited island being nearby Pulau Tuba. Langkawi is also an administrative district with the town of Kuah as largest town. Langkawi is a duty-free island.

           Langkawi means reddish brown eagle in colloquial Malay. The Malay word for eagle is helang - which is shortened to "lang". Kawi means the colour reddish brown. It was given the title of "Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah" in 2008 by Kedah's Sultan Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah as part of his golden jubilee to impress on tourists that it was part of Kedah.

         

A FAMOSA

A Famosa is a Portuguese fortress located in Malacca, Malaysia. It is among the oldest surviving Europians architectural remains in Asia. The Porta de Santiago, a small gate house, is the only remaining part of the fortress still standing.

The name is often mispronounced Famosa, even among Malaysians, as though the Portuguese definite article a were the English letter A. A more authentic pronunciation would be Famosa.

          In 1511, a Portuguese fleet arrived under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque. His forces attacked and defeated the armies of the Malacca Sultanate. Moving quickly to consolidate his gains, Albuquerque had the fortress built around a natural hill near the sea.Albuquerque believed Malacca would become an important port linking Portugal to the Spice Routine in China. At this time other Portuguese were establishing outposts in such places as Macau, China and India in order to create a string of friendly ports for ships heading to China and returning home to Portugal

The fortress once consisted of long ramparts and four major towers One was a four-story keep, while the others held an ammunations storage room, the residence of the captian, and an officers' quarters. Most of the village clustered in town houses inside the fortress walls. As Malacca's population expanded it outgrew the original fort and extensions were added around 1586.

The for changed hands in 1641 when the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of Malacca. The Dutch renovated the gate in 1670, which explains the logo "ANNO 1670" inscribed on the gate's arch. Above the arch is a bas-relief logo of the Dutch East India Company

The fortress changed hands again in the early 19th century when the Dutch handed it over to the British to prevent it from falling into the hands of Napoleon's expansionist France.The English were wary of maintaining the Fortification and ordered its destruction in 1806. The fort was almost totally demolished but for the timely intervention of Sir Stamford Raffles the founder of modern Singapore,who happened to visit Malacca in 1810. Because of his passion for history, this small gate was spared from destruction.

BUKIT BINTANG

Bukit Bintang stylized as Bintang Walk or Starhill, the latter being a translation of the Malay name) is the name of the shopping and entertainment district of Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia It encompasses Jalan Bukit Bintang and its immediate surrounding areas. The area has long been Kuala Lumpur's most prominent retail belt that is home to many landmark shopping centres, al-fresco cafés, swanky bars, night markets, as well as hawker-type eateries. This area is popular among tourists and locals, especially among the youths. A part of Bintang Walk is designated as an "Arab Street".

         Jalan Tong Shin in Bukit Bintang was the focal point of the Malaysia's deadly May 13 race riots Back in the late 1980s, corporate magnate Tan Sri Yeoh Tiong Lay proposed a rejuvenated retail cluster in Kuala Lumpur. He started retail developments in this area through a conglomerate YTL Corporations and branded the area as Bintang Walk. The district has since undergone a transformation to become one of the hippest destinations in the city, though the decentralisation of malls in Kuala Lumpur of late has seen more sophisticated malls sprouting around the fringes of the city proper at an unprecedented rate.

NATIONAL ZOO OF MALAYSIA

The National Zoo  is a zoo in Malaysia located on 110 acres (45 ha) of land in Ulu Klang near Taman Melawati, in north-east Kuala Lumpur, It was officially opened on 14 November 1963. The park is managed by a non-governmental organization known as the Malaysian Zoological Society. For funding, Zoo Negara relies on gate collections and on support from donors and sponsors.

Zoo Negara is home to 5137 animals of 459 different species. Over the years, the zoo has transformed itself to an open concept zoo with over 90% of its animals kept in spacious exhibits with landscape befitting its nature.

Zoo Negara received MS ISO 9001:2008 Certification in July 2007, and is a member of the SEAZA. The President and chairman of the zoo is Y. Bhg. Dato’ Ismail Hutson.

         In 1957, the Malayan Agri-Horticultural Association (MAHA) opened a miniature zoo. After the creation of the mini-zoo, the idea of proper zoo gradually gained momentum, and the federal government chose a spot in Ulu Klang,Selangor next to the border of Kuala Lumpur In the 1960s, Ulu Klang was an undeveloped green area. In 1963, the first Prime Minister of Malaya (now Malaysia) YTM Tunku Abdul Rahman opened the zoo to the public. Zoo Negara was known as the "Zoo in the Jungle" due to the greenery that surrounded the area.

         The zoo welcomed its millionth visitor on February 14, 1966, just three years after opening, and by 1986, the zoo was welcoming over 1 million visitors per year.

          The area surrounding the zoo was covered with thick vegetation until the late 1970s as Kuala Lumpur underwent an eonomic boom. Given Ulu Klang's close proximity with Kuala Lumpur, the area was opened for large scale development as a planned residential area in the 1980s. It has expanded in terms of population ever since. The development has caused the zoo's surrounding areas and also increases the land value where the zoo is located.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were plans to move the zoo to other locations in Selangor However, the plans were largely unpopular among the public as it is seen as an effort by some developers to capitalise on the value of the zoo's large land. With the support from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Selangor State Government, Zoo Negara will not be relocated.

PETRONAS TOWERS

The Petronas Towers, also known as the Petronas Twin Towers are twin skycrapers in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia According to the CTBUH`s official definition and ranking, they were the tallest building in the worlds from 1998 to 2004 until surpassed by Taipei 101, but they remain the tallest twin building in the world.The buildings are the landmark of Kuala Lumpur with nearby Kuala Lumpur Tower.

          The towers were designed by Argentine architect Caesar Pelli  They chose a distinctive postmodernstyle to create a 21st-century icon for Kuala Lumpur. Planning on the Petronas Towers started on 1 January 1992 and included rigorous tests and simulations of wind and structural loads on the design. Seven years of construction followed, beginning on 1 March 1993 with the excavation, which involved moving 500 truckloads of earth every night to dig down 30 metres (98 ft) below the surface.

The next stage was the single largest and longest concrete pour in Malaysian history. 13,200 cubic metres (470,000 cu ft) of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54 hours for each tower. This record-breaking slab with 104 piles forms the foundation for each tower.

From this floor rose a 21-metre (69 ft) high retaining wall, with a perimeter length of over 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). This concrete shell and the basement area it enclosed required two years to complete, and up to 40 workers on site 24 hours per day.

The construction of the superstructure commenced on 1 April 1994. Interiors with furniture were completed on 1 January 1996, the spires of Tower 1 and Tower 2 were completed on 1 March 1996, and the first batch of 'PETRONAS’ personnel moved into the building on 1 January 1997. The building was officially opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia'sTun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohammad on 1 August 1999. The twin towers were built on the site of Kuala Lumpur's race track. Test boreholes found that the original construction site effectively sat on the edge of a cliff. One half of the site was decayed limestone while the other half was soft rock. The entire site was moved 61 metres (200 ft) to allow the buildings to sit entirely on the soft rock. Because of the depth of the bedrock, the buildings were built on the world's deepest foundations. 104 concrete piles, ranging from 60 to 114 metres (200 to 374 ft) deep, were bored into the ground. The concrete raft foundation, comprising 13,200 cubic metres (470,000 cu ft) of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54 hours for each tower. The raft is 4.6 metres (15 ft) thick, weighs 32,500 tonnes (35,800 tons) and held the world record for the largest concrete pour until 2007. The foundations were completed within 12 months by Bachy Soletanche and required massive amounts of concrete. Its engineering designs on structural framework were contributed by Haitian engineer Domo Obiasse and colleagues Aris Battista and Princess D Battista.

The 88-floor towers are constructed largely of reinforced concrete, with a steel and glass facade designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic Arts, a reflection of Malaysia's Muslim religion.Another Islamic influence on the design is that the cross section of the towers is based on a Rub el Hizb, albeit with circular sectors added to meet office space requirements.

As a result of the Malaysian government specifying that the buildings be completed in six years, two construction consortiums were hired in order to meet the deadline, one for each tower. Tower 1, the west tower (right in the top-right photograph) was built by a Japanese consortium led by theHazama Corporation (JA Jones Construction CO, MMC Engineering Services Sdn Bhd, Ho Hup Construction Co. Bhd and Mitsubishi Corp) while Tower 2, the east tower (left in the top-right photograph) was built by a South Korean consortium led by the Samsung C&T Corporation (Kukdong Engineering & Construction and Syarikat Jasatera Sdn Bhd). Early into construction a batch of concrete failed a routine strength test causing construction to come to a complete halt. All the completed floors were tested but it was found that only one had used a bad batch and it was demolished. As a result of the concrete failure, each new batch would now be tested before being poured. The halt in construction had cost US$700,000 per day and led to three separate concrete plants being set up on the site to ensure that if one produced a bad batch, the other two could continue to supply concrete. The sky bridge contract was completed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction. Tower 2 became the first to reach the world's tallest building at the time because Tower 1 (Hazama) ran into problems when they discovered the structure was leaning 25 millimetres (0.98 in) off from vertical. To correct the lean, the next 16 floors were slanted back 20 millimetres (0.79 in) with specialist surveyors hired to check verticality twice a day until the building's completion.

Due to the huge cost of importing steel, the towers were constructed on a cheaper radical design of super high-strength reinforced concrete.High-strength concrete is a material familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel in sway reduction; however, it makes the building twice as heavy on its foundation than a comparable steel building. Supported by 23-by-23 metre concrete cores and an outer ring of widely spaced super columns, the towers use a sophisticated structural system that accommodates its slender profile and provides 560,000 square metres of column-free office space. Below the twin towers is Suria KLCC, a shopping mall, and Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, the home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.