Taman Wetlands, Putrajaya

11 million MYR or more was spent building this 'largest artificial fresh water wetlands in the tropics'. The same money could have gone into preserving ten to twenty times the acreage of natural ecology, instead of trying to fabricate this artificial one.

But that's Boleh-land.

Been here two years ago, and found it mildly interesting. A couple of flamingoes, pelicans, swans, and ducks, and lots of grass. It's not as interesting as the other Paya Indah Wetlands park somewhere nearby in Dengkil, but it would seem that the 33m MYR project is in trouble. Eco-tourism seems to be a lost cause here.

Anyways, I came back to this park in Putrajaya because of this. It's a geocache with a Travel Bug in it. And the fact that I have 3 bicycles now, so I grabbed two friends along for a leisurely, scenic ride around the wetlands.

Tried to find the geocache with my GPS, but no luck. The GPS insisted that the cache is behind a TNB fence which we have no way of getting to, short of climbing over a fence and risking tetanus from the scratchy rusted fence. Later back home, I discovered that the geocache page gave two different coordinates. And I copied down the wrong one. That, or I may not be using the same map datum as the guy who placed the cache.

Didn't find treasure. But at least got a good morning's ride out of it.

And managed to see one lone swan. The pelicans, ducks, flamingoes are nowhere to be seen this time. The wildlife has mysteriously disappeared, but at least the park is still very well maintained.

From some biking forums, I've come across various recipes for home-made powerbars, using muesli, chopped nuts/almonds, caramel, raisins etc to make hand-sized energy bars for long hours of biking.

I wonder how these recipes compare to the chinese 'power-balls'.

ie. sugary bean paste, wrapped in glutinous rice flour, richly coated with sesame seed, and then deep-fried until the ball is oozing with oil...