If you are asked for your postal address from Yichin earlier, the little small monster are probably on their way to your house now, struggling their way by air, sea or land – here is a little hint of what would be knocking your doors soon. Thanks again to the gift-sending team for this little surprise.

We hope all of you will like it :)

It shocked all of us when receiving the email from Jen yesterday, our writer for Vientiane, Laos. She had a terrible fall during her recent Tioman trip, 10 feet onto rocks and sand while having a BBQ dinner. Oh, she injured her neck and was in traction but recovering now. Her parents is taking care of her now.

Please don’t feel bad about any delay on our project. Nothing is more important than for you to get well soon, and we would love to work with you again!

My name is Shirley. I’m 22 years old and I grew up in Langkawi. I’m currently a university student, doing Bachelor of Commerce with Deakin University, and I’m majoring in Marketing and Economics. I’m a food lover, enjoy reading, blogging, traveling and am passionate in photography.

One morning, I turned on my computer to check my emails, without expecting to receive any emails from anyone except those annoying junk mails which I would delete straight away with resentment.

Before opening my first email that day, I took a quick scan along the list of unread mails and that’s when my eyes stopped at an unfamiliar name ‘Nicholas’. “Who on earth is Nicholas? I don’t know any Nicholas. Can this be a scam?” I thought to myself. My instinct told me not to open it, but my guts told me otherwise. Without hesitation, I opened the email from a stranger out of curiosity. A friendly greeting of “Hi Shirley got me wanted to read further. “This guy even knows my name!”

Nicholas invited me to join a4trip as a writer of their guidebook for Pulau Langkawi. Before I made my decision, I visited the website that was provided by Nicholas, to check out what sort of company it was. Despite being uncertain whether it was a genuine invitation, I replied to Nicholas and agreed to his offer. People say that curiosity kills. But, not all the time. I’m glad that I made that reply and now here I am, a proud member of a4trip!

I believe that a great effort will bear a fruitful success. Although a4trip is a newly established company, I believe it will grow as time passes. It’s their sincerity, helpfulness, the love for animals, kindness and friendliness that made me fascinated with their attempt to maximize profits while maintaining the closeness between members.

I see a4friends as a group of nice and friendly people with passions, who are doing what they can to help the company move forward. Besides showing love to the endangered species, this community also devote their time and energy to charity such as donating money to the victims who suffer from the tragedy of Sichuan earthquake. I see a4friends as not only a team that strives for a goal, but also a big family consisting of members from every corner of the world.

Since a4trip is based online, I would suggest a4trip to be advertised in blogs of the members. In order to spread the word of a4trip, it can be done through sponsored blogs or voluntary blogs. Further, reviews from buyers who have used our guidebooks would be a valuable source to win over the hearts of other potential buyers.

It’s a great pleasure to be part of a4trip family. It feels like home…

Sam was excited. With a pair of teary eyes shining vividly amid brownish furs, he was pacing behind Lina impatiently. Waging its tail, he stretched both of his back leg muscles, welcoming me a warm hug to his home, a sweet, lovely home indeed.

“Sam, you are too friendly” Lina winked to Sam, gesturing him to clam down, while she pushed open the door, inviting me to begin my most memorable tour in Kluang… …

I got to know Lina through a4trip when Pin, the founder of a4trip, told me that I am going to work with a very talented graphic designer. We were assigned to complete the first a4trip Siem Reap guidebook. The task was challenging. I am going to strategize the best guidebook content for a4trip guidebook while Lina would illustrate the color theme and map design template.

Weeks over weeks, after several researches, plus continuous comments from Pin and supports from Lina, we have finally outlined the content structure of a4trip guidebook. The experience was like hatching an unlimited potential golden goose egg, which will determine the future of a4trip. Three objectives of a4trip guidebooks are defined, which are Compact Structured, Customer Oriented and Charity Basis.

These 3Cs objectives have finally won us an honored testimonial from a traveler using a4trip Siem Reap guidebook. She quoted that “A4trip Guidebook is best guidebook in Siem Reap and this is a good guidebook should be.”

With the overwhelming positive feedbacks received over the months, we are confident to expand our a4trip guidebook project to all of the destinations in South East Asia by inviting writers and graphic illustrators to join our triumphed force.

7 June 2008, it was about half a year ago later since I have worked with Lina on three guidebooks. I have been hearing about her workplace in Kluang and her lovely dogs. I always wonder about her workplace while typing each character from my laptop over the online messenger. How her work place is in order to supply her on endless creative designs and remarkable masterpieces. Would it be a messy workplace like mine packed with books and manuscripts? Or would it be a funky spotlighted workplace with colorful drawings with rock music playing at the background?

Guess no more and have a second look in the photo. It’s a neat, modern and Swedish designed workplace. An ideal workplace designed by designers for a designer.

This is my first Jungle book, made up of newspaper cuttings related to animals. I started doing this since I was 8.

When it was first captured, villagers gathered in my house and no one can tell what this shy cat-sized, bear-looking, tail-less animal is. We got to know the name one year later- Slowloris, I wish I had Google back then. It died few days after we decided to free it, after 2 years of selfish captivity and showering it with the wrong kind of love.

In those days, encounters with huge tortoise often ends up with the slower one eaten by the fast one. There’s always an exception, the tortoise above was released after a memorable photo session.

My first animal conservation lesson came from my parents. Some animals such as pangolin and porcupine are believed to bring bad luck. Other animals such as snakes and scorpions should be killed without any second thoughts as they pose poisonous threats.

River prawns and small crabs had to be sacrificed before kids understood the importance of protecting animals, no matter how insignificant they might be.

The snake above is taken in Malaysia’s National Park in Pahang. They are lot of foreigners in this national park, especially families. Their kids are taught to love and appreciate these animals.

This Common Palm Civet was captured accidentally. Thanks Andy for its name, Malaysia Carnivore Project. The trap was supposed to capture monkeys that invade into oil palm nurseries. I secretly released it and fortunately no questions was asked by my dad.

This oil palm plantation was originally part of the primitive jungle. It was situated along the route used by elephants when migrating from one spot to another in search of greener pastures. When wild elephants meet men, the conflict begins and the same old story begins. Elephants pay a heavy price for damaging the crops. Penalty includes electrical shock, and in some unfortunate cases, death itself.

Elephants are very intelligent creatures. They can always find ways to defuse an electrical fence and always has their way to tell the plantation owner that “they were here last night”.

This was a visit to The Sumatran Rhinoceros Conservation Park in Sungai Dusun, Selangor. The centre probably had a bad feng shui. The first accident involving a fallen tree killed one of the rhino. Then, another mysterious virus outbreak killed the rest of the herd.

Share with us your animal stories
Read how river terrapins ended up as soap

On Sunday, 9th of June, we managed to catch up with Clarence, our writer for Malacca. The gathering is held at the Geographer Cafe at around 3 pm in the afternoon, as Pin and Chin Seng departed from Kluang at around 1 pm.

An Engineer by training, Clarence works in the semi-conductor industry and is based in the Otak-otak town- Muar.

Unfortunately, we are unable to meet up with Fabien, the mapper who will be working with Clarence on the Malacca Guidebook.

Clarence, we hope you’ll enjoy reading Meatball Sundae!

Here’s our 16-year old Charity Ambassador- Mei Yen, also known as Jojo. The picture above is taken while Mei Yen is working as a volunteer at SPCA Penang. Find more about SPCA Penang at their website www.spca-penang.net

Besides taking care of homeless animals, Jojo is also interested in shopping, blogging, photography and music. She’s also a vegetarian “most of the time”, as she also eat a bit of fish from time to time.

During an email interview, Lim said ,”I am particularly passionate about animal rights so the reason why I’d like to join and become a charity ambassador is the help increase animal awareness among us and all help spread the word. I believe animals deserve to be treated well and I am very against animal abuse.”

Featured above is Barbara, who has recently joined the a4trip Team as a proofreader. She’s now 76 years old, and her birthday is on the 20th of October. Bookmark that in your calendar!

When it comes to good food, Barbara said. “I LOVE having my meals cooked and served by somebody else!”

Marcus and I met our research advisor, Dr. Lee Yee Loon (centre) and his son (left-most) in Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre during the SMIDEX 2008 event. His research focuses on light weight concrete. More showcase can be found online at his Concrete Entrepreneur portal.

After receiving Choi’s SMS that he’d just touched down in Malaysia, the team begin to schedule their plans to meet up with the man.

After a spine-tingling ride (from PJ to KL in less than 15 minutes), Pin and Marcus managed to catch Choi in Tune Hotel at around 10:40 pm. A few weeks back, due to heavy traffic and a little miscommunications, Marcus & Eisen missed the opportunity to meet up with Choi on his brief visit to Malaysia.

This time round, not only did Pin and Marcus “surrounded” Choi with their warm Malaysia-style welcome (which also means being late for 8 minutes), they also managed to convince Choi to try out the popular Malaysian bevearage- Teh Tarik, translated literally as “Pull Tea”.

Apart from translationg the Guidebooks from English to Korean, Choi will also add additional insights for his Korean readers to make the Guidebooks more relevant. Choi stayed in Vietnam for more than 10 years and he is been actively traveling around South East Asia.

Good design is more subtle. Which explains why we believe travelers is the most important factor when we design the system for a4trip. The best thing about our design is… less pages to get things done.

We spend hours, weeks and months to remove shopping cart (yes, sounds crazy!), support right-to-left in Arabic languages… all to make our Cambodia e-Visa service easier. The result was loved by Barbara.

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