Puzzling World Wanaka

During our short time in Wanaka, Michelle brought me to Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World, one of the most well-known tourist attraction in New Zealand. The place is just two kilometers from Lake Wanaka near the town, where we stayed for the night. This world unique attraction that specialises on puzzling eccentricity can be considered a must-see attraction in the South Island of New Zealand.

As soon as we arrived at Puzzling World, we instantly noticed its crazy architecture. One of them is the Leaning Tower of Wanaka. This whole tower leans at an incredibly 53 degrees to the ground, that makes it looks impossible to balance on one corner. It seems that this tower managed to defy the laws of physics, especially in gravity and moments. As a comparison, the Leaning Tower of Pisa only leans six degrees.

Puzzling World near Wanaka, New Zealand.

The photogenic Tumbling Towers, added in 1994. 

The Leaning Tower of Wanaka at the front lawn, which was built in 2000.



The unique Back To Front Clock.



Puzzling World has possibly the world's best puzzling and illusion museum.

One unique features of the clock on the Leaning Tower is that this New Zealand backwards clock has been moving backwards since the eve of the new millennium; something that we didn't realise when we were there.

Upon getting the tickets and walk pass the entrance gate, we came to the incredible Illusions Room, a place where one needs to see it to believe it. Each and every rooms are unique and is an illusion on its own right. The first room was the Hologram Hall, where there is a huge collection of amazing 3-D holograms. We have to stand at the right angle to see the full-effect of the holograms, which means tall people like me should bend down, while shorter people have to stand a little bit further away.

One of the holograms in the Hologram Hall.

Entrance to the Hall of Following Faces illusion room.

The seven famous faces that are used in this hall. Can you name every one of them?

These faces seems to turn and follow us around the room when we walk from faces to faces. Cool (and a bit scary haha!), isn't it?



There are 168 giant models of those seven famous faces on its spherical wall.

The Mona Lisa portrait is famous because of the way the eyes follow us. However, in this unique hall, the whole face appear to rotate and follow us left and right, up and down. Another amazing illusion in this hall is that although the faces are concave (inwards), they can appear to be convex (outwards).

Next was the Ames False Perspective Room. The technique of this illusion was used in The Lord of the Rings film to create tall people and little people. The shape of this room is totally distorted although when viewed from outside through a window, the room looks perfectly normal.

The Ames False Perspective Room is as the background.

Looks like just a normal room, isn't it?

Now you see a short giraffe.

Then suddenly, it grew ten times taller than the Twin Towers haha!

Look at how short Michelle is lol!

Two interesting aluminum puzzles, which were made from one sheet of metal without being joined or welded.

Elephant-to-be with elephants haha!

Christmas is just around the corner and poor Santa has a big problem.

The next room was the Tilted House. The room is built not horizontally but tilted at an angle of fifteen degrees. 

We will think that it is a usual room and all the displays inside are normal. However, when we walked into the room, we could not go straight and felt the gravity as a strange sensation. The illusion is so strong that our brain is convinced the room cannot be sloping. The brain straightens up the room at the expense of the displays that seem to hang at impossible angles.

:)

There is only one true level line in the room and it is the level that Professor Puzzle is holding!

Roll a cue ball on the left side and the ball will roll upwards to the right!

 


Here is a video of the cue ball.

Still standing straight haha!

The water looks like running uphill, against the gravity. The truth is that it is running downhill, one degree to the right.

After going around the illusion rooms, we went outdoor for several more attractions. Michelle insisted me to visit the public toilet there. It made me curious why she die die wanted me to go there. Anyway, on our way there, there were also many posters with magnificent paintings by M. C. Escher on the walls.

So, we finally reached the public toilets. You must be wondering what the hell would we wanna visit such place. But believe it or not, this entertaining Roman-style toilets is probably the most photographed toilet in New Zealand.  Apart from the usual ladies and gents, there is a third room - the Roman-style toilets!  Before entering the actual toilet, we arrived in this big hall where we saw a very realistic painting of people using the toilet. They are designed to replicate Roman-style ablutions with a magnificent Diorama (mural).

Posing with the monkey statue (who uses Fair and Lovely, I think haha!) under the monkey tree.

Someone's having constipation in the Roman-style toilets haha!

We save the best for the last - the world's first modern-style Great Maze (Labyrinth). This maze consists 1.5 kilometers of passages and it is estimated that on average, it takes 30 minutes to an hour to complete it. There are two challenges in this interesting puzzle; one is simpler and the other is harder.  There are emergency doors for those with limited time, patience or energy, so one can quit whenever they want.

We tried solving the maze by taking up the simpler version. However, for someone like me who had short-term memory lost problem, it was almost a nightmare to require me to remember all the passages we have passed by. Luckily, Michelle was there and most of the time, it was her who took the lead while I tried to peek through the tiny holes between the walls lol!

Too bad somebody complained that she was hungry already after almost half an hour. So, in the end, we didn't manage to complete it and exited the maze through one of the emergency doors, disappointed. However, we still managed to reach three of the four coloured corners where on most of the time, I cheated by using my giraffe height to look over the wooden walls to see if the passage leads to a jalan mati (dead-end) haha!

The Great Maze - Labyrinth.

Most of the time, it looks like you are very close to reaching your target-location, but in the end you find yourself coming to a dead-end!

We tried the standard challenge, in which we had to locate the four corner towers.

One of the four corner towers - the yellow tower.

These two ang moh look like they are lost haha!

It is unusual to see a maze which has two-storey. Photo taken from here.

We managed to conquer the green tower!

Last but not least, we spent some time at the lawn of Puzzling World to camwhore with the crazy structures there. I don't think there is even one person who has been to Puzzling World and did not take a photo with him holding or doing something stupid with the Leaning Tower of Wanaka.

I decided to be a bit siao, hence this pose below.

Wow, I can support the whole tower with only my butt lol!

In all, it was a great experience and recommended for everyone.

Universal Festival 2010

A very simple poster of the University Festival, held at the Keyaki Hall.

One of the main events organised by the Centre of International Research and Study in Chiba University (千葉大学国際教育センター) is the biannual Universal Festival, an event where international students introduce their country to everyone, especially to the Japanese. This festival was first introduced in 1995 as the centre's main event of the year, with the cooperation of the international students and Chiba University International Student Group (CISG) (千葉大学国際学生会).

For the second edition of this year's festival, the international students from Nepal and Vietnam were the two countries that gave a presentation about their countries' culture, people, food, festival, dances, places of interests and many more. Besides that, there was also a special traditional dance performance by a South Korean student.

The pamphlet of the event.

The number of international students in Chiba University from each continent.

Before the presentation of each country started, there was a special presentation by CISG about how international students think about Japan. There were slides shows and videos taken while they interviewed the international students. Among the questions asked were their image on Japan before coming to Japan, how those images changed when they reached Japan, and problems they faced while living in Japan. This is the part where I feel was one of the most interesting part throughout the event.

There was this Thai girl, who just came to Japan recently and one of her wish is for the Japanese to talk slower to her because she couldn't catch them. They way she said that with her sympathetic facial expression was just too funny haha! But the pick of the lot is a couple of Chinese boys, whom one of them gave a really "honest" answer when was asked if he faces any problems while in Japan.

"Yes, I'm facing a problem. A big, big problem. I still don't have a girlfriend. I came to Japan two years already, but still couldn't get a girlfriend. The reason? I don't know myself" haha!

The Koreans, whom one of them lamented that the Japanese are sometimes too polite lol!

The rest of the international students who participated in the interview. Guess which one is the girlfriend-less guy haha!

Next was a presentation by Pralhad Uprety from Kathmandu, Nepal. He was a university lecturer before coming to Japan to do his PhD in Engineering, and his research is about earthquake study.

Mention Nepal and I bet the most we know about the country will probably only be Mount Everest. But the country is more than just Mount Everest. Although the country is one-third as big as Malaysia or Japan, the population is just approximately 30,000 people. I am not gonna give every details about the country, because you can always refer to Wikipedia.

The Nepalese flag has a unique shape, unlike the usual rectangle-shape.

Various geographical features of the country.

Two Nepalese who holds the Guinness World Records; the world's smallest person and the world's oldest person to climb Mount Everest.

The Nepalese food has influences from India and China.

Nepal is where the Lord Buddha was born.

A traditional dance from Nepal. This girl is actually the wife of Pralhad.

I find that the music and movements are very similar to Indian dance haha!



A special performance by a Korean student, who performed a traditional dance called sanmo.

Performers wear a hat with long ribbon attached to them, where they can spin and flip in intricate patterns by moving their heads.

He got one audience to join him on the stage.

The final presentation was by the Vietnamese students. There were a couple of Vietnamese students during my kosen years and every time I hear them speak their language, I just feel that they are speaking Thai. "Keng keng top tap, kop kap kap kap"> Something like that haha! If there is any Vietnamese who are reading this, please don't get offended, alright? It was just meant as a joke. I have asked them before and apparently, the two languages are totally different. Yet, to us who don't understand the language at all, I am sure we cannot tell the differences.

It is something like my Mom, who often tell me she cannot differentiate Korean and Japanese, which we all know are completely two different languages!

The country is something like Chile, narrow and long.

One of the seven World Heritage Sites in Vietnam - Halong Bay.

Tết is the Vietnamese New Year, in which the culture is very much influced by the Chinese culture.

The most important food is bánh chưng, made of glutinous rice, mung bean, pork and other ingredients.

A tradition which has been passed down for thousands of years - the famous and unique water puppet.

Two food that best represent Vietnam - Phở, a rice noodle soup and gỏi cuốn, summer roll consisting of pork, shrimp and herbs wrapped in rice paper.

The food differs according to regions - in the northern region, the food are generally spicy and salty, while most food from the southern region are sweet.

A traditional dance where dancers hops through the bamboo sticks.

 I think this dance is quite familiar to us. Anyone have any idea what is it called in Malaysia? (edited: thanks to "loyal reader", I got to know that this dance is called the Magunapit dance, popular among the Murut in Sabah.)

The performance was joined by several Japanese students as well.

Right after the presentation session, it was a culture-exchange party.

The table offering Vietnamese food was the most crowded with people haha!

Fried summer roll, I think. It is eaten with some sweet and sour sauce. Crispy outside, soft and juicy inside; very nice!

Sweet corn with dried prawns. Not bad as the sweetness from the juicy corn combines well with the salty dried prawns.

Futomaki-matsuri-zushi (太巻き祭り寿司), the regional cuisine that represent Chiba prefecture. Even simple food like rice are made into such cute and attractive shapes of hibiscus and Anpanman.

While I was looking at those sushi on the table, one old lady who was standing there (she was one of the volunteers who made those sushi) asked me, "Yes boy, interested to learn how to make them?" haha!