we really have to thank Is for suggesting club med ria @ bintan for the june holidays. as it turned out, we had such a wonderful time that we decided to extend our 3D2N trip to one more day, and the deal was made sweeter with the resort’s general manager’s persuasion (and generous offer).

there, that’s the GM, with the GOs. she is truly an amazing person, but more on her later.

you might think, “meh, bintan? what’s so great about it, it’s so near, and for that amount of money, it’s surely not worth it.” well we did spend over $2k for a family of four for a resort merely 45 minutes away from sg. it included not just the hotel rooms (we had two adjoining rooms – one for the kids and one for us) and ferry ride, but well, almost everything else on the resort. food, drinks, kids’ and adults’ activities were covered. and i think most importantly, the superb service from every staff on the resort made the experience especially worthwhile.

lets begin with the food and drinks: FREE FLOW. the spread of food? REALLY good (especially the desserts, OMG). and with breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea breaks, and supper served continuously, you and your kids NEVER go hungry. there are two restaurants, one with a sumptuous buffet (where GOs randomly sit in, dine and have interesting conversations with you); and the other where you order from a menu (overlooking the beach for a more quiet, romantic ambience).

the thing we liked very much about the resort was that it’s very child-friendly. everything seemed to be designed with the child in mind, even their toilets. the bar too had a special section for kids only…

they go to lengths to ensure that kids are well taken care of, so that parents can choose to go do their own things without worrying about the kids. there are scheduled activities if you sign them up at the kids’ clubs (they have different age categories), and you do feel safe with them under the GOs. plus, they’re all so high-energy and entertaining, the kids were simply drawn to them.

aniq was in the Mini Club (4 – 7 years old), and they had things like swimming (in the kids’ pool, which is separate from the main pools), tennis, basketball, games, movies, beach soccer, circus theatre… if your kids like socialising, they’ll fit right in. we were pretty surprised at the large number of kids from toddlers to teens at the resort, actually.

and the best part, they sometimes prepare for performances at night. yes, there’s a show with a different theme EVERY night – one of the highlights of the day, where we kick back after dinner, sip on mocktails and be entertained.

check out the Fashion Show rehearsal…

and on Show night itself…

great fun and exposure for the kids on stage.

oh and so what DID the parents do while the kids were busy? hmm.. i had to admit i was a little lost for a while without the kids making me crazy, so we filled our time by err, eating, exploring, siesta-ing, yoga-ing (we even did aqua-aerobics ha ha), chilling, and… ahem, checking out the GOs with their hot tans. :p

we had a beach party on one of the days, which was really for the kids. they had a tie dye event, danced with the GOs, played volleyball, and indulged in lots of finger foods, sweets and snacks (it’s okaaay, they’re on vacation…).

there were sea sports activities, which i admit i never thought i’d do. aniq and i had our first kayaking experience, and izad had windsurfing and sailing lessons…

the water was very clear, and deceptively shallow, so it was pretty safe for the kids at the beach. in the morning, we fed fishes with bread we pilfered from the buffet. i think the resort probably has the best part of the beach on the island.

and after the beach, we spent plenty of time at the pool. (it’s a month later and i still have them tan lines.)

being on an island, the weather swayed from super sunny to sudden showers, but the resort was always ready for wet weather. as soon as it poured, there was food set up indoors and GOs passing around board games to guests taking refuge from the rain. we were so impressed; the place was a well-oiled machinery.

and it’s all thanks to this lady, the aforementioned GM. not only does she manage the resort, she’s almost everywhere, popping up to talk to guests, hosting the show every night, and as you’d have it, she also dances on stage, in full costume and doing many complicated numbers. and this was the best part – on the Fashion Show night, she’d memorised the names of EVERY single adult and kid on stage who took part (and if you look, there were about 50 or so, some who’d just arrived). don’t know how she does it, she’s got super photographic memory or something. she didn’t even refer to any paper, just jumped right in to introduce everyone with a “give it up for [insert name]! give it up to the beautiful [insert name]!” so on and so forth. everyone was talking about it the next day.

so, yes, our first club med experience was DEFINITELY worth it, nevermind that it’s only 45 minutes away and on a hardly-exotic island.

and the kids? they’re still talking about it. and i’m very sure this’ll rank high up on their list of favourite holidays.

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Untitled, originally uploaded by izadd.

a perfect beach holiday.

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briefly, about our brief trip up to port dickson over the vesak day holiday.

we got confused between The Legend Water Chalets and The Legend International Water Homes, which were right next to each other, the latter being a newer hotel with what appeared to be better facilities and had those talked-about indoor pools within the rooms. our room itself wasn’t too bad, really. (the kids loved the bathtub, but of course.) the homes were built over water, which was something of a novelty.

we didn’t have indoor pools, but there were glass panels on the floor. to, err, look into the water beneath. not that there was much to see…

well, except sludge, at low tides.

i had some explaining to do to the kids about the changing tides and water levels which they observed throughout the day. i hope they don’t remember any of it though. coz i may have made up a few facts along the way…. /sciencefail.

the seaview. i also had to explain why the water was green. i said i’d get back to them. (i haven’t.)

kids needed to be entertained, so we rented some trike karts to explore the place.

there was a small outdoor playground. (there’s a small indoor one too, but the ball pit and lego sets were mostly faded, dusty, and quite sad-looking.) there were a few rabbits for petting, and a common pool, crowded with locals (we joked that since it wasn’t the International Water Homes, it must be the Domestic ones). there were also a few jacuzzis – none of which worked. lol.

the kids wanted to see ostriches, so ostriches we went to see. the ostrich farm was exactly the way we imagined a tourist attraction in a sleepy town would be, heh heh. and no, we did not try any ostrich satays. (who knows whether they’re really ostrich meat? i can’t imagine they’d slaughter any of the limited number of ostriches there for the mere consumption of a handful of tourists each day… ok lah, maybe they’re frozen imports of actual farmed ostriches. but still!)

the boy, ever game to try out something new, had a ride on one of them birds. the poor thing (the ostrich, not the boy) had its eyes covered with a sock so it wouldn’t run amok. he (the boy, not the ostrich) later received a certificate for the ride (for RM3).

now, what’s a trip to malaysia without trying out the roadside fares, right? so says the husband. he was pretty excited when we drove past this ‘cowboy’ place. there were loads of hot, steaming barbecued chicken on display. very clever, i say, coz that sure drew in diners. and at RM5 for a set with rice, soup and drink.

now, let me talk about a perennial problem we had while dining in PD. we had a lot of battles… WITH FLIES. they were not just outdoors, they were indoors too, in the malls where we ate.

they were everywhere, pesky and persistent, and drove everyone, in particular aniq, absolutely crazy (and pissed). LOL.

oh look, it’s high tide again.

bed time. we had two king sized beds. the kids watched episodes of CSI and House with me till late at night. i’ve been missing out on a lot of tv. (when did grissom and sara get married?? and house is sleeping with cuddy?!)

we drove up to KL for a night since it’s less than an hour away from PD, and stayed near Berjaya Times Square which had an indoor theme park. it wasn’t too bad – the rides were mostly kid-friendly, and since there was hardly a crowd (just a handful of tourists), there was virtually no queuing time, so the kids could go on the rides again and again and again. mummy and daddy had to try the monstrous-looking roller coaster, so we got one of the counter girls to watch the kids (who were bribed with cotton candy to stay still) while we went on it. (i am glad to report that no children were lost/kidnapped during this time.)

as is tradition when a trip to KL materialises, i had my fix of Carl’s Jr. burgers. (i can NEVER make up my mind when choosing from the menu, to the husband’s frustration. so hard when you have limited time and stomach capacity!) drove up to The Curve in damansara and had one of our favourite things – Bubba Gump’s shrimps.

THE END.

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had a last-minute inspiration about oh… five days to her birthday.

cookies and cake by NCakes.

owls often symbolise intelligence, wisdom, knowledge – plus, they’re REALLY cute. (and ok yeah, there’s a literary reference too: Owl Babies is one of my favourite children’s books, makes me teary every time, sniff.)

pink (her favourite) and black (my favourite) hoot loot. well, i had to compromise.

treated the kids to a stay at royal plaza on scotts over the weekend, and had close family members over for high tea at carousel.

just a commoner… ;p

cake compliment of Carousel.

the brother who still refers to his sister as “my baby”.

the coincidentally colour-coordinated grandparents, heh.

many eligible princes.

the maids-in-waiting.

yes, even he likes to squeeeeeze her. a lot.

the royal plaza people were so kind as to help set up some chairs and a table at the pool side for a small party in the evening.

night owls.

sleeping beauty was forced to wake up from her slumber power nap to blow out the candles…

and pose for insufferably many pictures.

the mommies.

the children.

kate middleton she may not be, but marry a prince… who knows?? :D

happy turning terrible terrific three, my owl baby.

ps: thank you guys for celebrating with us!

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… fills our weekends lives.

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iced teas!, originally uploaded by izadd.

after much rumination and a month away from her birthday, we decided to do away with a ‘big bash’ (and all the headaches that come with planning one) and do something else for family only. we think she’ll really like one part of the plan too coz she’s been mentioning it a lot. it starts with the letter “H”… :D

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visit relatives – check!

the last i’d visited my aunt in brisbane was 16 years ago, and she was kind enough to have us stay over at her new place for the last few days of our trip, where the kids got to know my two young teenage cousins, noorida and caliph. aniq & especially auni were absolutely smitten by caliph, and followed him EVERYWHERE… so, it was pretty easy when we had to do our ‘thing’ on one of the evenings – they didn’t even look for mommy and daddy. pfft! :p

it wasn’t too hard to occupy them, really. there was a swing set, a slide, a pool, and mcdonald’s nearby… which was how we made our ‘getaway’ for the evening, when they were ‘lured’ by my aunt with ice-cream and fries and a big playground… and later xbox games and toys at home.

come husband, let’s buy a piece of suburbia here…

and maybe i can get me one of these too??

addendum
i guess i could mention here two things on my personal agenda which i didn’t get to do.

i) i had the idea to visit a local day care centre since i was in the suburbs, just for the heck of it. (we passed by so many!) the australians are very child-centric, and they’ve a strong focus on quality early childhood services, so i was really interested to see for myself how a typical centre looks like on the inside. my aunt herself has family day care experience and looked after young kids at home (before she got bored and looked for other challenges). but we eventually just couldn’t find the time to formulate and execute a plan for this ‘look-see’ mission of mine.

ii) since my aunt is also a yoga enthusiast, i’d wanted to go to one of the classes with her. but she kept leaving for the gym at like, 5 in the morning (?!) and by the time i woke up, she’d already be back home, getting breakfast ready for us. i swear the women on my mum’s side of the family are all superwomen. (i skipped that gene.)

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the little traveller, originally uploaded by izadd.

there were a few things on my checklist of Things To Do While In Australia (generic, touristy stuff, really), and though i’d done most of it before, it’d be different because this time, i was participating as a parent instead of a child, so they were almost new experiences all together, seeing things afresh, through their eyes.

perhaps some day, they’d come to treasure the opportunities we afforded them. and i hope we’ll continue to be able to bring them out into the world, be it near or far, and let the wanderlust bug bite them just as it did me.

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he’d been looking forward to “10 december” for some time, but we were on the plane back from brisbane on that day, so with the ‘jet-lag’ (ha ha) and all-round laziness that usually ensues after a trip, “10 december” only happened the day after, with a proper birthday present…

and a proper birthday cake…

this year’s theme inadvertently turned out to be wheels-related this time – from the box of hot wheels i got him in australia, to a ferarri car garage his uncles got him, to the bicycle from his daddy, to the Cars cake he chose at swensen’s. (didn’t i say i love themes? even totally unplanned ones!)

happy fifth, firstborn. may your ride through life always be an adventurous and exciting one. (but be safe and NO MOTORBIKES when you’re older, ya hear?!)

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in a fit of nostalgia, i’d raided mum’s photo albums this evening, which made up mostly of badly-taken photos of our family travels throughout the years. every time i look through them, i’d lament at how awful the photos were, and worse, how awful i looked in ALL of them. (which is why i’m thankful mum keeps them in a cupboard, out of sight from visitors. :p)

i wonder if some day in the future, my kids will look at the gazillion photos we took of them and think the same. i can imagine the conversation now.

adult daughter: “mummy, WHY did you make me wear those awful crocs when i was small? what’s with those awful dresses and tights? how could you let me keep that awful hairstyle? why wasn’t i wearing make up?? HOW AWFUL.”
aged me: -____-’

so my first plane trip happened when i was about two years old, visiting a relative in Perth. of course i don’t remember anything of it, if not for the photos. but i think the camera must’ve hated toddler-me, or vice-versa, because i couldn’t find a full picture of my face anywhere.

evidence below.

partially hidden by giant panda (can you see the auni resemblance?):

partially hidden by ferry bench (my late dad in his corporate tee or whuuuut, heh):

partially hidden by hand (check out the cool stroller-thingy circa ’79, looks more like a lawn-mower):

skip a few years ahead, and we find ourselves on our first visit to brisbane and gold coast. why did i surface these? well, it’s 22 years later now and whaddaya know, we’re flying off tomorrow to the same destination… but more on that later.

so, gladly, these photos were taken from afar. i’d entered the awkward tween years. urgh.

we headed there again in ’91 to visit an aunt who’d started staying there. by then, i’d entered the awkward teen years, coupled with myopia. double urgh. but i did find this sweet photo of my parents in a very rare display of ACTUAL PHYSICAL CONTACT. ha ha.

in ’93, the said aunt gave birth to, back then, the most gorgeously grumpy but adorable half-matsaleh baby i’d ever seen, so we went to visit, this time with my grandparents. trivia 1: my grandma and i each have a mole above the right upper lip, and my mum has one on her left upper lip. i’d hoped auni would inherit a mole like her grandma, just to, ya know, form an awesome genetic pattern or something, but unfortunately it’s not meant to be. (… unless moles appear later in life?) trivia 2: this tub of chub (the baby! not me) is now a 17-year-old babe. i’ll be seeing her on this coming trip, and she’ll be babysitting MY babies this time.

as i’d mentioned in an earlier post, i’d bought tickets to watch U2 live in concert on my birthday (!! – yes, still not believing it), so i simply had to dig these up, from circa ’96 and ’98 (NEVER MIND HOW AWFUL I LOOKED)…

(notice how bono had ‘moved’ further away from touching distance the second time i visited him, tsk.)

okaaayyy, so it was his wax figure that i was ogling/fondling at london’s madame tussauds lah, whatever, that ‘bulu’ on his arm felt Even Better Than The Real Thing heh heh.

anyway, our bags are packed, we’ll be BNE-bound at 3.15pm, and how apt is it to end this post with this video? :)

see you guys in two weeks…

“you’ve been all over… and it’s been all over you”

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, originally uploaded by izadd.

“selamat hari raya… kain tu betulkan sikit, makcik….” (though she will flatly deny the label ‘makcik’ and correct you with an “i am princess!!” whatevuhhhhh.)

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recap on our trip to shah alam, selangor, 2 weeks ago:

1) it was my first drive on malaysian roads – i don’t know why i never attempted this in all my years of driving. but it really wasn’t very exciting despite the speedometer hovering at 140km/h. felt vair sleepy, in fact. even now while i’m typing this out i feel sleepy at the thought of driving on a malaysian highway in daylight. we made a pitstop at the restoran jejantas for A&W. had a coney dog. it sucked.

2) we stayed at concorde shah alam, and it’s so convenient because my uncle’s house is just a five-minute ride away from the hotel. and what do kids love most about hotels? why…

of course.

3) the first thing we spotted as we made the turn into the hotel was the big SUBWAY sign at the shopping centre next to it. joy! (yes, we singaporeans are so deprived of halal eateries that malaysia’s Subway, Tony Roma’s, Carl’s Jr. etc are like holy grails. speaking of which, our biggest regret that weekend was discovering too late that there was a Carl’s Jr. outlet at Midvalley Megamall after we’d just eaten at Nando’s. unfortunately, we weren’t gluttons enough to go for a second round of dinner.)

4) yes, there was even a Krispy Kreme. which you don’t have in singapore, so that makes it something you covet, and will have you INSIST that the donuts are SO much nicer than [insert any other donut franchise in singapore]. i’m not a donut person so i say, “meh”. anyway, this shopping mall was also where we lost aniq. yes, lost. not that it was a very big place to get lost in. we were browsing in a bookstore and my brother wanted to go back to the hotel with his kids, and our aniq, in his usual impulsive way, ran along with them, without any of our knowledge, and then changed his mind halfway and turned back, but couldn’t remember where we were, and we thought oh, he’s probably just with his uncle, but in actual fact, was now with a security guard and a tissue paper soaked in tears in one hand. and we wouldn’t have seen him if we’d turned to walk the other way, and he’d probably have been sold off to a child labour syndicate somewhere in malaysia right now if we hadn’t found him then.

it wasn’t the first time this happened in singapore, so yeah, we’re negligent parents.

moving on… the wedding!

5) who would’ve thought the little girl i played Barbie dolls with would turn out to be a doctor? she still looks so.. little! (she’s tiny, i think even tinier than me. we share the tiny genes in our family. but unfortunately not the smart-doctor genes. sigh.)

6) malaysian weddings are just as lively as singaporean weddings. except there weren’t any noisy music and deejays and people croaking on karaoke (phew). there was a theme (turquoise, obviously), a home-made dais, nasi minyak, bunga manggar (which my sis-in-law and i did, ok! ha ha –> loser rewang contribution), the renjis-renjis custom, etc. ’twas pretty traditional and low fuss. well, the biggest fuss probably happened when the groom came and we blocked him like, 3 times, the poor chap. it’s such a funny tradition, this, blocking the groom for money. and just like how you’d bribe a police officer at malaysian road blocks, that’s what happens at these ‘tolls’.

7) that’s the matriarch. she sure has been through a lot, including the deaths of two adult sons (including my dad), and a grandchild (one of the bride’s younger brothers, who was a victim of a road accident a few years ago), the births of 8 great-grandchildren, and of course let’s not forget the japanese occupation….

long live the Queen! :)

8 ) our small singapore contingent in the sea of malaysian relatives and guests.

congrats to najwa & mubarik – we await their addition to this clan…

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