Bowling with Bubbi

the title actually should be never bowl or play ping pong with bubbi... or ask for a handicap!

These pics were taken before our trip. Now she has a tan.

Nate played well as they have these bumpers that come up for kids. Mine? all longkang (drain) balls.

I tried to take a pic of ike's bumps today, he walked straight into a window pane corner and then later in the day he was playing with nate and hockey sticks and now has a long bump running down his cheek, how a hockey bump can rise above his fluffy cheeks is one of those medical mysteries.

Adventure number 10: Kuala Lumpur

Final stop, KL... got to see my old friends, do a bit of shopping... and bubbi? on the perpetual souvenier hunt. We also celebrated Terry's birthday and he took a day off to take us all to Sunway Lagoon. Its quite fun for kids so we will be back!

Adventure number 9: Gurney Drive and Batu Ferringhi

We get to Penang about midday. Drop in to see Aunty May Ying and Uncle Kok Swee (the singing couple at our wedding), get taken out to Penang Club for lunch. Nate and Ike wolf down their lunch so they can have ice cream and then they eat it under a big big tree. A girl then joins them to play and they play together nicely for an hour, even finding a big sand crab together and chasing pigeons.

We stay at the Gurney Hotel, spacious 2 bedroom apartment and the boys get to bathe in a big jacuzzi. They also had a great children's area, a pool with slides but very cold water. They boys are excited to see dada who arrived the next day. Poor dada came from bangladesh and the flight had strange hours (lift off at 2am) so he had maybe 4 hours of sleep and went to the hotel to sleep.

We drop porpor off at Aunty May Ying's house (she had such a peaceful 2 days there) and we headed out to the beach. Before that bubbi got a cultural tour of Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, the rockerfeller of asia in the 1850s.

The whole beach area had been hard to book as its Arab holiday season, we saw them everywhere, in their black zorro suits. Rather unfair that the women must have been hot and wrapped up and the guys in short sleeves. Another nice pool with slides.

Shopping wise, there was the night market and the batik factory and one other gallery but the bulk of stuff are imports from other countries and just very little "made in malaysia" gifts and souveniers.

The hotel had a very good snake show with 2 pythons and 2 hissing cobras. The kids went to the butterfly park which was also very nice and a big big indoor play area with long slides.

Dada came on friday and left on Sunday. We went back to the Gurney Road hotel, had our fill of char kuey teow. The next morning, we head out to Kuala Lumpur.....

Adventure number 8: Lake Belum

We took alot of tiny roads to get out of Kuala Besut, oh we actually left our passports at the resort, they had to arrange for them to get to us, so in the meantime, mom and I decided to eat durians under the big big tree. These are kamping durians. Apparently this year there is a bumper harvest of durians.

We took very rural roads out of there, with small bridges, buffaloes, padi fields, then the landscape took a dramatic turn as we climbed the titiwangsa range on the second east west highway. Stopping at a new resort halfway to Penang. Unfortunately, the raffleisia (the worlds biggest flower) was not in bloom. Another nice resort for a reasonable price, tho the whole area was made into a dam for "power generation" tho the real reason was to extract the precious logs.

Apparently on this highway at night, the elephants who are still angry at people for taking their habitat, would throw rocks at cars. Many signs on what to do if you come across an elephant herd.

We stayed only a night to then head out to Penang.

Adventure number 7: Perhentian Islands

This was a good idea, tho if we had planned ahead, we could have stayed at the better resort as bubu is a bit overpriced for what it is. They also had a resident Biawak that was not the godzilla size and was the main attraction with many guests.

The water here is so lovely and clear. We took a boat out to a snorkelling beach where nate learned to snorkel and with his flippers was like a fish. We fed them loads of bread and even bubbi and porpor got on snorkelling gear.

I managed to get in 2 dives, the highlights being, a shrimp cleaning station, where tiny tiny shrimp came on my hand to clean and encountering a hawkbill turtle that swam straight up to me. Wish I had time to also do shark bay.

Some of the locals made the boys a grasshopper out of a coconut leaf. We realised that all our lodgings were either by the beach or we stayed on an island. Even in KT, we stayed on Duyong Island.

Adventure number 6: Kuala Trengganu

A short drive to KT, picking up our laundry before hand, on our trip our laundry had gone from M$4.50 per kilo to M$2.50. Bubbi is the prize winner for always finding us a "dobi", we have to put on our dobi eyes but she spots it!

We stop by a kraft place, sad thing about malaysia is that their handicraft is not as good as vietnam or china or thailand. Although there is good silversmiths, the designs are too heavy and not too appealing, I was however quite tempted to get a rattan rocking horse for the boys.

The place we stayed in KT was specially built for the Monsoon cup, very luxurious but very quiet and so the price was very good. We took the boys to a night market and we had satay, all sorts of walk as you eat foods and a good time.

The next day we go to the largest museum in Malaysia, which is quite interesting except its hard to bring 2 kids along. Esp. with one that was screaming for 2 hours, determined to be naked (slight water spot on his shirt), he did finally pass out. It was also on this day that we found chiffon cake, we had been close the day before but they did not bake them on the "weekends" (the northern states follow the friday as day off). The bakery that I tried, looked like a low probability, they even said no then said oh they are right out of the oven (give me two!). It tasted great, not oily like singapore and for the same price instead of a piece I get a whole cake.

One day while Bubs and mom head out at night to use the free internet at the main area, they come across a HUGE biawak (monitor lizard), this one was longer than them and had a tongue like a snake tasting the air.

We also hit the main market and was able to find some bamboo whistles (that I bought to stuff the party packs, sorry in advance to the parent's ears). One afternoon, we thought of going to the beach and found a large park, Ike had a great wake up (ie no whining), wakes up to see a park in front of him, snacks and cool drinks.

We spent 3 nights here and thought Kota Bahru would also be markets and a more run down version of KT, so with a few calls, we managed to book ourselves into Bubu resort on Perhentian.

Adventure number 5 : Gem Island

Now this is truly a Gem of an island, it is tiny and has a small resort on it. Our room is on stilts and on high tide we can even see the fish swim up to nibble the bread we toss in.

They also have a turtle sanctuary and while we were there, one "burrow" hatched with new baby turtles but the tide was too low for us to participate in letting the turtles go. They keep and feed the turtles for about a month, till they get bigger and stronger to be let out but there is no statistics as to whether this is actually better.

The rooms are very nice and the bathrooms also updated. They have a spa and a walk there, one passes a smallish cave with hanging bats. We can also feed the fish at the jetty and they have 2 small private beaches. The boys pick up the sea cucumbers and squirt them like water guns. Then reload by picking up another one.

We were lucky to be able to get in on such short notice.