Day 2 in Koh Samui – Round island tour

We rented a car and with the help of a map, explored the island.  Our first stop was Wat Phra Yai, home to Samui’s primary landmark, the Big Buddha, a 15m tall statue of the Buddha.  Built in 1972, it is set on Ko Faan, a small islet connected to the shore on the northeast coast of the island.

Nearby is Wat Plai Laem, featuring a striking white 18-arm image of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.  Adding to its feel of tranquillity, the temple is surrounded by a lake, which is teeming with fish.  Other features at Wat Plai Laem include a large white laughing Buddha statue and and an elaborate ubosot (ceremonial hall) set on an island in the lake.

  

We then drove south heading towards Lamai Beach and stopped by this scenic outlook for some photographs.

Next stop was the Hin Ta & Hin Yai aka Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks, so named because they resembled the male and female genitalia, respectively.  The views from the rocks and vicinity are spectacular, stretching across the sea to nearby islands.

The famous Hin Ta & Hin Yai - the resemblance to the male genitalia is much more obvious

She humoured me when I asked her to do the jump :-)

We took a lunch break before continuing our journey to enjoy slightly cooler air up in the hills of the island’s interior.  There were many stops to enjoy the island panorama along the way.

We headed to the Secret Buddha Garden next.  Hidden away high in the hills, the garden houses an unusual collection of statues amid lush jungle surrounds, with a waterfall and stream flowing through.  The garden is a creation of an old Samui durian farmer, who in 1976 began erecting several statues and temples around his family's verdant land.  The statues depict a number of animals, deities and humans in various poses.  He continued developing his garden until his death at the age of 91.

We descended the hills and stopped by Wat Khunaram.  The revered monk of the temple, Luong Pordaeng died in 1973 in a seated meditative position, and since then, his body has been on display in an upright glass case at the temple.  Remarkably, even more than 30 years on, the monk’s body shows little sign of decay.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a local night market for a visual feast of all the street foods on sale.

 Variety of street snacks

There's even wine tasting and cocktail stands

Beautiful view at the end of the stretch of road 

Holiday in Koh Samui – Day 1

The August school holidays will be upon us shortly, and I haven’t even blogged about the trip we made during the June school holidays L  So before it becomes even more stale, here goes…

I bought flight tickets to Surat Thani shortly after Air Asia launched their flights there end of last year.  I was just fiddling around the website and got a really good deal to Surat Thani during the June school holidays so without much thought, I just booked.  I found out later, to my dismay, that Surat Thani IS NOT in Koh Samui, and that we need to get to the ferry terminal in Donsak to take a ferry over to Koh Samui.  I was in two minds whether to proceed with the trip, as I can already imagine the hassle we had to go through to get to Koh Samui, with the two girls in tow.

We went ahead anyhow, fully bracing ourselves for the long journey, and a long journey it was – 1.5 hours by bus to Donsak pier from Surat Thani Airport, and another 2 hours (including waiting time) by ferry before we stepped foot in Koh Samui.  So folks if you are planning to fly to Surat Thani to get to Koh Samui, please think twice.

To our surprise this time, Yan Yan was looking forward to flying, and showed no signs of fear, unlike our trip to Sri Lanka last year.  Back then, she was frightened by the loud roaring engines of the aircraft, and refused to go on the tarmac, and kept crying and pleading to go home.

Looking out at the clouds below

We stayed at Samui Resotel and Spa, a chic resort located at the quiet Southern section of Chaweng Beach.  I love the modern elegance and tasteful furnishings of the resort ground and guestroom.

Our room with two queen beds 

By the time we checked into the hotel, it was already close to dinner time so we walked along the street looking for food, and stumbled across this restaurant, which comes highly recommended from Trip Advisor.  As we were tired, and it was threatening to rain, we went right in.

 Dining by the sea

The girls had fried rice and fried noodles, while hubby and I shared a Traditional Kantoke set, a selection of small Thai dishes – comprising tomyan soup, stirfried kangkung, fried chicken with ginger, charcoal roast duck curry and deep-fried prawn cake with plum sauce served with steamed Jasmine rice.  I thought it wasn’t that good by Thai standard – I guess the restaurant has to serve a toned down version of Thai cooking to suit the palate of Westerners.  Dessert was banana fritters with coconut ice-cream – easily the best dish of the night.

The girls then had their nightly dose of multi vitamins for children` to prep them up for the days ahead.

Moving on

…after a short 1 year 10 months with this company, compared to 10 years 11 months with my previous company.  There were no mixed feelings, no guilt, and no apprehension.  All I felt was a huge sense of relief.  There simply isn’t any emotional attachment to this company, compared to how I felt when I resigned from my first company. 

Of course there’s a sense of sadness for few colleagues whom have made my life here that much more bearable, but I know we will still keep in touch via FB and other means.  The only tears shed were when bidding farewell to a group of regional colleagues at a meeting in Bangkok recently.  We were an awesome group that clicked so well together.

Looking forward to a few weeks break before starting work again – back to the industry I know best!  I have pretty good feelings about this, but as with anything new, there are always uncertainties.  What was truly reassuring was that my future boss, AND the company’s President, took time to call me recently, just to let me know how thrilled they are that I’ll be joining them.  I hope this works out to be a great, long-term working relationship.

In the meantime, Yiu Yiu is thrilled that I don’t have to work for the next couple of weeks.  I’ve been instructed to bring food to her during recess every day J  I also have photos waiting to be edited and photobooks (eight at the last count) waiting to be done.  Lets see how much I can accomplish.

School sports day

We were informed about Yiu Yiu’s participation in her school sport’s day just one day prior to the event.  We weren't informed of the sports day earlier - probably the school only sent invitations to parents of participating students.  She wasn’t slated to participate but due to an extremely unfortunate incident that befell her classmate, she was asked to stand in for her classmate.  Unfortunately I had to fly to Langkawi for work that morning so I missed her first sports day in primary school L

The usual red, yellow, blue and green sports houses

There's also a purple house

There are performances by the school band and taekwando club.

The older children participated in the usual athletics events like sprints and relay, while the smaller children had telematch games.

Yiu Yiu in action 

Oppsie...dropped the ring

Waiting for their teammates to complete their turns

Her class apparently came up last in the event – she wasn’t too disappointed.  That’s good and I keep reminding her that participating is more important than winning.

Yan Yan at three

When Yiu Yiu was born, I wrote down every milestone and always had a camera in hand.  Every memory was captured, every moment cherished, every achievement applauded.  With Yan Yan, sure, I still take photos but we didn't seem to have the time to take quite so many, or mark so many milestones.  When I look into my external hard disk the other day, my second born probably has only a quarter as many photos as her jie-jie.  So you’re looking at a very guilty second time mum here L

So as Yan Yan turned three, I reckoned I had better dedicate a post to her J

Many say she’s growing up looking very much like her jie-jie, and another mini mummy.  Do you agree?

At three, she's holding her own in conversations, and loves to chip in into our conversations by throwing in a question of statement here and there.  One of my favourites is the way she says “Oh yeah!” when we offer her an explanation which she seemingly know.  When she’s in a good mood, she’s ever ready to say “Sorry” when she does something wrong but when the stubborn bug bites, she would just refuse to acknowledge her mistakes.

She can remember entire songs, even Negaraku and 1Malaysia that she hears her jie-jie sing, but of course she doesn’t get all the syllables correct.  At one point, she was obsessesd with watching her jie-jie’s 6-year old graduation ceremony and she could memorize the English welcome speech delivered by one of the students.  She loves dancing too, and always asks to watch a particular VCD of children singing and dancing, and she’ll just boogey along.  She also loves to imitate her jie-jie gymrama moves.

She loves school, and has repeatedly asked to go to school.  We drive past a kindergarten every morning on the way to the babysitter and she always remembers to point that out to me.  Lets hope her enthusiasm is sustained when we actually enrolls her into kindy next year.

She can take off her own clothes and loves choosing her clothes to wear.  She’s also very vain, and can change clothes up to 4-5 times daily.  She tries to stretch her nap time till evening, probably because there are so many distractions at babysitter’s house with three older children keeping her company when they get back from school.  She typically falls asleep around 5+ in the evening despite waking up around 7+ every morning.

At meal times, she can eat as much as her jie-jie, but then again, it could be because her jie-jie eats rather little.  She loves eating fruits and vegetables, and for that, I’m glad.

Since jie-jie sleeps earlier than her these days (coz jie-jie is tired out from being away from home since early morning at daycare), I enjoy the quiet late night moments spent with her.  We will just lie on the bed, with her snuggling close to me and showering my face with kisses.  Or just sitting side by side with her listening to stories on iPad while I go online/work on my laptop.  These are truly precious one-to-one moments with her which I very much cherish.

Hubby’s birthday

Two days after Yan Yan’s birthday, it was hubby’s birthday.  And while having a meeting at work, my department administrative assistant came in with this…

...coz it was also our 8^th wedding anniversary.

And we celebrated with a dinner at Grumps, with yet another voucher that I bought.

  

But Yan Yan wasn’t happy with the celebration, coz there wasn’t any candle for her (or papa) to blow…haha.

Yan Yan turned three

Yan Yan turned three on Sunday.  As I had been away for most of the past few weeks, I hadn’t given much thought to the birthday celebration.  I even managed to forget about pre-ordering any special cake!

Posing at the small patch of garden at our porch

And so, we had a simple family celebration with my clan, and babysitter and her sisters.  Hubby suggested nyonya food and we ended up at this inconspicuous and modestly furnished restaurant, recommended by hubby’s friend.

Sisterly love, when they are not fighting over the iPad, that is :-)

The restaurant turned out to be a gem – food was authentically nyonya, and superbly delicious, without making a huge dent in the pocket.  This restaurant is definitely a keeper.

  

Ju hu char, nasi kerabu, tau you gay, beef rendang, ikan gulai tumis, french beans with shrimps, kerabu lemak sayur paku, fried asam prawns, and popiah

The highlight for the children was undoubtedly singing the birthday song and cake cutting after dinner.  We had grabbed this chocolate cake from RT Pastry House earlier in the afternoon.

This was what jie-jie gave to mei-mei as her birthday present – a box of modeling clay which jie-jie bought from the school’s bookshop with her pocket money, coz mei-mei loves playing with play dough.

Happy birthday Yan Yan.  Mummy hopes you’ll grow up healthy and happy, and be the best that you can be.

Movie outing – Brave

The day after our trip to Putrajaya, we went for a movie outing.  It was a toss between Madagascar 3 and Brave, but for convenience and time, we chose to watch Brave at the nearby mall.

Before that, we went to this shop to redeem this nasi lemak voucher, and it was possibly one of the worst nasi lemak I’ve ever had – the rice was overcooked and too soft that they clumped together, and the fried egg was burnt at the edges.  Luckily the beef rendang and the inche kabin were not bad.

While waiting for the movie to start, we went into Toys ‘R Us and bumped into Teacher Kathleen, Yiu Yiu’s 5-year old kindergarten teacher.  Don’t know what came over her but she was so shy and hardly spoke to her teacher!

After the movie, we redeemed another voucher at Crazy Potato.  It came with one Crazy Sweet Potato Fries, Crazy Potato Fries with a choice of topping (we chose Crazy Meaty) and Tempura Chicken Nugget.  The fries were good, as expected, and so were the chicken nuggets.  The nuggests were so good that Yiu Yiu alone ate six pieces!  Didn’t quite like the Crazy Sweet Potato though.

It was a good day, and it felt like it's been such a looooongg time since I spent quality time with the girls :-(

Floria Putrajaya

I had been travelling a lot lately, and was hardly home during the weekends over the past 2 months.  One of the weekends that I was home, we made a trip to Putrajaya on Saturday night to watch the float parade.  The parade was supposed to start at 8.30pm but by the time we finished dinner and arrived in Putrajaya, it was close to 9pm.  And there was a massive jam going into Precinct 2, where the Putrajaya Lake is located.

We were lucky that we managed to park close by and quickly made our way to the lake side amidst the many stalls and floral exhibition, not to mention the massive crowd.  We went all the way down to the edge of the lake.

Colourful lights illuminating the lakeside

 A shot of the bridge over the lake

Soon after, the brightly illuminated and gaily decorated floats started floating by.  There were two international entries, one from Suzhou and the other from Kenya.  The rest were representating the various states in Malaysia, showcasing the tourist attractions in each state.

Suzhou

Kenya

Langkawi

Johor

Melaka - the least pretty float, in my opinion

Negeri Sembilan

Pahang

Perak, my hometown - not that nice

 Perlis

Sabah 

 Sarawak

Terengganu

 Putrajaya

 Tourism Malaysia

The night ended with a fireworks show at about 10.30pm.

  

 The finale