Chinese New Year 2015

CNY is a time for gathering with family, relatives and friends, with lots and lots of food.  As usual, we headed back to Kuantan first.  On CNY eve, we headed out for our keropok lekor fix, followed by the beach.  I was walking ahead of the girls in the carpark and in an attempt to catch up with me, Yan Yan ran and fell, resulting in bad scrapes on both her knees.  So the beach plan was abandoned, and the poor girl celebrated her CNY with injured knees.  Luckily it dried up pretty quickly and she was up to her usual mischief the next day.

Her scraped knees 

First day of CNY was spent visiting a temple, followed by cendol and rojak as the famous Mustafa Cendol. 

 

Assortment of cookies and snacks prepared by MIL 

In the evening, the girls went out with their cousins for another round of keropok, and a short visit to the Teruntum Zoo, leaving mummy to enjoy a short siesta J 

 CNY will not be complete for the kids without fireworks, and we bought some just because.

 
On the morning of the second day, their 叔叔 took them on a walk around the kampong and the girls enjoyed themselves looking at a variety of plants and insects (pictures below taken by Yiu Yiu). 

They even spotted a crocodile 

As the cousins were due to return to Singapore the next morning, the kids wanted to go to the beach together so off we went.  The girls just LOOOVVVEEE the beach and sea.

After dinner, we celebrated MIL’s birthday with a cake at home.

 

We attended a friend’s open house on the third day and I saw my first lion dance for the year.

 

On the fourth day we made the long journey back to Ipoh, and had dinner with my side of the family, followed by more fireworks.

 

We went back to KL on the fifth day, after making a visit to the now touristy Ipoh Old Town and Concubine’s Street (details coming up in the next post).

Girls' beloved nanny

This is the woman who helps me raise my daughters. She is the reason I can work and travel with absolute peace of mind knowing that my girls are in excellent hands. In the 9+ years that she's been taking care of them, never once have she pulled a long face when we are late to fetch them - and when I say late, it can be really late like 10-11pm if it so happens that both hubby and I have work commitments, though it's quite rare. She even offers to lets the girls stay overnight... when I have to travel to give hubby a break.

She treats them like her own and my girls in turn love her and her family to bits. Yiu Yiu doesn't go there anymore since she started primary school four years back so she always look forward to going to the her house during the school holidays.

Besides taking care of the girls, she also cooks our dinner so I get to eat home-cooked food without having to lift my fingers :-) She's also entrepreneurial, selling home-made moon cakes during Mid-Autumn Festival and prawn crackers during CNY. I seriously don't know where she finds the time and energy to do this, having to babysit during the day.

She turned 55 last week, and we wish her many more years of health and happiness.

I am really blessed to have found such a gem of a nanny. Yan Yan will go into primary school next year and will stop going to her house too, so we are all going to miss her and her cooking.

2014 Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is a time for

Food…

MIL's home-made cookies 

Fun with cousins…

Hanging out by the beach…

Celebrating MIL’s birthday which falls on the 6^th day of CNY…

And fireworks and sparklers!

Central Vietnam trip – Hue and Danang

We checked out from the hotel after breakfast and made a quick stop to visit the large Dong Ba market, before visiting the Tomb of Tu Duc.

The variety of stalls at the Dong Ba market.  Clockwise from top left: conical hat stall, food stall, goldsmith (first time I see goldsmith in a market), stall selling various strings and ropes

Traders of Dong Ba market

Clockwise from top left: White rose apple (first time seeing it), Vietnamese version of cincaluk I guess, some buns, dumplings

Not far from the Tomb of Tu Duc is the incense making village, and we couldn’t resist stopping for some photos of these colourful incense sticks.

We took the Hai Van Pass, a scenic 21km long mountain pass, back to Danang.  Hai Van Pass is the highest pass in Vietnam at 500m above sea level.  Hai Van means “Ocean Clouds”, since the peak of the mountain is in the clouds while its foot is close to the sea.

Train heading to Danang on the Hai Van Pass

Hairpin bends on the Hai Van Pass

 

A fortified gateway on the top of the Hai Van Pass – looks like the entrance to an old citadel.

Back in Danang, we headed to the Linh Ung Pagoda.  Built on the cliffs of Son Thuy Mountain, the temple commands a stunning view of the sea.  The temple has a fine array of white marble statues dominated by a 67-m tall statue of Kuan Yin.

Traditional fishing boats by the beach

We then checked into the hotel for our last night in Central Vietnam, and as it was a gloomy and cold day, instead of going to the pool, we spent some time at the beach.

Girls imitating the pose of the marble statue

Traditional Vietnamese basket boat

After breakfast the next morning, we hit the pool and beach again before bidding Danang farewell.

 Me with mum, and me with girls

Girls with their 小姨姨