Sungkai Sg Klah Hot Springs.

Knowing this place since CNY from my dear friend, we finally made our first visit to that 6mil refurbished tourist attraction.

It's easy to find the place, just go on the North South Highway either from KL or Ipoh, and exit Sungkai. (Sungkai is not Sg Wang, ok? And it's not only a stopover for toilet breaks and McD tarpao lunch!) After the toll, the signboard to the place is noticeable, unless you are THAT blurr.

Accommodation is available, my brother inlaw and his wife bought a hotel room voucher to check it out while we look see look see first.

Newer additions are some 1 to 3 bedroom villas with personal jacuzzi like the private family spa in the hot springs park. Picture of that will come later. The villas look good for a nice secluded big family gathering, but checking the price, it is too expensive for our liking.

We reached the place at about 3pm, and had a durian picnic on the lawn of the hotel with my inlaws. Lucky didn't get shoo-ed by the hotel staff. Though it didn't quite look the right thing to do, the durians were damn good.

Then we headed over to the hot springs park and boy! the weather was too hot and humid to be enjoying a hot steam bath.

The park has a big hot pool, some smaller "tubs" for foot therapy, an egg-boiling section, a boardwalk and the family private spa.

During MY's visit, I remembered she blogged that they do not sell eggs there. So I made sure we had brought along eggs. But they had improved, they indeed are selling eggs there, at 40cents each. We should have brought kicap cair, pepper as well. That would be yummier when eating the freshly boiled egg. Can try half boiled eggs too, if you like. That would be so fun! Other food can also be boiled, but not vegetables. You know why?

Pools for foot therapy. It was quite comfortable soaking our smelly feet in there. If some dead-skin fish eaters can stay alive in there and help to clear our dead skin as well, that'll be even better!
The big pool for swimming. It would be great if the weather is cool. Look for rainy days to go visit.

The kids getting bored after awhile jor. It's not very fun actually. After too much hot soaks, the head would get a little dizzy actually.

We then walked around the rest of the place and checked out the boardwalk.

The stream where hot water flows from the source to the pools.



And finally, we paid for 1 hour of private spa, all of us stripped naked. It felt realllll good. Can shower as well before going home. (Want to see a picture of us soaking in there?)

We went to Tg Malim for dinner and by then, the children were all konked out. I was too, it had been too long ago I slept in a long journey. Suddenly I felt a pang of nostalgia. It was night, and I was too comfortable, the radio was playing some familiar songs in chinese and cantonese accompany my growing up years and the ambience was just too peaceful and relaxing. Will we go there again? I think so.

Late night movie with the kids.

Hub wanted to watch Transformers long before it was shown. And then he went to overseas business trip. And then we went back to Ipoh for the weekend. And so, last Friday was perfect to go for a movie, finally.

I let the kids slept thru passed 6.30pm on their afternoon naps that day, as the tickets I bought were for the 9.30pm show. Which means we would be only finishing off at midnight. That's quite a "first-time" for us indeed. First time for the kids to stay up till so late outside and first time for me to "loosen up" on their routine. It's a nice feeling though.

Hence, I was really looking forward to it. Still had time to cook dinner and wash things up. And we eagerly took a quick shower and change to half-pjs, half gaigai clothes to the cineplex. It was very cosy, as we sat at the 4 far right seats, with didi happily got his own seat at last. Both the boys enjoyed the show tremendously, didi shouting out jubilantly "YAY, Bumblebee saves the day".

During a scene where some ass was shown, koko quickly covered my eyes, which really tickled me. Why did he do that, eh?

On another scene, Obama's name was mentioned and both papa and koko instantly turned to me and muttered "OBAMA??".. Eh, I didn't write the script, ok?

And meanwhile, meimei fidgeted all over me and expectedly, didn't quite enjoy the show. I wished it was papa she was sitting on, but she didn't want him. That's one disadvantage of her being clingy to me the most. Anyway, I am not complaining. Will be patient for her to grow up bigger and enjoy watching movies later.

Supposedly a post of pictures only.

Oh dear! I just realised I've made a grave mistake of deleting the pictures from the memory card. I thought I had saved it up into the hard disk while I cleared them from the cam and now all those pictures couldn't be found. CY, I AM SO SO SORRY!!!!

Those are pictures my bro took from a day trip to the Camerons. I've browsed through them, and some are really cute and beautiful. (At least I took a look and all remained as images in my memory only now, what a pity)

And we made a trip to visit an old abandoned tin dredge (kapal korek) in Tg Tualang, Perak. It's a very interesting trip and I definitely snapped some nice pics of the kids and my dad too. SOB! SOb! Sob!! I am sooooooo sad...

After which, we made a pit stop to eat the famous big-head-prawns of Tualang, and the food pics would make you droolllllll... The food was so darn delicious and it wasn't expensive either. We stuffed ourselves damn full. Yeah, the waistline kembang so much after just a weekend.

It didn't help that they were around for another few more days which meant I were to skip my yoga classes and go for more filling breakfasts with them. Not that I'm complaining. I had a good time with them, after all the last I'd seen them since was a year ago.


Another highlight during the weekend in Ipoh was the meeting up with Dawn, one of my good friend in Form 3, who came back from US for a visit. There were other aunties around too, and these aunties made such noise that their children would be shocked to see! Oh my! Who cared. The main point is to let our hair loose and enjoy ourselves. I didn't have any pictures, but it's so easily retrieveable from FB (other people's cam)

Ahhhhh.... I still can't believe those pictures are gone forever! boo hooo hooooo.....

Birthday tea party.

It's koko's 9th birthday! And everyone gathered for a tea party here.

Busy entertaining the guests.
(didi and meimei arrange the party for them)

Even Transformers so give face.
(didi made this, btw, he loves to play these toys more compared to koko)

And so, it was just another ordinary day other than the extraordinary guests for the tea party. Went to school, came home, showered, took a nap, went out to choose his own cake, had dinner, finished off homework and played Wii with a friend who stays downstairs.


Guess it was a far cry from the previous years' parties we arranged for him, but he didn't complain. At least he got his electronic dictionary and we went to Chillis the Saturday before. And papa promised for a Tony Roma's dinner someday when he's back.

Oh, the cake, orange Italian cheese cake was sinfully delicious.. And koko reminded me to leave some for papa. The kids miss them. I do too. But I'm so in dilemma, should I let him in when he's home, or shoo him out to go and self-quarantine for 7d7n before he comes back and hug hug kiss kiss? Or is it ok to just take the risk and let him in? Then hug+kiss seem not-right, no hug+kiss also seem not-right. How? Just hug+kiss and whole family self quarantine together? Might as well go for a 7d6n holiday then. hmm.....

Random pictures from their lens

Recently, I let the kids explore their creativity through the lens by letting them having some fun with my camera. And here's some pictures selected from the hundreds they had been snapping.

A very basic phone I use, since I won't be so heart-ache if I lose it.
And I like it slim, so I can tuck that into my jeans pockets.

Singapore Museum and my nephew so tall liao. He was our tour guide that day.

Pink tanks. For sissy soldiers.

What we had one of the nights in Sinkapor.

Her Royal Highness.

And Her royal toys.

V sign!

Come, let's sing some nursery rhymes.

Go! Go! Green Fun Family Day..

.. is organized by didi and meimei's preschool. It was supposed to be held on the Sunday right when the school holidays started in end of May, but was postponed to today. I feel glad about the postponement as we would have missed it for our Spore trip if it hadn't. And it turned out to be a fun and enjoyable Sunday morning for me and the kids. Too bad papa wasn't here as well.

The venue is Bukit Jalil Recreational Park, and it was our first time at that park. Surprisingly, the park looks very nice. The weather was very favorable as well, and it was quite a crowd on a Sunday morning there. There were people jogging, running, bicycling, taichi-ing, badminton-ing, fighting, lovemaking, kiting, camwhoring...

It was a long walk to the preschool gathering place, apparently, there are 2 carparks there, and I had chose the wrong one!

The preschool put much effort to turn this into a fun event for old and young alike, with a warm-up of zumba dancing from the teachers' lead. Quite just nice as there's a higher "platform", serving like a stage.
The teachers are all very young, energetic, pretty and "sock", of course, they are caring and love children too. Can see from their smiley faces everyday when dropping them off in the mornings and picking them up after school hours.

We had some games, which include both parents and children's participation. Very nicely coordinated.



Each family brought picnic mats and food along. With the cooperative weather and the shade from the trees around, it was very enjoyable and pleasant.


In between the various games and treasure hunt, children burnt their extra energy running around, parents lazing on the mats, chatting up with each other, most likely bragging about their kids' results (I'm one of them, blek!), and teachers playing with their students, and snacking on the food.

The treasure hunt was very entertaining and fun, with koko helping me out to find the answers to the questions. It's his first treasure hunt, and he admitted it was very fun, though hot and exhaustive in the end. I had so much fun myself, I'm thinking right now to get together some friends with their families and play it as well. Furthermore, the place is a good place to take pictures indeed, and I didn't had the time to take some for my kids. I can't wait to go back to that park again.

It was noon when we finally get going, I didn't even realize time flew by. It sure does when you are having fun! We went home, have a shower and went out again to have lunch with their paternal grandma and her whole entourage of gang to accompany someone on her first day in UM. Then we came back and totally knocked out!

Having fun ourselves

Heiz.. hubby had to postpone his trip home and left us all fending to ourselves over the weekend. I don't have much problem with that, but I don't quite like sudden changes almost at the last minute.

But what to do, have to tolerate for awhile. Koko has a replacement class today, and we sent him to school as usual, just that this time when we returned, we need not rush to get the other 2 for their lessons. I planned to take them to the wet market and stock up the food a bit, but the carpark was really overloaded with cars, spilling them into the side of the roads too.

So, I detoured and went to our favorite hakka mee stall for breakfast. It was a very leisure morning with them, and I enjoyed it. I thought the traffic might have cleared a bit at the market by then, but it wasn't really, and it was getting hot, so I thought, WTH, just go home and try my luck another day. I know it that it's not so advisable going to the market in the weekend, as it's normally too crowded.

We went home and I surfed the internet a bit while the kids lazed around watching TV. Life's good for them. By 1, it was time to pick koko from school. As I *beat chest* promised a neighbour to pick his daughter home for him as he's in Spore, I queued along with other cars on that road to the school, snaking my way there for almost an hour. Geez! Really not easy if I were to do that everyday in the scorching heat.

Then we headed to our favorite nearest mall, intending to just have a simple lunch there and suenpin grab some stuffs. I asked the kids what they would like to have and usually it's koko who's more suggestive. Remembering hubby's going to miss celebrating koko's brithday together with us this year, and I was longing to pamper myself a bit after slogging for a whole week here in the kitchen, we went to have my favorite lamb. It was another one pleasurable and enjoyable meal together with them as the ambience was so comfortable. They love the food and didn't fuss at all. We made it without me shouting or yelling at them at all, amazingly.

In the car, I talked to koko about his birthday this year. I said papa is not going to be home in time to celebrate it with us, so how? He suggested to delay it for just one day since it's just a day difference. I said that's not going to be special then lor. He said that's ok la. I said why don't we get a cake on that day and just leave 1 piece for papa, is that ok? He asked what cake it's going to be and can he get to choose what kind of cake he wants? I pulled his leg a bit and said I should be the one to choose, since I had to sacrifice to let the doctor cut open my tummy on that very day to let him out wor (have to keep reminding him that every year! brainwashing...) ... Then he said "But I let you chose what kind of cakes to eat for the first few years already!!!" Wahhh... his negotiation skills getting dem terror now. Where he learns it from ah? I was speechless for awhile too, and nodded, yeah, son, you do have a point there.

In the end, actually he meant he wants to decide what kind of icing that goes on top of the cake and the flavour is unimportant. YES! So that means, I still get to decide what cake to eat, coming soon. I love birthdays, because it's the best excuse to indulge in it.

We went shopping for awhile and shockingly it was more than 4 hours spent at the mall when we want to go home. Feeling so tired already. Going to be a few more nights of "camping" together in my room. I feel lucky that they are around to accompany me for the nights, instead of the other way round actually.

Tough question

Now that my eldest son is all grown up, it's time to own some responsibilities of some house tasks around here.

So, when he was putting the laundry up for me just now, he suddenly came out and asked me "mommy, why do you need to wear this everyday?"

I looked up from my laptop and saw he's holding my C cup bra. How to answer his question ah? *wipe sweat* I think more tough questions are on the way.