Our final overseas travel as a family of three. Our next travelling will be done as a family of four! However, it will be at least 2 years later, till the young one is strong enough to travel.
We decided to travel up to our neighbouring country in the north as Sarah is not a very good traveller yet. She has problems sitting down still for longer than 2 minutes, so we decided to fly to the nearest destination, Kuala Lumpur.
While we were at the departure hall awaiting our flight, Sarah was intrigued with Mama's new polka dot bag, she was happily dragging it all over the airport.
We touched down in KL after a short 45mins flight at 10am, here's Sarah dashing towards the customs at the LCCT.
We took the shuttle bus from the terminal to KL Sentral and a cab from there to our hotel, Berjaya Times Square. It was pretty stressful trying to navigate the way to our hotel via different modes of transport due to the lack of information signages, especially so at KL Sentral. We were caught in a bad jam on the way to our hotel due to the closure of Bukit Bintang for the new year countdown party.
We finally made it to our hotel at about noon. While Papa was busy queueing up for the check in,
Sarah was monkeying around at the lobby, she saw a boy playing with an interesting toy and quickly went to act cute in front of the boy.
Luckily the check in was fairly quick, we went up to the room and dumped our baggages before heading out to search for lunch.
As it was way past Sarah's meal time, we settled for a cafe that we found in Times Square. It was a forgettable meal, the cafe was extremely stingy on the ingredients, I only got 2 pieces of lean pork for my KL hokkien noodle, Flo only got 4 measly pieces of fish in her sweet and sour fish + fried rice.
After lunch, we burned our calories in Times Square, but found the shops to be repetitive from the 3rd floor onwards and with Sarah around. It was near impossible to walk in the mall. She wants to be sitting in the pram for 2 seconds, she wants to walk for 2 seconds, she wants to be carried for 2 seconds, other time she wants to run around screaming her head off in the exact opposite direction of whichever way that we intended to explore.
We decided to up the level of challenge, by venturing outside Times Square. We found crossing the road with a baby pram to be a huge challenge, felt like we were in the frogger game. The traffic does not stop for you, you merely have to hold your breath and wait to the moment to make a mad dash across the road. Once you made it, there was another mad dash to lift pram over the kerb at the roadside.
After we made it safely across, we strolled along Bukit Bintang, Mama Flo played tour guide and introduced the family to Sungei Wang and Lot 10.
We seeked refuge from the searing heat at Dome in Lot 10, sipping lemon tea to cool us down. Seems like the only way to keep Sarah quiet and still is to let her watch Hi-5, in fact she was watching Hi 5 for most of the trip, otherwise it was impossible for her to stay still.
We were actually pretty aimless at this point, too tired to walk, too early to go back to hotel, no clue as to where to settle our dinner.
Flo, who has been to KL on several occasions, suggested dinner along a street where they serve food by the road side. She could not remember the name of the street though. Luckily for us, the helpful waiter understood her description and gave us the directions, it was not far from where we were.
After a short stroll, we made it there, Jalan Alor. It's an entire street lined up with hawker stalls.
The street was bustling with hawkers, touts, tourists
and pigeons!
We do not have interesting food scene like this place in Singapore anymore.
After walking one round, we decided to dine at the first stall as it was the most crowded, which means that their food is good?
While I was studying the menu seriously,
someone else was playing a fool with her menu.
This was our best meal of the trip, it was cheap, local and yummy.
Bull frog in chicken essence.
BBQ stingray with sambal chilli.
The KL Hokkien noodle, this was much much better than what we had for lunch, you can taste the lard with every mouth of noodle, very sinfully good.
Seaweed soup with egg for Sarah.
After our dinner, we decided that we had enough for a day, so we headed back to the hotel via Bukit Bintang. By now the crowd has swelled on the street, ready for the new year's eve countdown party.
Back at the hotel!
Cheeky Sarah could not wait for the tub to be filled so that she could play with the water.
That night, Sarah and Mama slept early as they were tired, while I stayed up to catch the fireworks display. I found it weird that Flo could sleep straight through the loud fireworks display, yet be woken up by me munching potato chips.
The next morning.
Sarah was up early and admiring the city view!
Before checking out, we managed to take a family portrait after many many takes.
We had to check out early in the morning so as to catch the shuttle bus to Colmar Tropicale.
The ride to Colmar Tropicale took just one hour, as the traffic was rather smooth.
We arrived at our destination at 11am, the weather was lovely, warm in the sun and cool when there is a breeze.
Unfortunately, our room was not ready for check in, so we had to loiter around.
Sarah was excited to see this huge carriage and wanted to pull it along!
Getting to other parts of the resort was rather inconvenient, we had to take a shuttle 'tram' to the other places of interest within the resort. The timing of the service was erratic, whenever we approached the staffs, they would point to the timing board. However, they never leave on time, they leave whenever they feel like it.
The japanese garden, we left almost as soon as we reached. This is because the garden has both steep incline and decline accessible only by stairs. With Sarah in the pram and Flo carrying a big tummy, we decided that it was too much of a challenge.
We actually wanted to go to the rabbit park instead of the japanese garden, we hopped onto the departing tram, thinking that the shuttle service would be doing a loop linking all the destinations, but we were wrong. So we ended up being dumped by the driver at the japanese garden.
We managed to catch the next shuttle back to the resort within 5 minutes even though the scheduled frequency was one every 30 minutes.
Back at the resort, Papa decided to try his luck at the gaming booth to see if he can win a soft toy for Sarah. He won NOTHING.
Since Papa couldn't win anything, Mama had to buy her some toys instead.
This is what Mama bought for her
Mama spent our lunch money on these magic beans, that could grow into a beanstalk leading into the sky.
Sarah got to try out the colouring sands with the aid of the helpful retail assistant. She was a rare patient and courteous staff that was close to extinction within the resort.
Mama chose her a tweety bird card to play with. She looks really amazed by the colouring sands in the photo below.
We took almost 10 minutes to complete the colouring as we had to guide her hand through the pouring of the sand. The picture below shows an almost completed masterpiece.
The resort was bustling with tourists as it was near noon time, however our room was nowhere near ready.
These are the magic beans that mama bought.
Mama decided to patronise the same stall that sold her those beans again, this time she bought a bubble gun to impress Sarah.
She was running dangerously at the car park, chasing the bubbles and screaming after them.
After checking in and settling down, we decided to venture out to the rabbit park again. This time we made it!
It was Sarah's first close encounter with rabbits and she was especially excited with the ones that were hopping away, she ran after them and kept wanting to pat the rabbits.
There was a donkey ride there as well. The hostile donkey with a smiley face tried to eat Papa when we tried to take a family photo with it.
Sarah has a thing for donkeys and horses, see her excited face. Maybe her future bf/husband will have a long-ish face to contrast her round face.
These are two weeks old baby rabbits, how adorable.
After the rabbit park, we decided to call it a day and headed back to our castle.
Day 3
Spent half an hour waiting for the tram to go to the horse trails.
After a winding down hill ride, we reached the stable.
Sarah saying hi to Mr Horse.
We managed to catch a horse riding training session in progress.
Sarah wanted to dash forward to be as close as possible to the horses.
We left the place after a short while, there was nothing much to do, Sarah was too young to ride a horse. So we decided head back to rabbit park again, to let Sarah try riding on the donkey.
Back at the rabbit park, Sarah was getting ready for her ride.
She was ok when she mounted on to the donkey, but she got freaked out the minute the donkey started trotting away.
Hence her maiden donkey ride ended after the donkey trotted less than 10 steps. Haha. The funny thing was, she was ok and wanted to play with the donkey immediately after dismounting. So in the end, she just stood beside the donkey and patted it ears.
Since we got plenty of time to kill, we let her venture out to the rabbit enclosure again.
Still as excited to see those rabbits.
We were quite impressed with the cleanliness of all the animals in the park.
After she got tired of chasing rabbits, we brought her to see the swans.
A very nice shot of the graceful swan taken by Mama Flo.
I have no idea why she gave that chinese opera pose when I told her I wanted to take a picture of her at the balcony.
A photo of Papa and Sarah with the nice background. Our general assessment of the resort, from far it looks very nice, but from near it is far from nice.
Playing with Papa's shoes while we were busying packing up to go home.
Trying to fill Papa's shoes at such a young age.
The swan was sad to see Sarah go, because she kept throwing food at it.
A tired Sarah sleeping on Papa's lap, while in the van on the way back to KL. She did not have her afternoon nap for the three days that we were in Malaysia.
Before departing KL, we made a final stop at Times Square again. To pack a dozen of Krispy Kreme donut back with us.
Yum Yum!
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