Day 3 in Sarawak was pretty much the same as Day 2.
We agreed to have a good night rest the day before and suggested to go out for breakfast at 9.30am. Being early risers, we were all up by 7.30 or so and feeling restless I called the other rooms to check if they have woken up. They were up and we were out of the hotel by 9am. Magaret, the person operating the snack counter in the hotel told us of another good place for breakfast. We wanted to eat mee jawa this time.
We used the back way and had to passed by Topspot (we had dinner there the night before) again.
We passed by the cat statues opposite Tun Jugah and came to another cat statues with a mini tower. I'm not sure whether Margaret calls this the Great Cat or Sze-En invented the name for this tower.
Breakfast was at this restaurant diagonally opposite the Sarawak Plaza, very near to AirAsia's shoplot.
The mee jawa was disappointing, the chow kuey teow was alright and the Sarawak laksa was the best so far, according to Aunt Chirs. They have also ordered "poh pia" and "woon chai koh." No comments on that.
Taking pics with the Great Cat.
On the way back, we got separated again. Esther, the kids and I went to the Popular bookstore in the Tun Jugah shopping centre. We spent quite some time here. We didn't know what else to do and was very glad when Rachel's friend, Bob called Esther to set an appointment for lunch at 1pm. Since there were 8 of us, he and his girlfriend came in 2 cars and took us to a chinese restaurant.
I don't know how to read Chinese but I can recognise my surname here. :) They pronounced it as Ting. Not sure what dialect. Most of us had beef noodles. Only Aunt Chris and Bob had pork noodles. There had a special name for it but I can't remember. The kids had spaghetti. The food was alright, and would have been better if we weren't so full from breakfast. I didn't finish my noodles too. Such a waste.
After lunch Bob said that he could leave us at the Textile Museum and from there we could walk back to our hotel.
Bob said that this is the place where they show you how to make textile. No entrance fee and no cameras allowed. Um, a word of caution - if you are easily afraid of mannequins DO NOT enter this building. The place was quite spooky with all the dark mannequins with untidy hair and unsmiling faces. My mom went in one of the rooms and got a fright. She refused to go any further. Sze-En who was once very afraid of departmental stores mannequins must have gotten over that fear because she spoke to one of them and got a good scolding from my mom.
We left the place quickly and did some shopping again along the shops opposite the waterfront.
We passed by SinggahSana (yellow and orange building), the inn which we wanted to stay earlier but the rooms we wanted were fully booked.
In the evening, we went for the Sarawak River Cruise. A good experience for the price of RM60 per adult.
Then as usual lah.. we went to Topspot to have our dinner. This time we ordered from the first shop again. The service there was good and the person taking our orders was very friendly. This time we prawns, asam fish curry, vege, tofu, oyster and midin, the paku-pakis vege.
After dinner, we didn't know what to do. We didn't want to walk at the waterfront again but we didn't want to sleep so early too.
I thought of a way for the aunties and my parents to play card games. The 2 nights before, we were thinking of how Aunt Chris could be in my room (or my parents' room) to play cards without disturbing Brian who would then be fast asleep when she returned to her room. Aunt Chris shared the same room with Brian and Tune Hotel only provide 1 key card and if Aunt Chris is in my room till late at night, she would have to wake Brian up when she goes back to her room. They ended up not playing cards for the 1st 2 nights.
The 3rd night, I explained the situation to the receptionist and asked whether they could help us open the door later when they were done playing cards. They said they could do that.
Since they wanted to play in my room, I gave them a time limit. They can only play till 12midnight. I reminded them that we had to get up at 6am for breakfast the next day.
They played till 12.15am and when Aunt Chris was ready to go back to her room, I went downstairs to ask the receptionist to open the door for me. She gave the master key to the security guard and we went back upstairs to open the room. He tried once, twice.. but couldn't open the door. The light at the door was blinking red. It seems that Brian had activated the "do not disturb" button and the guard couldn't open it with the master key. Aunt Chris had no choice but to wake Brian up. We tried calling Aunt Chris' handphone which she left with Brian, but he didn't wake up. She called knocked and called softly to him and he woke up. Hmm.... Aunt Chris, I think Brian only listens to your voice leh...
Someone told Aunt Annie this - it's okay to miss other tourist attractions in Kuching but not the Sarawak River Cruise.
So here we are waiting to board the ship. Esther managed to get cheaper tickets for us. Initially it was RM60 per adult and RM30 per kid. There were 5 adults (Esther didn't want to go) and 2 kids and the person in charge gave us a RM60 discount. We only paid RM300 for 7 of us.
The kids were so excited. They have never been on a cruise before.
Boarding the ship. It's not a big ship. According to the brochure, the ship could hold a maximum of 138 persons.
This is the lower deck. It was air-conditioned and I guess, they allow you to have your karaoke session here.
We all prefer to go up to the upper deck to enjoy the view.
Sze-En and Brian were waiting patiently for the ship to move.
Photos taken of the warerfront sidewalk from the upper deck.
It was going to be a good cruise I could tell. The weather was hot but there was a nice breeze too.
We could see Fort Margherita over at the other side of the river. We did not go to this tourist spot because we heard it was closed on Monday and Monday was the only day left we could visit this place.
Some pictures to prove that we went for this cruise.
We saw many sampans (boats) along the way but not as many as the ones I saw during the Kuantan River Cruise.
Welcoming drinks and snacks for everyone.
On of the waitress performed a cultural dance for us.
We could see a mosque from here. I'm not sure whether this is the State's mosque.
And a mountain.. what mountain is that? Mount Santubong?
The sunset view was really good. My compact camera is not high-teched enough to take better shots. :(
The children really enjoyed themselves. They didn't want to sit down and enjoy the view and poor Aunt Eunice had to accompany them to the front because that was where they wanted to be.
At least twice I made the children follow me back to the sitting area just to take pictures of the aunties. Otherwise they will scold me for not doing so. :(
Sunset pic.
Ha! Never thought I would enjoy the view this much.
People living along the banks of the river.
Evening sun. Again I wished I had a DSLR.
Passengers at the upper deck sitting down and having a nice relaxing time while Sze-En, Brian and I were roaming all over the upper deck. Most of the time my dad was standing in front of the upper deck.
Another dance performed by the waitresses. Sze-En wanted to see them perform, but Brian preferred to watch the sunset. I couldn't be at 2 places at one time, so I told Brian that we would go and see the performance for a while and then come back to the front to watch the sunset. He obediently agreed. Such a well-mannered boy. :)
The sun's completely gone but it coloured the sky from where it was.
Darkness had descended and soon it was time to leave the ship.
For RM60 with a discount, I must say the cruise is a bit pricey for one and a half hours. I don't think I will go for it again unless with good company. It's one of those been there done that kind of thing. This is my personal opinion and some of you might disagree. :)
We woke up early to get to church by 6.45am. We went to an Anglican church ...way different from the church we usually attend back home.
When the service was over, we looked for a restaurant to have our breakfast.
Fortunately, we met a couple of girls and they told us where we could have the famous Sarawakian laksa and the kolo mee. Then we went to the Indian Street (Jalan India) to look for the Sarawakian laksa paste. Unfortunately they don't sell them here anymore.
From there we walked along the Kuching waterfront to get back to our hotel. The children, Esther and I had a chance to go for a short ride on the riverboat.
We reached the hotel at about 10.30am. It was still so early. At the reception area, my mom asked a person by the name of Margaret (she was handling the snacks corner) about the attractions of Kuching and subsequently reached to the topic on food. My mom was looking for a good cup of coffee. This lady was so kind to tell us where to get real authentic Chinese coffee.
She drew us a map and it looked quite near and all the aunties were excited. They immediately left the hotel to go to this coffee shop. Esther and the children decided not to go. My dad asked us to go ahead first and he'll come later. We have to pass TopSpot (the blue/green building where we had our dinner the night before) and it took us about 15 minutes to get to the coffee shop. As soon as I reached the shop, my dad called up to ask for directions. I roughly told him the directions and said that I would meet him at the MAS building. I told him that the coffee shop was next to the Grand Continental Hotel.
Aunt Chris ordered a bowl of Sarawak laksa. She wasn't satisfied with the one she had for breakfast. By the time my dad and I reached the shop, Aunt Chris had already finished her bowl of laksa and she was ordering some nyonya dumplings. I ordered my teh-si (Tea with evaporated milk). The nyonya dumplings were very good... and cheap. It cost only RM1.20. Over in Seremban, these dumplings may cost up to RM3.00.
My mom said that the coffee was not up to her expectations.
By 11.30am, the stalls started cleaning up. It seems that they open for breakfast only.
At about 11.50am we started walking back to our hotel. My mom saw a shop selling chicken rice and thought of Sze-En. It was almost lunch time and knowing that Sze-En love chicken rice, she bought a pack for her. Aunt Chris brought one for Brian too.
Walking back under the hot sun. The aunties were complaining that they had to walk so far. On the was back to the hotel they saw SALE signs all over a Bata shoe shop. I told them that I would bring the food back for the kids so that they could do some shopping.
Back at the hotel, Sze-En and Brian happily wallop the chicken rice and Esther made them drink water before we took them out for shopping.
And what's this? Statues of cats in the middle of the street.
Adorable cats statues.
We went for shopping at the Tun Jugah and Sarawak Plaza. Um.. there weren't many people in both shopping malls. Not sure why...being Sunday and all..
Esther and I didn't have our lunch yet and so we had nasi lemak and pasta each. The kids had ice-creams. They weren't hungry because they had chicken rice earlier on.
With nothing lined up for the evening, Esther and I took the kids to the waterfront to burn off their excess energy.. :)
The weather was hot.. but at least we were not cooped up in the room..
Sze-En and Brian posing for the camera.
There were some traders selling mostly jewelery made out of beads and other souvenirs.
It was soon time to get back to our hotel to check what my parents and aunties were up to.
The door's not fully closed in one of the rooms. Ah.. they are playing card games again. :)
At night, we went to Topspot again. Yeah... we don't know where else to go. Anyway, there were a lot of shops to choose from and so we went to one called Topspot Seafood which is in the middle of the row of shops.
We had mix veg, Foo Yong Tan (Seremban egg), the paku pakis vege, oyster, tofu and boneless chicken meat. The aunties preferred the first shop's food. I thought the food was fine. I'm not that fussy I guess. :)
Since the day before we didn't get the chance to walk in front of the waterfront at night, we thought that we should, well... walk, especially after having our dinner.
The humidity was high and pretty soon what all the aunties wanted to do was to go back to the hotel and take a good shower.
Back in the hotel, after bathing my parents and the aunties were waiting for each other to call. All of them wanted to play card games but no one called. So they ended up sleeping early. We have already agreed that we would sleep in the next day and meet at 9.30am for breakfast.
The 2nd cockroach in my room. I couldn't reach the ceiling so I just left it alone. Pretty soon it disappeared. I remembered sleeping with the fear of cockroaches crawling all over my face.
I didn't think that I would be staying in any Tune Hotels so soon after my last experience with Penang's Tune Hotel. Granted most of the Tune hotels were built in strategic locations, but I remembered the Tune Hotel in Penang was a bit too cramped. It was alright for a night, but to stay for 3 nights with someone I have never slept with (hehe.. hold on to your imagination, don't let it run wild. My sleeping partner in Kuching was Aunt Annie), I just couldn't imagine how we could stay and not get onto each other's nerves.
Nevertheless, the hotel rooms were booked, and I should be grateful that someone spent some time booking the rooms for us. We were supposed to stay at the Singgahsana Inn, but the rooms which we wanted were booked much earlier.
So anyway, this is TuneHotels.com, Kuching. Like I've said earlier on, the Tune Hotels were built in strategic locations and the one in Kuching was located in the heart of Kuching city.
The Kuching Tune Hotel is just opposite Hilton Hotel.
And it is very near to the Kuching waterfront. I took this picture from the window of my room.
The negative part of this hotel is, you have to climb more than 10 steps to reach the reception area. The ramp for people who use wheelchairs was at the back of the hotel. It would be very inconvenient for people who could not climb the stairs.
This is the reception area. It's quite clean, but has one kind of smell, not unpleasant and I think it could be the disinfection chemical they used or some kind of cleaning chemical.
The receptionists were very helpful. I like the idea of a 20-minute internet usage for the guests' convenience. If you brought your laptop and intended to use the internet in this hotel, be prepared to pay RM12 per block of 24 hours.
Oh by the way, don't be fooled by the "from RM8 or RM9.99 or RM18" promotion per night. The concept is something like AirAsia's. You may or may not get it, depending on the dates you choose and that's just the basic cost. If you want air-conditioning in your room you'll have to prepay credit hours in blocks of 12 or 24. A block of 12 hours air-cond credit cost RM13.49 and 24 hours cost RM21.00.
A towel rental and some essential shower basics cost RM5 and you'll have to add a RM10 deposit for the towel, refundable when you returned the towel.
The hotel charges admin cost of about RM9.90. And don't forget about the 10% service charges and the 5% government taxes.
You'll need to pay a refundable deposit of RM5 for your room key card and they only give you ONE card.
So let's just say that you managed to get the RM8 room promotion, and if you only want to stay a night you need to be prepared to come out with at least um.. let me do a quick calculation.
1) Room charges - RM8 + 0.80 (10% service charges) + RM0.44 (5% government tax) = RM9.24
The total bill comes up to RM33.13 and this excludes the towel rental and deposits mentioned earlier.
The hotel room is still very very cheap after adding all the extra charges.
Oh, I forgot to mention a few more things. The check in time is at 12pm and you'll have to check out by 10am. That's a bit too early for some people, so please take note. If you have an evening flight and need to deposit your luggage somewhere, you can ask the Tune Hotel's receptionist for help and they'll charge you RM1 per bag.
If you forgot to bring your hair dryer, you can rent one at the reception for RM1 per day with a refundable deposit of RM30.
There isn't any jug kettle in the room but you can rent them at... ah, it's free, but you'll have to return it within 2 hours. I'm not sure if you need to pay a deposit. Probably yes.
As for the one-eyed monster, the TV, I'm not a TV/movie fan so I never got around to asking if we could rent a TV. I don't think so. The room is pretty small.
The snack corner shares the same floor with the reception counter. If you don't mind spending a little extra for snacks you can get at the Giant supermarket just minutes behind this hotel, then this is a good place to have a cup of drink with your room mate.
The corridor is alright, not too narrow, but I did wonder why the corridor was not fully carpeted. And I missed the floral paintings on the wall along the corridor. Sigh. I saw them in Tune Hotel Penang and fell in love with the paintings. In Tune Hotel Kuching, only the reception floor had this floral painting.
We were given only 1 key card and you can see that most of the time our doors were not fully closed. We booked 4 rooms and specifically asked the receptionist to put all of us near to each other. Most of the time, one of us will be in the other room and to avoid troubling our roommates, we left the door slightly ajar.
Surprisingly the room space was much better than the one I stayed in Penang. This one looks like a normal standard hotel room, only thing the room is much smaller.
I immediately cheered up when I saw the room. I was actually dreading to sleep in the room similar to the one I stayed in Penang last month.
The bathroom was more spacious too. :) - Definitely much better than Penang's.
The space in front of the bed was wider than Penang's.
But... the room was infested with cockroaches. Maybe the word infested is a bit too strong. The first night, I found 1 cockroach in my room and I killed it with my sandal. The 2nd night I saw another one near the ceiling. It was too high to reach and it crawled to I don't know where because it suddenly disappeared. My dad found 2 cockroaches in his room too. The 3rd day, we saw someone from the housekeeping department and told her about it. She knew about the cockroaches and told us that she had already sprayed our rooms. I didn't want to complain further. The sad thing was, this hotel is only 2 months old (or so I've been told).
And well, the air cond was leaking and the walls were plain unlike the room I stayed in Penang. Okay, I'm not going to say anymore. I kind of like this hotel but wished that they would clear the cockroaches once and for all.
If you have absolutely nothing to do in the Kuching, just walk along the Kuching waterfront. If you hate to perspire then that's too bad because the weather is really hot and humid most of the time.
We came across this site and my dad said this could be the market place once before the traders were asked to move to another site. I think they want to extend the waterfront walking area.
The kids, Esther and I enjoyed an 8-minute boat ride which cos t us RM5 per trip. It was cheap till we found out that it would only cost us RM3.20 if we didn't ask the price. :(
My parents and aunties were looking forward to the Kuching River cruise they heard so much from Aunt Annie's friend. We went to look for the ticket counter but it was closed.
We saw a bunting near the ship which says TICKETS SOLD HERE but no one was around. Fortunately there was a phone number printed on the bunting and Esther made the call. It seems that the sunset cruise that evening was fully booked by a big group of Singaporeans and we were advised to go for the cruise the next day.
The aunties were a little disappointed. We had already planned not to go anywhere that day because of the evening cruise. So what did they do to occupy their time? You'll find out in the later posts. :)
Bring and Sze-En posing with the felines. :)
We reached our hotel at 1o.30am. Everyone was surprised that it was still so early. Well, duh, of course lah it was early because we woke up at 5.30am to go to church at 6.45am.
On the way back from church, we passed by the Kuching Waterfront. This is the Sarawak river which flows into the heart of Kuching City and till this day many Sarawakians still used the riverboats to get to the other side of the river.
We were strolling along the waterfront, admiring the view, wishing that there was a river as wide as the Sarawak river in Seremban when we saw people getting out from a riverboat.
Feeling excited for the kids, Esther checked out the price of the boat ride. She told him that we just wanted to go to the other end of the river and back to the starting point. He wanted RM5 and we thought we had a good deal. I read somewhere that it cost RM1 per person to get to the other side of the river. Much later we found out that it only cost us 40cents per one way.
I guess we got cheated because there were 2 other passengers beside us. My parents and the aunties didn't want to experience the boat ride, so the 4 of us, Esther, Sze-En, Brian and I went in the boat and made sure we were seated evenly. Even Sze-En knew that if she would sit next to Brian, the boat might be lopsided.
It was a lovely ride. I think we only sat in the boat for less than 10 minutes. He boatman asked us if we wanted him to take us further and it would only cost us RM10. We said no because my parents and aunties were waiting for us.
Hmm... I'm surprised that Esther could take this ride. I thought she would get sea-sick.
Soon it was time to leave the boat. I could see that the kids really enjoyed the ride.
We attended the 6.45am church service in St Thomas and it ended about 8.05am. Breakfast was on our minds as soon as we came out of the church. Most of us didn't have proper breakfast because we didn't want to get up earlier to have a good meal.
We were supposed to meet Rach's friend for breakfast but he was down with flu. Left alone, we didn't know where to go and so we asked a couple of church goers who were kind enough to lead us to a restaurant. We had to walk further away from our hotel, but since it was still SO early, we didn't mind at all.
We saw our first live cat on the way to breakfast. Someone said that if you want to see cats in Kuching, you'll have to go to the Cat Museum because you can't find any cats in Kuching. So, there you go, our first live cat lying arrogantly on a sidewalk.
The two girls brought us to this shop and told us we could get the the Sarawakian laksa and the Kolo mee here. These two noodles were famous in Sarawak.
My dad and I had Kam Pua noodles. Something like Kolo noodles but the Kam Pua noodles are thicker.
Sze-En had Kolo noodles.
My mom had her Kolo noodles custom made. She wanted black soy sauce and some vege.
Esther and Aunt Chris had the Sarawakian laksa. They said it didn't meet their expectations at all. I can't remember what Aunt Annie and Brian ordered.
After breakfast, we went to look for the Sarawakian Laksa paste. Some of our friends asked us to help them to buy since we were in Sarawak.
The locals said that we could find them in the Indian Street.
So we walked a little further to get to this street.
We didn't find any but we found some some very nice designed Sarawakian T-Shirts here.
My mom, Aunt Annie and Aunt Chris took a long time to choose the T-Shirts. The weather was good.. not hot at all and we waited patiently for them to buy their stuff.
We went back using the waterfront way route but was delayed because... check the next post out. :)
The day before Esther checked out the St Thomas church service timetable. The English service was at either 6.45am or 8.15am. Guess which one we went to?
Of course the earlier one :). Esther and I made the decision and all the aunties were grumbling. Nevertheless, we ALL got up early. Aunt Annie got up the earliest I think, at 5am. I woke up at 5.30am.
We started walking only at 6.35am. We were told that it would take us about 15 minutes to get there on foot.
We roughly knew how to get there but we still asked around to see if there were any shorter ways to get to the church.
We used the shorter way and passed this Chinese temple. This was the 2nd elaborately decorated Chinese temple I saw in Kuching. The first one was the famous Tua Pek Kong Temple just opposite the Kuching waterfront.
At 6.50am we reached the St Thomas chuch compound. We could hear the a hymn being sung. Sze-En was especially excited about going to this church. She knew it was going to be different from the church she usually attends. Her mother had warned her not to make any noise and that she had to sit still throughout the service.
We were late and had to sit way back. Poor Sze-En couldn't see a thing because a pillar was blocking her from seeing what was happening in front. Soon she got so bored that she turned around and told her mom that she missed her own church. According to Aunt Chris and Aunt Annie, this Anglican church service was almost exactly the same way the Catholics conducted their services. There were certain things they did which I was wasn't comfortable too like the invincible cross sign they did with their hand and they recited certain things from a book. I never expected this in an Anglican church. Anyway, this was a new experience to me.
The church service ended at 8.05am. We saw the time and were amazed that we actually got up early to attend the 6.45am service.
One of the entrances to the St Thomas Cathedral.
We went for breakfast after the church service. It's just so weird. Back home we would have thought of lunch and not breakfast. :)
Our Kuching trip was planned last year, Aug08 at a friend's funeral. AirAsia was having a zero fare promotion and the aunties wanted to go somewhere. Later I check the website and managed to book all 6 of us at RM170 per person. We paid RM160 the airport taxes, admin fees and fuel surcharge and the additional RM10 was for the baggage charges. The 6 of us included my parents, Aunt Annie, Aunt Chris, Esther and I.
Early this year Esther thought it would be good to bring Sze-En along. When Aunt Chris heard that Sze-En was going, she thought of Brian, her grandson and wanted to bring him along too. We okayed it and Esther proceed to book his flight ticket. His ticket cost about RM288. This was Brian's first time on the plane and we were all so excited for him.
Our flight was scheduled to leave for Kuching at 7.10am. This means that we had to be at the airport by 5.30am which also means that we had to get up as early as 3.15am.
Uncle Guru and Mtc was kind enough to wake up early to fetch the 8 of us to the airport. We pre-checked in online the day before and what we did as soon as we arrived at the airport was to get our boarding passes verified and checked in our luggages.
Then we proceed to Gate P11 (that's where we were supposed to board the plane) and looked around for something to eat. I saw a "snack attack" food cart (the same food they served in the AirAsia flights) and to my surprise they were priced much lower than what we would have paid on the plane. The nasi lemak (and other main meals) were priced at RM5.50 and they have added in a free cold drink to lure us (who were still half-asleep at 6am in the morning) to buy from them. FYI, the nasi lemak on the plane cost RM9 WITHOUT the free drink.
Esther bought the nasi lemak set and I took the spaghetti set. Esther took a bite of the nasi lemak and scrunched her face. It tasted like yesterday's food, she said. I tried her nasi lemak and had to agree with her. We didn't finish the nasi lemak. My spaghetti didn't taste as good, and with the help of Sze-En (who loves spaghetti as long as it is not spicy), we managed to finish most of it.
Since it was Brian's first plane ride, we let him sit near the window. Sze-En did not particularly enjoy her plane ride because she gets air-sickness especially when the plane takes off or land. This is her third time flying and what she does was to prepare herself mentally and try to sleep during the entire plane ride. Sze-En is now quite tall and she assumes that Brian will let her rest her legs on his lap, but no. After a while he kept pushing her legs down till Esther had to tell Sze-En to either curl or cross her legs.
The plan ride lasted for 1 hour and 45 minutes. We were asked to fill in a health declaration form each and deposited them to the airport personnel as we were about to enter the building. At the immigration counter we were given a slip which states our personal details and a clause stating that we could only be in this State for ninety days. I felt like I was a foreigner. :(
A few days ago I checked in the internet for our transportation in Kuching. There were certain tourist places I wanted to visit and I also wanted to know the cost of visiting those places and how to get there. As I was surfing, I stumbled upon Tune Hotel's airport transfer in Kuching. It cost only RM20 per saloon car and was operated by Golden System Car Rental & Tour S/B. When I clicked into their website, a blank page appeared. Thinking that there was something wrong with my laptop, I gave Esther the link and asked her to check the website. Same thing. A blank page appeared.
I didn't bother much about it because I knew that the other taxis cost RM22 per car.
After collecting all our luggages, we went to the taxi/tour agency counter. I saw a booth operated by Golden System Car Rental & Tour and immediately went there and asked for the price of a taxi to Tune Hotel. She said it was RM8 per person. I told her that the (Tune Hotel, Kuching) website I went to said that it was RM20 per car. She kept insisting that it was RM8 per person. After a while she said that the lowest price she could offer was RM25 per car. She asked whether we did a pre book online. I said no because we couldn't even enter the agency's website. She said that we could have send an email to them. I told her again that we tried to go into the agency's website but the page was blank. After arguing for a while, I gave up. I went to the normal taxi counter and book 2 cars for RM44 (RM22 per car).
We arrived at Tune Hotel 15 minutes later but couldn't check in yet because the check in time was 12pm and it was only 9.30am at that time. We kept our luggages at Tune Hotel (RM1 per luggage) and book 2 taxis to take us to the Sarawak Cultural Village. The aunties, my mom and Brian managed to retain the same taxi driver who took them to the hotel. He then called a fellow taxi driver to take the rest of us and off we we went to get our tickets for the Cultural Village. The first taxi driver said he knows of a tour agency who could offer at a lower price. It cost RM60 per adult (Children below 12 - RM30) at the entrance of the Cultural Village and only RM45 (Children below 12 - RM28) here at the Borneo Exploration Tours & Travel.
Some 45 minutes later, we found ourselves at the Sarawak Cultural Village.I found this place more interesting than Mini Malaysia. The Sarawak Cultural Village had 7 authentic ethnic houses built around a man-made lake.
We spent about 3 hours here. What did we do there? We saw the cultural show which lasted about 45 minutes, we checked out all 7 houses, we posed/took lots of pictures and we had lunch there. Was it value for our money? I would say, if you have never been there before, you should go. My parents and aunties did complained that it was hot and humid and they decided to skip visiting most of the ethnic houses.
Since the Damai beach was very near the Cultural Village, the taxi drivers took us to the Damai Puri Resort and Spa to have a "look-see, look-see" of the beautiful beach. It was so much nicer than our polluted and dirty Port Dickson.
Our next destination was the Cat Museum. Fearing that we would never see a cat in Kuching (the Malay word for cat is kucing) , we agreed to see some stilled cats. :) We spent about 40-45 minutes here.
After that, the taxi drivers took us back to our hotel. We checked in, showered and go ready to go for dinner.
Everyone who knew that we were going to Kuching said that we should go to Topspot Seafood for dinner. It was walking distance to our hotel, so we did a little exercise (by walking to our destination lah) before we had dinner.
There were many seafood stalls here and we didn't know which ones were good. We chose the one nearest to the entrance. I think it was called Lung Leong Seafood.
We had a good variety of dishes. We called 6 dishes, but I only took 5 pictures of 5 of them because the last dish, steamed fish, came so late that I forgot to take a picture of it. The food was good. The dishes here came out pretty fast (except for the last dish) despite the place being jam-packed with people having dinner too. The meal cost RM125 (USD36 or EURO 25). It was so cheap.
And the barley drink here cost a bomb. RM2.20 (about USD 0.60 or EURO 0.45) for a glass of barley drink. Aunt Chris said it was worth it because it tasted so good. In Seremban we could order a glass of barley for only RM 1.00, but the taste was more of sugar than of barley.
After dinner, some of us wanted to walk along the waterfront. It was only a few minutes walk from our hotel. We ended up not going because most of us were very tired. It was only 8.30pm, but we had a long day.
While Aunt Annie was bathing, I saw a cockroach coming out from underneath the bed. I screamed, not because I was scared, but because I was so surprised to see one in a 2-month old hotel. Quickly I hit it hard with my sandals.
After that I kept my bags closed and made sure there weren't any food packets left open. I slept with the fear of cockroaches running up and down underneath the bed.
A cat is called kucing in the Malay language. The capital of Sarawak is Kuching (with a "h" in the middle). The pronunciation is the same and we always associate Kuching city with cats.
Having said that, your visit to Kuching is never complete without going to the cat museum.
So here we are visiting the Cat Museum like proper tourists.
This is the entrance to the museum. There were no entrance fee charges but I had to pay RM 4 for my camera.
Some of us wanted to be cats..
Cats everywhere. There were pictures of cats, painted cats on a small rocks, porcelain cats, cross-stitched cats, cats painted on mirrors, jig-saw puzzle of cats.....
The kids thought the big cats were adorable..
Hello Kitty.. what are you doing here? Oh you're a cat too.
Garfield the cat.
Cat pictures painted on tiles and ceramic.
Cat pictures and cartoons.
Puss in boots and other cat pictures.
The musical CATS. I love this musical. I watched it in the Istana Budaya (cultural palace in KL) a few years ago.
A cat cave with all the bigger wild cats.
Cat food, trinkets, decorative cats and wooden cats.
Paintings of cats.
The place is full of cats. We were there for less than an hour, including choosing and buying souvenirs which took up about 20 minutes. If you are not a cat lover, you'll find this place boring, but if you are then you should include this place in your itinerary.
After visiting the Sarawak Cultural Village, the taxi drivers took us to the Damai Puri Resort and Spa. He wanted us to admire the beautiful Sarawakian beach. I must say, it was one of the nicest beach I've ever seen in my whole life.
The resort was lovely.
On the way to the beach, we saw this huge snake and ladders game on the tiled floor. Sze-En and Brian was so attracted to it that they wanted to play a game. After like 5 minutes, they gave up because, they had to carry the cones when they wanted to move after they have thrown the big dice. This was too much work for them and they were actually on the way to the beach.
Some of the activities listed in this resort.
The kids must have wished we booked this hotel instead of the one in the city centre.
The clean beach.
The sea water was so clear. Made me think how polluted our Port Dickson was. :(.
The sand was so fine. Te beach was clear of litter. It was certainly a beautiful beach. We saw a few people playing in the sea and some were sun bathing.. at 2.30 in the afternoon. Sigh! Some people just love tanned complexion.
The first thing we did after arriving at our hotel was to book 2 taxis to take us to the cultural village. We heard a lot about it and it sounds interesting. Each taxi cost us RM100 and they promised to take us to the Cultural Village, the Damai beach and the Cat Museum.
One of the taxi drivers told us that if we were to purchased the entrance ticket at the Cultural Village itself, it would cost us RM60. He took us to a tour agency where we purchased the tickets at RM45 for adults and RM28 for children below 12.
It took us about 40minutes to get from our hotel (which is in the heart of Kuching city) to the Cultural Village.
This is the entrance of the place. Like what the taxi driver said, it cost more to get the tickets from here.
It was a hot and humid day and I knew I was going to get sun burned judging from the map of this place.
Some carved wooden statues right after the entrance.
It was almost 11.30am and everyone was rushing to watch the cultural show. We were on time... or probably, a few minutes early but we couldn't get a decent place to sit. Many of us had to stand.
Performances by the locals.
Performances by the locals and they include the Ibans, Bidayuh, Melanau and Melayu.
The cultural show lasted for 45 minutes. It was really hot and boy was I glad the show ended. Esther said the last time they performed in a big hall with air-conditioner. The hall was under renovation and I guess this was the alternative place to have the cultural show.
There was a commotion even before the show started and everyone was looking up at the trees trying to spot this snake. It was only after the show that we managed to catch a glimpse of the snake. My dad said that it probably ate a bird and was too full too move.
I have never seen this kind tree bearing this kind of fruit before in my life. What are they actually? My mom asked to take pictures of them. I did as instructed. :)
We weren't interested in this Penan house till my dad said that we could stamp our cultural village passports here to say that we have been to this house. At the entrance where we presented our tickets, each of us were given a Sarawak Cultural Village passport where they explained a little bit about the Sarawakian people. There was also a page where we could stamp on for each "village" we visited.
Next we went to the Iban longhouse. It seems that the Iban people built their longhouse to last for 15-20 years or until the farm land in the surrounding area is exhausted. Then they move on to another spot. Hmm... interesting.
Next, we visited the Orang Ulu longhouse. It was built on tall stilts. Unlike the Ibans, the Orang Ulu houses were made to last.
We had to climb so many stairs to reach the common area. The kids loved it, especially if the stairs were made out of only 1 piece of log (top right picture).
Yup, we get to stamp our passports again. :)
So many steps and so steep. Esther was terrified by the stairs.
This is the Melanau house. They built massive houses, forty feet above the ground. I really like this concept because it was so cooling underneath the house.
There were 2 kinds of stairs to go up the house. The kids chose the log stairs and Esther preferred the proper stairs. I prefer the log stairs too. :)
Inside the Melanau house. There were at least 3 flights of stairs up to the top. The house is really huge.
Some of the log stairs were quite dangerous too. The log was so small and the steps weren't deep enough for my whole foot to step on them. And it's not that my feet were big. My shoe size were the same as Brian's. He turned 11 last month.
This is the Orang Melayu house. Nothing special about the house. Probably because we have these kind of houses in the Peninsula.
Rumah Cina or Chinese House. The doorway was lined with a red cloth or paper and like all devoted Buddhist/Taoist, the altar was place facing the doorway or the entrance of the house. There was a well at the back of the house but I'm not sure whether it was a real well, or made purposely along with this house. The water was not clear enough to see how deep the well was.
This is the Rumah Bidayuh. I didn't enter this house because the kids wanted to go and walk on the bamboo bridge. Esther took all our passports and had them stamped.
The bamboo bridge. Kinda fun, but not fun enough for the kids because they only went across once and didn't want to go the 2nd time.
It was nearly 2pm when we had our lunch. I was beginning to get hungry. I had... um mee rebus I think. It was so-so. My mom had mixed rice and she said it wasn't good. Aunt Chris had rice with asam fish and something else and she strongly recommended that. I didn't feel like eating rice and since Aunt Annie said that the mee rebus was good, I ordered that.
Our next stop was the Damai beach. We heard it was very clean and beautiful.
They called mangoesteens queen of all fruits. I'm told that durian is a heaty (makes your body get heated up fast and the chances of falling sick is high) fruit, and eating mangoesteen cools your body down.
You can find mangoesteens in every durian season.
I used to eat them, but now I don't really fancy them. Probably because sometimes there is this yellow colour thingy attached to the flesh which makes some of them look bad.
Look at that. Going to Melbourne is getting cheaper. RM730 (USD 207, EURO146) for a return flight. My last flight was RM952 (just the flight and airport tax).
I told my friends in FB and look what they replied -
LKK at 2:04pm June 17
AUS is flu infection zone. That's why so cheap lah
It was really cheap. RM1 for 1 packet. Usually they sell them at RM5 for 3 packets. I gave a packet to my sister to being it to class and another one to Sze-En to bring to school the next day.
My last pair of sandals gave way when I went to the Chiling waterfalls last month. It was a very well-used sandals and I'd used it for both my Mt Kinabalu trips. It was like 2 sizes bigger , not because I wanted it that way, but because I had no choice. I went all around Seremban and KL to look for a pair of reasonable priced sandals and they were all for men!!. The ones for women were priced at RM199 - RM299, the brands of course were well-known worldwide.
I knew I had to look for a new pair of sandals and so I tried looking for the same one. To my disappointment, they can't be found anywhere. I asked at least 2 shops, and they said that the supplier didn't supply that type of sandals anymore.
A few days ago, I went to Jusco Seremban, intending to get myself a pair of shoes. I ended up buying this :-
A pair of sandals which fitted me quite nicely. Minch said that the shoes were meant for children. Not quite believing her, she asked the shop assistant and he confirmed the shoes were really for children. Oh, well.. it fitted me perfectly. I paid and now am a proud owner of a pair of children's sandals. :)
Yesterday was my last day home alone and what did I do? I went shopping at Mid Valley in KL. The sale was until the day before and to go to Mid Valley just for shopping during a non sale day was not really a waste of time. Somehow, sales season or not, some shops will still have sales. I went with 2 of my good friends and the reason why they chose MV was because one of them wanted to eat at Kim Gary. We went there just in time for lunch. I wasn't hungry at all and so I told them to go ahead and have their lunch while I shopped.
I went to Carrefour first. Sometimes they have good bargains. Like the one time I was there and got a B&D Drill with accessories for only RM49.90 (USD 14.20 or EURO 10).
It was so cheap. Suspiciously, I asked the staff of Carrefour what was wrong with this gadget and why were they selling it so cheap. The reason was, they wanted to bring in new stock (orange colour) and the had to get rid of the old ones. Later I checked the new stocks and they cost close to RM200 without the accessories.
There was another time I bought a volleyball net for only RM 10 (USD 2.85, EURO 2.00),which I grabbed and paid immediately and later they pushed the price down to RM3.00 (USD 0.85, EURO 0.60) and I also bought the 2nd net. Why did I buy it? Because it was cheap!!! (Later we used them for Kidz Safari in May08).
So, did I find anything interesting in Carrefour?
Yup, I did. 2 books, each cost RM5.00 (USD 1.42, EURO 1.00). They weren't well-known authors but at least I have something to read other than my weather book that I am currently reading now.
Then I went to MPH and Borders, but didn't get anything there because the book which I wanted to buy did not have a discount.
At almost 3pm, I started feeling hungry and wandered over the food garden just next to Borders.
This was what greeted me.. Poufs that spelt FOOD GARDEN. A very unique entrance I must say. I love it. I didn't eat my lunch there. Instead I bought a bun from "The Bread Story". I just wanted something light.
After that, I met up with my friends again and had this :-
"Gui Lin Ko" (herbal jelly) and "liong cha" (herbal drink). I haven't eaten Gui Lin Ko from this authentic shop for such a long time. It cost me 2 plates of Won Tan Mee, but it was worth it.
We left KL just before 5pm. It was a good 3 hours plus shopping. Later we went to Tesco Seremban to shop again.
What do you do with the 4-legged creature that nibbles at your "ham-yee" (salted fish) when you are fast asleep at night?
Why, you take out your rat-trap and put their favourite food as bait and hope they fall into your trap. That was what Minch's grandmother did when she found out that a rat had eaten her salted fish.
Now they are wondering what to do with the rat.
I don't have a problem with rats but my neighbours told me that they have seen big rats attacking their food provision.
At the moment.. my only problem is the termites. :(. I'm sure they are still somewhere in the cracks of the walls or wherever.
Usually he looks like this: I have never really seen him so happy before :
Yesterday, Matt and Minch came to my mom's house for dinner. Wayne, their 31-month old nephew came with them. He needed a lot of warming up before he smiled at anyone. Usually he was stuck to Aunt Minch..... and it was so difficult to make him talk.
I recruited Sze-En to help entertain Wayne. Apparently, Wayne loves children. He was mighty glad to see Sze-En and wanted to play with her. Unfortunately he wanted Aunt Minch to follow him too. So all the adults (Matt, Minch, my sister and I) went out to watch the kids play.
At first they played throw/kick the ball. He started smiling and enjoying himself. He was having fun and was even happier when the adults cheered for him. After a while Minch noticed that the boy was perspiring too much and called for a break. But the boy was having too much fun and so Sze-En thought of another thing to play.
Blowing Bubbles.
When we were young we loved to blow bubbles. You can imagine how excited Wayne was, trying to pop all the bubbles. He chased after them and made sure he burst them... and he would laugh so loud. He even repeated what we said. I never knew he could talk so much.
Whenever there were no more bubbles to burst, he would turn to Sze-En, expecting to find her blowing more bubbles.
Laughing, running, chasing after the bubbles, he perspired even more. Soon Aunt Minch called for a halt to this (again), and Sze En went to look for something else to entertain this boy.
Aha.... she found something....
A toy golf set. It wasn't really as fun as blowing the bubbles, and so Sze-En went back to blowing bubbles for him again. The bottle of liquid soap was about half full at the beginning and soon the bottle was empty.
Surprisingly, the boy didn't cry but he knew there weren't any left because he said "no more".
Matt, Minch and Wayne left soon after that and Wayne said "goodbye" and "thank you", with the help of Aunt Minch of course.
During last Saturday's Kidz Safari event, Sze-En exchanged 60 tokens for this prize - A crystal mining set. She had to obtained 60 tokens and her mind was set not on the MP3 player but on this prize.
I guessed the prizes were motivating them to play the games. That's bad. Like as they laboured for their toys!!
The next day, after dinner, Sze-En asked me to be involved in mining crystals. I was so lazy but made an effort to help her with the mining.
She started of with opening the package and "setting the mine" up. Since she had done 5 other minings in the previous year, she knew what needed to be done. She asked me to get some newspaper so that we wouldn't dirty grandma's floor.
She started of with banging her plastic hammer onto the "clay mine". Based on previous experience, it would have taken her days and grandpa's real hammer to get the stones. So she asked me and later Uncle Michael to help with the mining while she dust the clay and supervised our work.
Soon we were able to get all the crystals out from the "mine". The were supposed to be only 8 stones, but we dug out 10. Either the crystals broke while we were trying to get them out, or there was really 10 of them buried in the clay brick.
I went home feeling glad that I had spent some time with Sze-En. The poor girl was all alone because her cousin Brian had gone to visit Mae-Z (another cousin) in KL.
When I left my house for the Kidz Safari event I spotted this beautiful picture of the clouds.
I thought they were just too beautiful and it would be a crime not to capture the picture.
My compact camera didn't do justice to what nature had to offer.
I have a couple of weather books at home and started searching for this type of clouds soon after the event.
When I was in my school days I really hated this topic. To me, clouds are clouds. Who care whether the clouds looked like fish scales or why they weren't there or how they formed, how they affect our lifestyle.. or... It was a boring subject. As I grew older I began to appreciate the beauty of the clouds.
When I was in Australia last month, I made sure I got 2 soft toy wombats for myself. It cost only AUD2 per wombat and AUD10 for 8 of them. Sad to day, I didn't know who to give the extra toys too nor do I have enough space for 8 toys.
These are the 2 new wombats.
These are the 1st two wombats I had when Rachel went over to Australia some 17 years ago and got these cuties for me.
Ever since then everytime when someone goes over to Australia I will ask them to get me one or 2 wombats.
I have 12 wombats now including the 2 new ones I got from my recent trip to Australia. Esther saw this picture and got the shivers. It's so "gigik".
This is our 2nd time having this Kidz safari. Last year, we had it on the 24th of May. It was the 1st day of the mid term school holidays.
This year, we had it in the middle of the mid term break. Some of the reasons were - I was away in Penang last week and we thought the youths could help us during the 1st week of their holidays.
I woke up just before sun rise and had breakfast with Rachel. She was sick for the past 2 weeks, but she had committed herself to this event and so, she came.
We reached church just before 8am. There was so much to do. The day before, we placed all the games in the hallway (for the fear of them getting lost or wet during the night :)). Today, we just had to placed each game on individual tables or stalls. The volunteers were told to come at 8.30am to set up their game stalls.
The children came pouring in by 8.30am. They had to register, get a tag, play cards and a bingo card. (Will explain this later).
This is the registration tag I made for all the 120 children who registered for this event.
This is the bingo card. Esther (or Rachel) thought of this idea. Last year, all the kids were eying the MP3 and what they did was to play one game (an easy game), many times in order to get more tokens and later exchanged them with the MP3. This year we wanted the children to play all the games and each stall would stamp on the bingo card to indicate that the child did come and play the game at their stall.
After registering, the kids were given a chance to guess the weight of the cake. Aunt Chris made this cake. Everyone was so awed by her creativity.
Feeding the tiger - Ah... this is an old game... and all the children loved this game because they get to hit the person behind the tiger. Jian happily volunteered to be that person. Later on, whenever Jian took a break, Qing and Justin took turns to get hit by wet sponges. Jian later commented that he felt that his face was flatter than before.
Hungry Roaring Lion - You think this game is easy? I can assure you that it is not. It's because the lion is very short and difficult for us adults to throw the ball into the hole. Mark, the stall keeper for that game did a marvelous job. The sun was shinning brightly and humidity was high. There was a tent shading the area, but it was still hot. He didn't grumble about the heat, but made a joke out of it. His assistant left him to help out with the next stall - feeding the tiger.
A necktie for Mr Giraffee - Another game from last year's kidz safari. We used a gas tube to form the hoop. The kids had 4 tries for this game.
Dumbo Needs a Tail - A week ago Rachel and I went to the cabin searching for this game. It was painted on 3 plywoods and took us a day to complete the painting. This is the 2nd time we painted this picture, the first time was during Mae-Z's safari party in 2005. Not wanting to spend more time on this game, Rachel went searching for the painted plywoods. What a relieved to her when she found them quite intact and in good condition. We moved them into the next cabin so that it would be easier to take them out later.
Munchy Monkey - This game uses the same board as "Dumbo Needs a Tail" game. The child's job was to feed the monkey by using a long stick with a banana attached at the end of the stick, and hook the banana onto another hook on the board. To make it more interesting, we gave a time limit to the kids so that they wouldn't take forever to feed the monkey.
High Voltage Area -This game is so old, but the children loved it. At any one time, there were children playing this game.
Watershed - A simple game, but not that easy. By using a stick and a ring attached to to the string, the child had to hook the bottle with the ring. Again, we set a time limit to this game.
Dunk the Animals - This game is probably one of the easiest way to collect tokens. The child was given 3 balls to overthrow the toy animals out of their comfort zone.
Safari Droppings - All these fancy names were thought of, last year. The child was given ping pong (table tennis) balls to throw into the egg trays. I remembered painting this last year, and at that time I thought it would be fun if each colour represented different amount of tokens given.
Tin Cans -This year, JoelC was in charged ( I just assumed that he was in charged because I saw him here most of the time) or maybe he was just helping out. The tin cans were not stacked high like the twin towers. This made it harder to knock all the tins down.
Crocodile Alert - A game that was so popular with the kids last year because Uncle Rajen was in charged then. Looks like this game was one of the children's favourites too because there were lots of them wanting to have a go at the crocodiles.
Some of last year's games like Leopard Spot, Win Lose or Draw and Guess Who Came to the Party were omitted from this year's safari games. Aunt Chris didn't want the kids to feel bored so she replaced some games with new ones.
The following games are all new and I asked Sze-En which were the games she loved most. She said the leap frog and spider web were her favourites.
Ring Toss Game - Initially we had only 1 cone, but I guessed Aunt Chris thought it would be better to have more cones by adding some bottled water. This is an easy game unlike the next one.
Coin Throw Game - Everyone found it hard to collect tokens from this game. At first we used key rings but found that it bounced to easily off the plates. I went into the resource room to search for other types of rings and found some washers. It was still difficult to get tokens but definitely much easier than the rings. Later someone pitied the children and added more plates.
Hit It In - Rajen was in charged of this game. Naturally there was a long queue.... definitely not because this was an easy game or they wanted to support Uncle Rajen's game stall. Just before each child played the game, Rajen would want to know their names and age first and then teach them how to hold the table tennis racket. He allowed them to have a trial run before the actual game. When someone actually got the ping pong ball in, he congratulated him/her by shaking their hand, giving them a token and said "nice doing business with you".
Darts - Very difficult to get bull's eye. This is a toy game and the darts are too light to even hit anywhere near the centre of the board.
Leap Frog - The children loved this game. They just need to throw the frog onto the leaf and they get a token for it.
Spider's Web - According to Sze-En, this game is very easy. The children got to choose 4 insects out of 5. They would then throw through the web and to get a token, the insect must fall into any of the 3 baskets beyond the web.
Tarzan Swing - It wasn't what Aunt Chris wanted but she "okayed" it due to lack of time. She wanted a rope with knots to be hung at the top of the tree so that the children could climb up. What the man (person who did this wasn't from our church) did was to tie 2 parallel ropes, one for the children to hold on to, and the other for the children to walk across crab-like to the other end of the rope.
Most children found this exciting and easy. Danny who was in charged of this game said that this game was well-liked by the children judging from the long queue of children lining up.
Ah... I can't remember what Aunt Chris called this game. Was it balloons tail or something like that? Anyway, this is exactly like the musical chairs we played when we were young. No tokens for this game, but the winner will get a toy made from a long balloon.
At 10.45am, all the children went in for a Mini-me and puppet show. Mini-me was cooked up by Azriel and Arthur during the Aspirer's Anniversary last year. Noticed that Mini-me's hands are not the same colour as it's face. Arthur was behind expressing with his hands while Azriel was telling a story. It was so hilarious. Let's see if I can upload a movie clip on this.
Ah.. the winner of "guess the weight of the cake". There were 6 winners but we picked only one so that we didn't have to cut the cake into 6 like what we did last year. Rajen presented the cake to Jordan, the winner.
Okay, let me explain to you how the safari games system works. Each child aged between 6 and 12 must register 2 weeks before the event and pay RM2 (EURO 0.40, or USD 0.60) for the registration fees. This RM2 covers their snacks and water.
On the event day, each child will be given a wrist tag, about 20-25 playcards and a bingo card. On the tag we have the child's name and age and their guardian's contact number. For every game the child wanted to play, they have to give one playcard to the person in charged of the game. When they win, they are given tokens (in coin form) to exchange for gifts later.
There are 18 games, 1 musical chair game and a puppet show and each child must complete play/attend all the stalls in order to complete the bingo card. The person in charged of the stall will have to stamp onto the bingo card (only once for each card) to indicated that the child has visited the stall. Upon completion of the card, the child will proceed to the gifts counter where she or he will get a free gift for completing the bingo card.
The more you play, the more tokens you will accumulate and you will be able to get your favourite gifts. After 12pm, I told some of the games keeper that to make it easy for the kids to get the tokens. Some children found it difficult to collect the necessary amount of tokens for their favourite toys. Some who wanted a certain toy so much that they played not for fun but to get more tokens.
In order to get more playcards, the children are encouraged to memorized verses and repeat them to Aunt Yeow and Aunt Pik Mei. Some smarter ones arranged the books of the bible in the form of cardboard strips because they have memorized them even before this event.
The food committee prepared sandwiches and buns for the kids.
Judy "worked" so hard to get this MP3. It was "priced" at 200 tokens.
The overall pictures of the event. This year we set up 5 tents. Last year, we only had 3 tents.
At 1pm, many of us started clearing up the area. It's true that many hands makes work light. By 2.45pm everything was cleared except for the tents.
Oh, this is JoelC and his neckties. He was just fooling around with the balloons.
All in all, it was a successful event. The kids had their fun. The organisers were glad that the kids enjoyed themselves. It seems someone told my sister that her 6year-old child waited for 1 whole year to attend this event. The child was 5 years old last year. He not only couldn't play any games then but had to watch his older brother having fun. Over the past 1 year, he reminded his mother over and over again not to miss this year's Kidz Safari.
Will we have this event again? I don't think so. Too much work and too little human resources. :(
This year's Kidz Safari was to be held on the 6th of June. It was a public holiday in Malaysia and this year there were 1119 children who registered for this event.
We, the committee had scheduled 4th and 5th June to set up the games stalls and to create a safari-like atmosphere in part of the church compound.
Since Rachel, who was one of the key players for this event, couldn't take time off at work to help with the preparation Aunt Chris and I had to work twice as hard. Rachel helped the weeks before by making sure that some of last year's games were still in good condition.
Yesterday, Aunt Chris went into the cabin to take out all the sticks and signboards for the games. It was a tedious task which no one wanted to do. Usually Rachel was the one who would search for things in this cabin.
The tents were set up on Wednesday and with the help of our church youths, the plywood animals were out of their "cage". We cut and painted the animals last year and this saved us a lot of time. Some of the youths helped with shredding the raffia string to create the green effect of the jungle.
The fishing net from last year's musical was used for tying the raffia strings on to it. Last year's Kidz Safari, we used 2 volleyball nets instead of the fishing net, but they got lost soon after the event.
My parents and a couple of youths helped with tying the fishing net onto the poles of the tent.
My father, who is a great help in any of our events, hung the SAFARI letterings up . Philip who saw that my dad needed an extra hand came to help.
This happened today. One of the church members was so kind to provide long sticks for us. These sticks were used as a support for the plywood animals. He was driving a pick-up truck and probably had forgotten that he had some sticks lying 45degrees, sticking out of his truck. He drove underneath the tent and the sticks got caught and pulled the tent down.
One of us called the tent provider and she came in the afternoon to inspect the damage. It cost us a lot extra for the damaged tent. :(
The youths were complaining about how boring this task was... shredding the raffia strings. Yesterday, I brought a half-used roll to do with Tusi, so that today the youths would have less to do. Today there were more youths and the task was completed in less than an hour.
Joy said that girls are better at this task because they always used their hands to run through their long tangled hair.
The older folks helped with diving the playcards and putting a number of them with each registration tags. Ai Ling came to sort of the gifts and Callista (who wasn't here to help) wrote the name of the games onto pieces of manila card boards.
I was worried when I called Frankie this morning. He was supposed to help us with putting up the animals and he was at the welfare department helping someone to get his monthly allowance from the government. He wasn't sure what time he would be back because his queue number was more than a hundred. He was there since 8.30am this morning and wasn't sure how long it would take for the officers to call out his number. Fearing that he would not make it back in time, (I had the same experience recently and I knew how long it could take to be stuck in the welfare department) I asked my dad to help out with the smaller animals.
I was so glad to see Frankie at 11.40am. He was all set to fix the main board. His son came to help him. They worked well together.
Some youths were in the office helping out with the gifts.
We had Judy trying out some games, testing to see if it was safe enough for the rest of the kids.
Rachel had food poisoning the day before and took medical leave today. In fact, she was sick for more than um... 7 days I think but she only took 1 day off on Tuesday. She was well on Wednesday, but had food poisoning yesterday. Knowing that she would die of boredom today, I told her to come only when we were about to finish. So at 4pm, I told her that she could come to church and probably help in one or two things.
Hey, what's this? Some London brochures lying on the table. Is somebody trying to send me a message? Should I pack my bags now? Gosh! I've never been to London before. Oh boy, oh boy, I get to meet the Queen. What shall I say, what shall I wear? Should I start practising my curtsy now?
Wait, when am I going? (Checking the flight details.....).. Um.. where's my name? (Frantically searching for my name..). Oh... err.. my name's not there. Mctc is going with someone else. Help, my heart can't take it.. I need to sit down.
Got to call my lawyer. Oh, can't do that either. Mctc's going with him. Sigh! This is too much. I need a plan.
This Saturday, a hundred and twenty children (ages 6 to 12) are going to make a hundred-odd volunteers work.
We will be having our 2nd Kidz Safari on the 6th of June this year. That's this Saturday. I am in charged of making the registration tags.
I started on the tags yesterday and hoped to finish them by the end of today. Each tag has the child's name, age and parent/guardian's phone number. Since this is not a money-making project, we had to think of ways to bring down the cost. The registration fee for each child is only RM2, enough to cover the child's snack expenses.
Last year, 86 children signed up for this event. This year we have 120 children attending this event. It's going to be one wild safari party at church this Saturday.
This is a creative invention. A hat with a mini fan. Whoever invented this must be feeling hot all the time or has a child who is always complaining about the heat.
I have never stayed in Tune Hotels.com before. I heard it was a budget hotel under AirAsia. Tune Hotel.com's system worked similarly to AirAsia's flight system. The earlier you book, the cheaper you pay for the room. It's a basic no frills room and they only provide the bed (they promised the beds are of 5-star quality), attached bathroom with hot water and a fan. You need to purchase the air-cond usage starting from a 12-hour block which cost RM13.49 to 24-hour block for RM21. Towels, hair-dryer and toiletries are priced at RM5, travel shield (insurance) at RM6 and wireless internet, at RM12 for 24 hours.
The day before we went to Penang, I went into their website. I chose a basic room which cost about RM38 and a 12-hour block air-cond usage. The total came up to about RM54. I thought the price was good, but I didn't book the room. The next hour, I checked the room prices again. It went up to more that RM60 and still I didn't book the room. The 3rd time I checked, it was more than RM70. I told myself, forget it, I will look for another hotel when I reach Penang.
When we reached Penang, Mctc and I kept a look-out of all the hotels advertising their room charges on the banners in front of the hotels. There were some which we thought was alright, but in the end, we chose Tune.hotels.com at Jalan Burma simply because my mind was there plus it was near the city.
The hotel looked new. The lobby was at the 2nd floor.
We check out the room charges. All in, including the room, 12-hour air-con usages and some admin fees cost us about RM85. The receptionist told us that if we were to book 4 months ahead, the room would have cost RM9.90 excluding the air-cond usage and admin fees.
Not knowing how small the room would be, Mctc paid for it and we went up to our rented room.
The walk way. I thought the paintings were lovely. Something different from the normal boring white/off white walls we see at the other hotels.
The room, however was small. Hardly enough place to walk. We love the mirror behind the bed. It certainly made the room looked bigger. :)
And the flower paintings on the wall added character to the room.
So little space, not enough for a table and a chair. This fold table was perfect for the room. It was only meant for temporary usage because it would be a hindrance to the person sleeping at that side of the bed.
The basic facility - a fan. The room was small and quite stuffy for 2 persons. What we did was blast the fan and turned on the air-cond to the lowest temperature - 16C.
They have provided space for ads too.
The bathroom is very near the bed. In fact, if you open the bathroom door wide, it would touch the bed.
The bathroom. It was not too small, not too big. Just nice. I love the shower head. Big and so nice to shower with. :) The only thing I didn't like about the bathroom was the water kept dripping from the shower area to the toilet area. Mctc had to squeeze the mat dry after every shower.
Notice the engravings on the tap (faucet).
As soon as we slot the card (the card also acted as a door key), the clock began to tick. I wonder if the clock would stop if we didn't turn on the air-cond.
We used up about 10 hours and 15 minutes of air-cond. I did asked the receptionist if we could "keep" the balance and use it when we check into the next Tune Hotels.com. She gave a ngative reply. :(
So, will I stay in Tune Hotels.com again? Definately, but only when the price is right. :)
We agreed to have a good night rest the day before and suggested to go out for breakfast at 9.30am. Being early risers, we were all up by 7.30 or so and feeling restless I called the other rooms to check if they have woken up. They were up and we were out of the hotel by 9am. Magaret, the person operating the snack counter in the hotel told us of another good place for breakfast. We wanted to eat mee jawa this time.
We passed by the cat statues opposite Tun Jugah and came to another cat statues with a mini tower. I'm not sure whether Margaret calls this the Great Cat or Sze-En invented the name for this tower.
Breakfast was at this restaurant diagonally opposite the Sarawak Plaza, very near to AirAsia's shoplot.
The mee jawa was disappointing, the chow kuey teow was alright and the Sarawak laksa was the best so far, according to Aunt Chirs. They have also ordered "poh pia" and "woon chai koh." No comments on that.
Taking pics with the Great Cat.
On the way back, we got separated again. Esther, the kids and I went to the Popular bookstore in the Tun Jugah shopping centre. We spent quite some time here. We didn't know what else to do and was very glad when Rachel's friend, Bob called Esther to set an appointment for lunch at 1pm. Since there were 8 of us, he and his girlfriend came in 2 cars and took us to a chinese restaurant.
I don't know how to read Chinese but I can recognise my surname here. :) They pronounced it as Ting. Not sure what dialect. Most of us had beef noodles. Only Aunt Chris and Bob had pork noodles. There had a special name for it but I can't remember. The kids had spaghetti. The food was alright, and would have been better if we weren't so full from breakfast. I didn't finish my noodles too. Such a waste.
After lunch Bob said that he could leave us at the Textile Museum and from there we could walk back to our hotel.
We passed by SinggahSana (yellow and orange building), the inn which we wanted to stay earlier but the rooms we wanted were fully booked.
In the evening, we went for the Sarawak River Cruise. A good experience for the price of RM60 per adult.
Then as usual lah.. we went to Topspot to have our dinner. This time we ordered from the first shop again. The service there was good and the person taking our orders was very friendly. This time we prawns, asam fish curry, vege, tofu, oyster and midin, the paku-pakis vege.
Since they wanted to play in my room, I gave them a time limit. They can only play till 12midnight. I reminded them that we had to get up at 6am for breakfast the next day.
