Boat trip at Kilim, Langkawi

In the last March, we went to Langkawi Island. We had the opportunity to have a boat trip touring Kilim river from Kilim jetty, at the north eastern edge of Langkawi, up to the estuary heading to Andaman Sea. It was a fascinating trip, entertaining and educating for not only the kids but us too. It took about three hours in one afternoon.

The best parts were seeing the green mangrove forests, caves, as well as the peoples living in the area

Here is video collecting photos there uploaded by Farhan at his page.

Cameron Highland's strawberry

Ainaa concluded at the end of the trip that: "Cameron Highland is aall.. about strawberries". "Strawberry is everywhere!" She said.

What to enjoy is the strawberry, the fresh is the best regardless of various products they made of the strawberries. Since the time in Melbourne, that was the first time they could enjoy a lot of fresh strawberries.

For the second day we went to a strawberry farm with variety of other vegetables, flowers and cacti. The choice was based on accessibility ie the closest to our stay room considering the traffic jam. But the entrance to the strawberry farm was closed - we suspected that was because they ran out of strawberries. So no strawberry picking. Again think very well before going there during long holiday. 

Somehow we enjoyed the time there, the views and the taste of their strawberry cakes, strawberry ice-creams, strawberry, tomato and vegetable salad, smoothies and pies!

Got some cacti to bring home too.

Right after that, we headed home before a quick drop by at a morning market to buy some vegetables and strawberries too.

Cameron Highland's Mardi Agro Technology Park - May 2015

From the tea plantation, we went to an agro park by Mardi a government agency specialised for agriculture development.

Again, from the tea plantation, the drive took us almost 2 hours for less than 2 km journey. Just take it as sightseeing through the road overlooking the bushes and jungle scenery left and right with patience. Otherwise you would end up hating the whole trip. Luckily we had some foods in the car to keep the children occupied. Luckily too no one had the nature call throughout that might polluted the forest ...

The park was fun too. There are variety of colourful flowers, strawberries and vegetables. A shop was selling strawberry based products like ice-creams, yogurt and juices. But many products were out of stock for extra demand from so many tourist during the holiday.

Family trip to Cameron Highlands - May 2015

It was a long holiday. Labour day fell on Friday. Wesak celebration was on Sunday and Monday was subtituted as holiday.

We had a gathering with families from Kedah at Cameron Highlands. Quite a big number of them. They are 3 families of my father-in-law's siblings. Another is the 3 generations of my own in-laws. They invited us to join their big gathering and had booked the residence for quite some time.

As we were warned of the bad traffic in the highland during long holidays, we were quite reluctant to join initially. However thinking that it's quite difficult to have such opportunity to be together with them, we finally packed our bag. 

Even we actually had started the journey on Friday, but turned back as the traffic in all highways almost stood still. We started again the journey the next day on the early Saturday morning at about 4 am. The traffic was good and we reached Brinchang by 11 am. 

At Brincang, it was cloudy and rain showering at times. The temperature was 20 degree at 11 am. We met with the rest of the team at a petrol station near Brinchang Police Station. They decided to do to a tea plantation near Tanah Rata.

As warned of the traffic, the trip took us almost 30 minutes despite the short distance.

The travel worth it may be with the amazing green view awaiting us with good and sufficient facilities. Even the toilet has an opened window facing the green tea plantation...

There was a tea cafe with so many people in queue. We had a taste of a jug of tea shared among all of us. It was good. 

There was also a shop selling tea and other Cameron's specialty products like dried strawberry, ice- cream and some memorabilia. The tea is slightly more expensive than the ones sold in Mardi agropark.

The kids, as usual are the happiest. The tea trees are like maze they could run around and had the fun of hide and seek. 

My own sewn long skirt

Yesterday was the last class for the semester.

Today in the morning I felt not really well. Initially I intended to work from home in the morning but did not have the feel. Looking at the screen made me feel more dizzy. But sleeping during day time is simply not my thing. I need to do something else.

Slowly I re-arranged the kids wardrobe. And found a fabric given by a relative long time ago. Suddenly the urge to sew that into a skirt came. I browse through some youtube videos looking for ideas and voila.. I wanted to make a long A-cut skirt for myself.

So almost all day, I worked the skirt using my little sewing machine. And here it is.. It's done except for the waist band that I need to look for in the shop.

As for me, this is a big success as this is my first time product for sewing ;-)

Happy mom's day

To all mothers in the world.

Thanks to the kids and the dad for having me this <3

A come back post - roti sarang lebah

After almost 1 year and half coming back from Melbourne, can I make a come back to this lonely page with this bread story?

Here it is. My bee nest ( is it correct?) bread or roti sarang lebah as it is called. I was quite active making bread during the study leave .. as a way to unwind perhap. But in here this is only the third time I made a bread. 

As usual, the newly baked bread gone within minutes.

Credit to pn azie for the recipe: http://aziejaya.blogspot.com/2014/12/roti-sarang-lebah-yang-menjadi-pujaan.html.