Trip to Ipoh- Nov 2011

We made a trip to Ipoh in November to celebrate my grandparents' birthday (yes, both of them); it was my grandfather's 90th (Chinese) birthday!

We stayed at the Tower Regency hotel; the apartment we managed to book was decent and spacious, although I have to admit the hotel is rather run down for a place that is relatively new (about 2-3 years old).

The birthday dinner was quite good; and we had a nice time catching up with the relatives. I hope my grandparents enjoyed themselves; I'm sure they were happy to have so many family members celebrating with them. There were 4 generations there that day! 

The next morning, before we came back to KL, we decided to visit the Kek Look Tong Cave Temple, a tourist attraction situated in the natural and picturesque area of Gunung Rapat in the south of Ipoh. It was pretty nice walking around and exploring the area for a little bit. The air in the cave was cool, and there were many stalactites and stalagmite formations to admire.

A short overnight trip; but well worth it I would say...

16th East Asian Actuarial Conference

Nothing much to blog about the conference, except that it was a great opportunity to catch up with friends.

Check out the menu for the farewell dinner! The food that night was dismal, though.

Trip to Genting Highlands!

Hubby’s company organized a trip toGenting recently and we brought the whole family along. Actually, it was more of me helping hubby to plan the trip and everyone just followed the plan! Haha.

The drive up to Genting was surprisingly short, and it took us only about 45 minutes or so to reach Gohtong Jaya.We stopped to visit the Genting Strawberry Farm, where we had a great time showing the kids how strawberries were grown. Armed with a pair of scissors and a basket, we also had fun ‘plucking’ strawberries, which we later purchased (about RM 6.50 per 100 grams I think). The strawberry farm is a great place to visit with the family, I would say. 

We also had lunch in Gohtong Jaya beforemaking our way up to Genting itself. Lunch was ok, although we did find a tiny worm in the vegetable soup! Yikes. Ah well, can consider it as protein.:p

Crystal fruit

Mushrooms

Giant pumpkins

We managed to get an early check-in,and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Family Room was quite new and nice. It had 2 double beds, a couch, and plenty of space to walk around, so the kids could run around a little bit. Our room was right next to the Outdoor Theme Park though, so while it provided an interesting view, it was quite noisy with all the screaming from the thrill rides.

We had a fairly nice break in Genting although we did not get to do much. It was raining a lot, with strong winds and a LOT of mist; at times it really felt like we were in some English countryside! Visibility was so low that we could not even see the theme park from our window most of the time. At night, the wind howled and moaned, and it was a tad scary, to be honest. The Outdoor Theme Park was also closed since the weather was so bad, which meant that everyone just congregated in the Indoor Theme Park making it terribly crowded! :( 

We paid for an All-Day Pass for the IndoorTheme Park, but only got to go on 3 rides! Gosh, what a waste of money! I thought we could do more rides, but with kids, it's hard to do much,really. They get tired and cranky easily, and everything just takes more time when you travel with young children. Ah well. 

One big gripe I have with the 'resort' (if you can call it that), is that it is AWFULLY unfriendly to young kids (who need strollers) and people with disabilities. There are stairs and escalators EVERYWHERE, which makes getting around a real nightmare. After the first evening, where we had to haul our 2 strollers around (thank God we had help from from hubby's colleagues), we learnt our lesson and from then on, we only took the lighter one out instead. It was a whole lot easier even though one of us had to carry one kid at any one time. 

Guess the kids need to be older to enjoy Genting a bit more....

Glow-in-the-dark bowling