It seems like eons ago, but just 5 weeks ago, my husband, 20-month old daughter (aka HRH) and I set off on our long-awaited vacation to Malaysia and Australia. Our annotated itinerary looked something like this:
12 December – fly from Bahrain to Kuala Lumpur (night flight in Business Class). HRH was way too excited to sleep at her regular bedtime!
13 – 16 December – enjoy the offerings of the Genting Highlands in Malaysia. To be honest, this was the view for most of our visit, and it was quite cool (by our reckoning, anyway). This was the view we had for breakfast each morning, and we followed that with a trip down to the theme park. Poor HRH was terrified of the carousel! They had some great local live music to entertain her though, which put the smile back on her little face! Our last day, we had a long wait after checking out of the room before our car picked us up to take us back to the airport. We filled the time in with forbidden fruit! LiLi’s SIL would have been proud!
16 December – fly from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney (another night flight). At least the lounge was comfy, so we could eat something and relax before doing battle to get HRH to sleep on the aircraft!
17 – 20 December – enjoy Sydney (in particular the casino at Star City). The hotel was very nice, as were the docks nearby, and the views over Sydney are breathtaking! Hubby and I had a bit of a flutter in the casino, won some but came out losers overall!
20 December – fly to the Gold Coast!
20 December – 6 January – Christmas with my family, then 10 days at the beach. After a week of being true tourists, we settled in at Grandma and Grandad’s house in anticipation of Christmas! We all had a nice time, relaxing and enjoying the views around my parents’ semi-rural home. HRH figured out that Grandad’s dog is okay and spent some valuable time with Grandma! Lots of shopping ensued, ahead of some extended-family Christmas craziness! Once the unwrapping was done, lunch ensued! HRH had a grand old time playing with her cousins! After all of that family time, I think hubby was about to go crazy when we finally decamped to our (almost on the) beach apartment! We had a lovely time on the beach!!! On New Year’s Eve, we took HRH to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, near the southern end of the Gold Coast. We saw kangaroos, emus, lazy sun-worshipping lizards and koalas galore! Unfortunately, the weather was stinking hot (about 35°C, and 95% humidity), so HRH crashed within maybe 1.5 hours, and we retreated to the café to let her sleep and cool down! And so ended our foray into meeting Australia’s native fauna! After that, we headed back to the apartment to let HRH play dress-ups! After long days shopping, sun-worshipping and playing in the park (and Mummy and Daddy hiring a babysitter to run off to the casino for New Year’s Eve), our time in paradise was up!
6 January (another night flight) - We said out tearful goodbyes to Grandma, Grandad, uncles, aunties and cousins, and flew our from Brisbane back to Kuala Lumpur! Now, it’s really time to SHOP!!! We spent three days helter skelter in the malls of KL, but mainly in the SOGO department store near our (less than wonderful) hotel, and in Berjaya Times Square – 14 (yes, FOURTEEN) levels of shopping madness! Pashminas for US$4, nice leather handbags for US$10, shoes for whatever price you want to pay. But the one thing I wanted to try, the highlight for me of 4 weeks of vacation was the 30 minutes I spent in the Fish Spa! I let a pool of little fishies nibble at my feet for half an hour, cleaning and chewing off all the dead, dry skin and returning my feet to a pristine, never-been-walked-on state! It tickled like nobody’s business, but the end result was fantastic! If you ever get the chance (and have a spare US$10), you must try it!!!
10 January – finally, after 4 weeks of madness and early mornings and late nights, we rolled back onto the plane in KL, to fly ourselves (and 100kg of luggage :eek: ) home to Bahrain!
So tell me, how was your Christmas and New Year???
P.S. There are plenty more pics in the online album – feel free to browse!