The Household COO

Mmm…  This looks like a great place for a second honeymoon… 

Coco Palm Dhuni Kolhu
Baa Atoll, Maldives

Oh, wait a minute…  Hubby already confessed he hates beachside resorts.

Bah… We’ll have to keep looking, then.

Well, I’ll be…  Hubby’s photograph taken from our Great Ocean Road tour was shortlisted by Schmap to be included in the 5th edition of their Melbourne Guide which will be published at the end of this month.  It’s a free guide so there’s no payment for the photo, but the publicity would be good if he was moonlighting as a photographer…

They found the photo from my Flickr stream and dropped me a message.  Here’s the photo that was selected:

Stay tuned to see if it made the final cut…

Our recent trip to Tanjong Jara reminded me of a trip the hubby and I took a long time ago to Pangkor Laut.  This was before we got married so you’ll notice that hubby look a lot trimmer in these photos.  It was also back in the days when I could be bothered to wear my contact lenses…

The trip was a planned surprise for me, which I thought was rather sweet of the hubby to go through all that trouble.  He refused to tell me where we were going, only that we were taking a few days holiday at some unknown destination.

I caught on to an island retreat because he let slip that we had to make it to a certain place by a set time.  I figured that meant we had to catch something.  Since we didn’t need our passports, it clearly meant we would still be in Malaysia so it had to be a boat.  Turned out I was right, except I never guessed it was Pangkor Laut.  I was thinking something along the lines of Redang or Perhentian (although my geography of Malaysia is so bad I didn’t know any other islands existed anyway).

Here are some of the photos from our trip:

Below: Waiting for the ferry.

Below: On the ferry.

Below: Arrival at the resort, just after checking in.

Below: Scoping out the menu for lunch.

Below: Checking out the island - I think this was outside the Chinese Restaurant.  It was a long time ago so I can’t remember…

Based on the decor, I’m pretty sure it was a Chinese restaurant.  Can’t imagine any other restaurant with a large gold coin stuck to their front door…

A cute way to place mosquito coils:

Just goofing around outside the spa:

“I wonder if these rocks are climbable?”

Heading down from our room in the “hills”.  Pangkor Laut offers you “hill” villas, “sea” villas, “spa” villas, “beach” villas, garden villas and the suites.  Back then I was really into rock climbing so the hubby figured I would prefer the “hill” villas.  It was rather sweet of him considering the “hill” villas were located the furthest away from all the amenities and it meant we had a lot of walking to do - not exactly the hubby’s favourite passtime…

The food at Pangkor came included in the room package and was “all you can eat” at a variety of restaurants and cafes throughout the island.  This was breakfast on the second day:

All around the island you can see lovely peacocks showing off their tails.

There are a lot of activities to do around the island, but aside from the spa, most of them involve physical activity.  For instance, you can take a kayak around the island.  The hubby very sweetly accommodated my passion for physical activities and agreed to go kayaking with me around the island.

You can see some of the “sea” villas behind me in the background here:

We decided to take a break and headed for shore…

So hubby could get some “oxygen” - he was still an active smoker at the time…

A great workout deserves to be followed by a great meal.  We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant on the second night.  Dessert was homemade ice cream.

The waiters kindly accommodated us by taking a photo…

And another at the entrance to the restaurant.  There’s a cool looking boulder inside the restaurant that caught my attention, although I didn’t get a photo of it.  If it weren’t such a feature within the restaurant, I might have attempted to climb it.

Dinner on the second night was at another restaurant where a three piece Phillipino band was playing.  They were fantastic.  They went around from table to table serenading all the couples.  When they got to our table they sang a Phillipino song called “You are my Soul” - at least that’s what I think the title was.  I loved it, but it’s a shame I never managed to get hold of a copy of the song…

Here’s another peacock…

A view of one of the sea villas.

Taking a walk along the walkways by the sea villas…

Along the walkways they have seats where you can take rest stops, or just sit and admire the scenery.

Alternatively, you can look out for the giant lizards swimming in the water or sun bathing on the rocks.  Can you spot the one in this picture?

Pangkor Laut is a rather romantic getaway.  It is definitely the place to bring your other half and definitely not the place to be if you’re by yourself.  I can’t really comment on the child-friendliness of the place since I never really noticed those sort of things back then. 

The food at Pangkor was a lot better than the food at Tanjong.  There’s more variety as well.  The only downside is that because it is located on an island, there isn’t much else to explore except what’s on the island.  At Tanjong, you can take a drive out to the surrounding towns, explore the night market, and so on.  But if I had to choose which place I would rather go back to, I would choose Pangkor.

Come Monday, hubby and I will be taking our first family beach holiday with Gavin at a place called Tajong Jara.  Since Gavin is still a little too young to enjoy a lot of the activities available, I’m not sure how much we’ll get to do there besides eat and frolick in the pool.  Nevertheless, it will be a welcome break for both hubby and me since we haven’t been on a real holiday since our honeymoon.  As for Gavin, I think he’s going to have a ball.

Tanjong Jara is located on the East Coast of Malaysia between Kuantan and Kuala Terengganu and has been touted “One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World” by Condé Nast Traveller UK, 2006.  For more details and pictures of this beautiful getaway, take a wonder over to the Tanjong Jara Resort website.  They even have weddings and honeymoon packages - it’s a perfect venue for a beach wedding.

Back in the early days when the hubby and I were still dating, we took a trip down to Australia together.  I was initially supposed to make another trip to Krabi but changed my plans after my Dad sounded a little disappointed I wasn’t planning to come home for Christmas.  We went to Brisbane first and then flew down to Melbourne for the second part of our holiday.

I guess a little guardian angel was looking out for me because that was the year the second largest ever earthquake hit the Indian Ocean causing a tsunami that spread as far as Krabi.  Although no one was hurt in Krabi, friends reported a lot of damage done to East Railay.

I digress…  Under the recommendation of my parents, we took a coach tour along the Great Ocean Road and here are some of the pictures from our tour:

Although I had been to see the Great Ocean Road one during my Uni days, I think I had a better time during this trip.  The coach picked up us from Swanston Street in the city took us out west onto the Great Ocean Road.  The driver was also our tour guide pointing out interesting landmarks along the way like the last light house and Shipwreck Coast where numerous ships ended up while trying to aim their way towards Port Phillip Bay.  Back in those days, navigating those waters was apparently like trying to thread the eye of a needle and a lot of ships never made it. 

It was a rather informative trip and a real pity we didn’t have time for more tours…

As I grow older, I think I get more sentimental.  I look back at all my old photos in the archives of my external hard drive and get a little weepy-eyed as I recall the memories.  Then I wonder how time has flown and how much life has changed.  It seems a little sad to keep those pictures in the attic of my hard drive, so I’ve decided to start uploading them to slide and post them here.

Below are photos from Christmas three years ago when the hubby and I had our first holiday together in Melbourne.  It was a BBQ at Al’s house with my former dental colleagues. 

I recently saw the gang again in August…  It’s amazing how old everyone looks now.

Saw this on my cousin’s website:

L’Hotel is where my uncle will be staying at during his next conference in Paris.  Sweet!  Back in the 60’s they had people like Princess Grace, Elizabeth Taylor and Salvador Dali staying there.  When you check out the pictures below and on their website you’ll know why this hotel was the place to be.

One of the rooms - this is just one of five beautifully decorated rooms that they offer to their guests.  Not quite something the hubby would like, but I’d have no complaints staying here!

Get comfy in their restaurant with their sofa chairs - no more bottom-breaking wooden furniture.  The hubby definitely wouldn’t be complaining about this that’s for sure! 

A room with a view.  Now this is a site to wake up to!

I think I’ll have to add this hotel to my list of places to stay at when I get around to visiting Paris.

Holiday pictures from the hubby’s and my trip down to Melbourne in 2004.  These were taken at Southbank and Federation Square (which is just across the road from Southbank).  It was the first time I ever visited Federation Square.  The photos from Southbank were taken at the Lolly Shop and Charmaine’s Ice Cream (which is unfortunately no longer there).  They used to be the gold medalist winner for ice cream at the Australian Dairy Show.  What a shame they had to go… 

Sometime during my pregnancy, my brother told me he was getting married and that the wedding was going to be held in Shanghai. The hubby and I thought we would take this great opportunity to extend our trip and take a little holiday around Shanghai since neither of us had ever been there.

That was before Gavin was born. Of course everything changed after he was born. For instance, we totally underestimated the power of our son’s call to us. After he was born, the idea of leaving him behind while we went off on a holiday suddenly seemed too unbearable. As a result, we cut our four day holiday to an overnight trip where we would just attend my brother’s wedding and fly back ASAP.

Even then, we thought we might at least get a chance to see a little of Shanghai before we had to leave. Here are the three photos I took from our trip that were not related to the wedding:

Above: Hubby and Mom walking out to the hair salon where Mom and I got our hair done for the wedding.

Above: Another shot of Mom and Hubby - you can see a part of the Sofitel Hotel where we stayed at behind them. I did take another photo of the Hotel with the revolving restaurant at the top but I had to delete the photo because silly me forgot to download the previous photos on my memory card before we left so I had very limited spare memory on my camera for the wedding photos.

Above: a telephone card machine at Shanghai airport that I took using my mobile phone camera. It was meant to be one of those shots for “English bloopers”. If you take note that they spelt “automatically” as “automatially”. Even if you assume that they simply missed printing the letter “c”, the grammar is still incorrect.

Yup, a trip to Shanghai and all we saw was the airport, the hotel and a hair salon.

Ripponlea is one of the last privately owned estates in Melbourne. It has since been converted to a National Trust where people can visit to observe what life of the wealthy had been like during the 19th century.

I’ve always loved old-style houses, especially estates because I marvel at the grounds. I would have loved to have been a child growing up in a house like this.

Many of the photos taken inside the house are blurry because I wasn’t allowed to use a flash. This was back before I got the Casio Exilim, and I didn’t know how to toggle with the ISO settings. You can still get a pretty good idea of what it was like to living in an estate back then.