Off to Kota Bharu

We had some breakfast (which was some delicious fruit) on the deck whilst savouring the magnificent view of the sun rising up into the sky. Some chickens accompanied us by jumping onto our deck and scaring Atti and Leo, so we threw rambutan seeds on to the gravel down below so the chickens would jump down.

beauty

sunny

sunrise

cute

 

After breakfast we went for a little snorkel on the beach. Ella’s Dad brought his classic motorbike with a side cart to the farm and we had a ride around the place. The motorbike was very original and it could go super fast.

bye

atti

vrrrooommm

Later, Ella showed us a bee farm and it was so cool learning how bees made honey. The bee lady gave us samples of fresh unprocessed honey straight from the bee hive.

whats in there?

tiny fish

cool bees

awesome

taste test

buzz

inside the HIVE!

Then it was time to set off on our long journey to Kota Bharu. We entertained ourselves by dressing up pinky (my orangutan teddy), mum took a great photo of the view whilst inside our car.

Hairstyle no.2

Hairstyle no.1

cool

When we got there, our room is beautiful. It has a wonderful view of Kota Bharu.

wow

high

lobby

lobby

super hotel

bedroom

Last but not least, we had a scrumptious margarita pizza for dinner. The waitress gave us some free ice cream because she thought Atti was cute.

me

leo

 

thanks for reading

lily xxx

 

 

To the other side….

Pretty short one today, as we are baggaged from the long drive. We had a decent breakfast of eggs at a nearby cafe, then set straight off.

The journey took us across the vast expanse of forest and palm oil plantations of the Malaysian interior. Total distance of over 430km, which took us most of the day to cover.

Was very much worth it when we arrived however, as our new guest house is stunning, and is only a car journey induced, crippled wobble away from the beach.

Will show you all more tomorrow.

See you soon 🙂

 

Malaccarrrghhh Shipmates…

Great day yesterday, started with breakfast in a Kaya themed cafe, with pancakes and good coffee all round.

Planned a day of sight seeing, starting by trekking up a huge hill, to reach the ruin of St Paul’s Church, the oldest church in SE Asia. It was filled with stone inscriptions on tablets, and, had a commanding view over the town below.

From this vantage point, we spotted a bunch of planes and other vehicles collected towards the city, which turned out to be some kind of transport museum. We headed down to see what it was, and messed around with the exhibits, and popped to a local park for a run around.

After a swift ice cream, we boarded the first part of the Malacca Maritime Museum, which was a massive replica of the 400 tonne Flor de la Mar, a Portuguese trading ship made in the 1500s.

Awesome little museum, telling the pretty distressing tale of the various invasions/handover events of Malacca, especially it’s destruction by the good old Brits! Had a great collection of actual treasure too!

Finished up the day with egg tarts in a local Chinese tea room.

See you all soon 🙂

Malaccalacca Ding Dong

Great day today, moseying round the small streets of the town. After a cosy night in the guest house, with a savage storm going on outside, we went hunting for breakfast. But not before another sun blinded photo (seems to be common!)

We ate in a gorgeous little antiques shop, that was using the antiques as the tables for customers. Really interesting setting and tasty, pastries and coffee.

 

We then spent an hour or so in the Baba and Noyna Heritage Museum, which is a fascinating history of social and cultural self-isolation. The resulting design, food and culture makes for great reading, and the museum was full of pictures and items telling the stories throughout the 7 generations of their history. Appropriately, cameras were banned inside, so you’ll have to take our word for it!

After the museum, we had a spot of lunch in a highly recommended spot called the The Daily Fix. The building (like many here it seems) had a stunning 10 foot square open topped courtyard smack bang in the middle, allowing light and rain to pass into the middle of a 40-50ft terrace location. sitting under the natural light, with plants all around, is really relaxing, and creates a lovely atmosphere. Food was fantastic too.

After lunch, we wandered around some more, popped back to the guest house for a chill. we had spotted a massive Tesco on our travels, so span out in the car to pick up some odds and ends for our travels. We finished up the day with a late meal on Jonker street, in a lovely open air cafe.

Leaving you today with a picture of Lily looking older than her years, settling into her book.

See you all soon 🙂

 

 

Bye Johor, Hello Malacca

We had some fun in the pool this morning for only half an our because it started to rain. The pool was on the top floor, with a four foot edge that drained all the water and led to a ledge for better view of the harbor. Got quite spooky when the storm came in, as you could not see far at all!

We then set off for Malacca, the car ride took three hours and was very quiet on the road. We entertained ourselves by playing ninjas (again!) and then fell asleep.

We arrived at the guest house, which is on one of the tiny streets of Malacca town, just on the river. The town is beautiful, and is cut in half by a river with a number of pretty bridges.

We took a walk over to a very popular north Indian food place. While it looks like we had dinner in a car park, the food is stunning, and we gobbled the lot, washed down with mango lassi.

After tea, we had a wander through the streets, particularly the bustling market places and food stalls of Jonker Street. We will be going back, as there was so much to take in! Expect a more detailed explanation of this carnage later.

We finished up the day with a lovely ice cream and coffee by the river just 20 feet from our guest house, with river cruises and people bustling by as the sun set.

Finishing today on a shot of Leo looking out wistfully on the incoming storm

See you all soon 🙂

Lego Theme Park

Sooo, today was theme park day, and we were there at 10am just as the park opened. The map above details all of the rides and things we saw, we pretty much nailed it, as we didn’t leave until 6:30pm!

Lily’s favorite thing was the Dragon Coaster, which was the big, fast, roller-coaster at the back of the park. Leo’s was the Driving School, as he got to race Lil around the roundabouts. Atti’s highlight was the green plane he rode in (and we will never mention the bouncy drop thing again….) Pics below of these rides.

Dragon coaster

Castle (obvs)

Last carriage!

Plane ride

Plane ride

Cars

Wrong side of the road!

This bouncy drop thing looks fun….

…GET ME OFF!!

We rode on loads of other rides, met a live Hari Raya Frankenstein (??), caught a ninja show, sat in a big lego train, shot lasers at Egyptian mummies,  and posed with a bunch of Lego models, including Darth Vader (note the baddie faces).

A Gallery of Baddies

Ninja Show

Frankie

Cars

Cars

Models

Lil

Rope Climb

Rope Climb

Rope Climb

Lil

We also acquired a set of ninja accessories, which led to a pretty diverse display of ninja acrobatics from Leo in particular. Some are featured below!

Ninja Leap

Ninja Lunge

Wolf Stab

Spinning Ninja

Ninja Swing

Ninja War Face

We recorded a little birthday song for the kid’s Nana, we hope you like it Anne!

Some more generally nice photos from today…

Boys

Boys

Beard

Lil

Leo

Joust

Gang

Smiler

Smiler Snr

Munching

 

Finally, we’ll leave it for today with a pic of Atti hiding from dinosaurs.

“There be Dinosaurs”

See you all soon 🙂

Lego Waterpark

Today we picked up our hire car, which we will live in/out of for the next month. Check her out!

No problems at all getting into central Johor to pick it up, but there is a huge amount of development going on. The roads are all massive but empty?

Then we were off to the waterpark. Even the hotel seemed to be made from lego, and there were massive statues of lego pirates and stuff. We did lazy rivers (with cool floating lego bricks, which the boys promptly made guns from), tube slides, raft slides and a wave pool. There was even a head first, Luge style slide race. There is a map in the pics below.

wheee!

huge lego dude

waterpark

We spent ages there, and then popped back to the hotel (which is only 5 mins away) for dinner. Lily managed to get a few snaps in-between courses, so you can see where we are eating.

More to come tommorow, when we go to the Legoland Themepark (the non watery bit). Leave you with this one of us mauling our picnic by the wave pool.

Picnic

See you all tomorrow!