Cheeks to Cheeks

When I called my aunt this evening she told me she had booked a vacation package for us to Pangkor Laut Resort. I have read and heard many good things about this exclusive resort. Jon and I are so hoping to get some good R&R with the family. Luckily for us, my parents, aunt & uncle, and grandma will be joining us. That means we have free babysitting. Woohoo!

As you know I don’t believe in weight loss pills. That means I have exactly one month to lose my tummy flab. I doubt it will be feasible. So, I’m resorting to a good tummy tuck swimsuit. Hehe…

~Backdated post~

Ah, at long last, here are the pics from our Monterey Bay trip during Thanksgiving holidays. We weren’t in a hurry to get there so, we took our own sweet time preparing for the trip in the morning. We wanted to make the journey around Belle’s nap time. That way, she could sleep in the car during our 2 hrs drive to Monterey Bay. Read the rest of this entry »

AnnieQ asked what is a Canopy zip-line? I think this is the company we did our Canopy tour at Puerto Vallarta: Canopy & Outdoor Adventures.

Click on the video and you will see the fun we had experienced.

Let’s start the post with a funny pic…

My sister was so afraid of the bird (that was trying to kiss her with its tongue). We were greeted by people dressed in traditional Mexican attires but we didn’t stop to take photos with them. Our day was scheduled well: Jon, Angela and myself would join the Canopy zip-line tour and the rest of our party (including Belle) would spend 1/2 day sight-seeing at Puerto Vallarta.

Our Canopy tour started with a leisure boat ride from the port to inland. Once we reached our destination, we (12 of us) hopped into a truck (below).

The ride was quite bumpy and we were lucky to have seat belts on the bench. The truck ride to the mountains took about 30 to 45 mins. Luckily it was open air and I didn’t get motion-sickness on the way up.

The guys in black shirt was our guide. I think his name is Pablo. He is a funny dude and told us a lot of funny stories on the way up. He used to be a scuba diving guide before he became a canopy zip-line guide. I tell you, all these zip-line guides have bodies like the oscar statue. So man-ly and all of them have that Antonio Banderas accent. LOL! *slurp*

We didn’t take much photos of the canopy zip line ‘cos it was impossible to be hung above ground (over 70 feet high) and zip across the line while snapping photos. The guides made all of us store our cameras in a safety box before they geared us up with the equipment. All our memories of the canopy tour will be stored in the DVD we’ve bought.

I was and still am afraid of heights and this canopy tour had increased my confidence level. I would do it again, anytime.

Angela, my dad and Jon had a swell time eating lobster, drinking beer and tequila after all of us got back from our trips. Where was I? I was fast asleep in bed ‘cos I had motion-sickness on the way down from the mountains. I also had a slight fever, sun-burnt and slight diarrhea. I ate something wrong the day before and Belle had loose stools too. It must be something we ate from the Harvest Cafe. I guess we were the unlucky ones ‘cos everyone else seemed to be fine.

Mazatlan:

Ah, beautiful Mazatlan. If I were to come back to Mexico again, I would spend more days in Mazatlan. Mazatlan is the biggest shrimp/prawn exporter in Mexico.

One thing you’ll notice once you get to Mazatlan is the statues. Mazatlan has many statues placed along the bay and they have every statue for every thing. We decided to join an independent Trolley tour and not use the cruise’s tour that day. Since our party was big, we were able to get a discounted price of $20 per person (Belle was free). If we didn’t had so many people, we would have to fork out $35/person.

I forgot what these 2 HUGE rock islands were but the guide joked about seagulls bombing those rocks till they turned white.

First stop was at this hill and I think it used to be a marine fort. We were able to snap some good scenic photos of Mazatlan from there.

Next stop was to view the infamous Cliff divers. My sister took a good shot of the diver plunging down. If you look closely, the diver’s body isn’t straight ‘cos he will need to enter the water with his chest and not his head. The depth (I was told) was not deep; therefore, the diver will need to swim upwards right away.

These divers do this as a living. Their income is the tips given by the audiences. Mind you, everyone there gave USD, not pesos. These divers must be friggin rich!

After the brief cliff diving show, we went to the oldest Church in Mazatlan. The church is so beautiful. My parents and in-laws did the Puerto Vallarta city tour the day before told us this church is more beautiful than the church at P.V.

The trolley tour is just like any typical tour agency…they will surely and truly bring people do some SHOPPING. Without us shopping, they will not get commission from those stores. So, again, we were hard-sold into Diamonds International. My mom did get a gorgeous AND huge mystique topaz ring. Sorry, forgot to take pic of it.

The best thing about this tour was the Mexican restaurant we had for lunch (again, some kickbacks for our guide). The food was good…not great but the seafood was really fresh. Oh, Belle graced their toilet and boy, did she laid a huge one! We had to wash and change her pants..hehe.

Above are just random shots of the places we saw. We sat in that trolley (above). Look at all the food we had ordered (below). I can’t remember the names but they were all lobster, shrimp, squid & fish.

We’re blessed that Belle was a very good girl throughout the trip. She enjoyed the sight-seeing and even took a nap on my shoulder.

Cabo San Lucas:

Our final Mexican port was also our shortest port day. We set up a tour with the cruise line for my parents and in-laws. It was a short tour in the boat around the Los Arcos. Their tour started at 7.30am and ended around 9am. Our snorkelling tour did not start till 10am. We had to take a smaller boat to the pier ‘cos Cabo doesn’t have a pier deep enough for cruise ship to dock. We met up with my in-laws and folks at the pier and walked along the broadwalk with them.

They got hungry and we decided to leave them at this restaurant (somewhere in the middle of the town). This restaurant has cool settings. I love the way the hung stuff on the trees and they had tables set up in the open courtyard. It looked very romantic. Too bad we (Angela, Jon & myself) couldn’t stay long ‘cos we had to head back to the pier to meet up with our snorkelling guide.

Below are some shots taken while we were on a raft.

The famous natural Arc of Cabo San Lucas (upper right). There is this beach (lower left) that appears whenever there is a low tide. I think it is called Lover’s Beach.

When snorkelling, the rule of thumb is always be with your partner. If anything happens to you, your partner will be there to help or signal for help. We met a lovely gal from Vancouver Edmonton, Canada on this snorkelling trip. Angela paired up with her. I think her name is Anne. We saw Anne when we were at Puerto Vallarta. She did another tour but her cousin and aunt did the canopy tour with us. (Angela said they were not related..but we will never know.)

The ride back from our snorkelling spot was really bumpy. The sea got rough and our guide had to cut short our tour due to that. Nonetheless, we got to see fishes close up and the water was so clear and blue. I got a little sea-sick while floating in the sea but didn’t puke.  I was surprised I didn’t sea-sick from the bumpy ride.

The photo below was taken on our boat trip from the cruise ship to the Cabo pier.

Next, more pictures…

Hola again!

We spent the first 3 days at sea. I think this is a better route than other cruise lines. The ship route is 3 days at sea, reach Puerto Vallarta (1 day at port), then Mazatlan (1 day at port) and last port at Cabo San Lucas (1/2 day). Since we have 3 days to familiarize the ship, we were able to unpack the luggage bag and relax a bit.

We were given newsletter every evening. The newsletter was useful ‘cos it listed out all the events that would go on for the following day. Jon, my sister and Belle managed to catch a few shows performed by the chefs and bartenders. My mom and I attended a seminar, which they claimed, would help us familiarize all 3 ports. We felt slightly conned by the “chance to win a diamond pendant” and sat thru a seminar where they talked about shopping. Majority of the shops “recommended” by the Princess cruise were jewellery stores. The lady who did the seminar was trying to hot-sale all the stores. It is like telling the passengers to spend more more more. Haiz…So, did we win the diamond pendant? Fat chance for us!

This was taken at Harvest Cafe. It is a 24-hr buffet dining room. My in-laws and folks prefer to eat there than the traditional dining rooms. They like the flexibility of choosing whatever food they like. We did traditional sit-down dining for 2 nights and rest of the nights we had dinner at Harvest Cafe.

Jon and I like the photo above ‘cos it gives a warm fuzzy feeling after viewing it. My in-laws love Belle to death.

So, what else did we do while at sea for 3 days?

This is a rare moment ‘cos Belle decided to play with her Ah Yi.  For some odd reasons, Belle just loves to bully her Ah Yi. Whatever her Ah Yi has, she would wanna get it from her and refuse to give it back to her.

Belle also spent time at the Plaza (lobby) running around. The staffs in the boutique stores loved her to bits. Everytime we were window shopping, they would say, “Here comes, Isabelle!”

The photo above is just a random shot of her on the bunk bed. Nope, she didn’t sleep there.

We did a little sun-tanning with Belle’s Ah Yi. Did you notice she always have this pose where she points her index finger on her cheek? Well, that’s her ??? (Mandarin: smile a little) pose.

There was a formal wear dinner on the 2nd night. We dressed up for it and took some formal shots (done by the cruise photographers). There was a little hiccup: Jon thought his suit pants was in his suit hanger but when he took his suit out, the jacket was there, the shirt and tie were there but no pants! He was gonna forego the formal dinner and eat alone at Harvest Cafe but my FIL came to the rescue. He gave Jon his black pants and wore a beige pants with his jacket. Poor Jon, had to suck in his tummy the entire night!

Another xiao xi xi moment…

We waited till 8pm ‘cos the Captain of the ship was gonna make a speech. We had some hors d’oeuvres and cocktail. Belle was hungry by then and silly me for not feeding her earlier. I fed her some hors d’oeuvres and water.

See all the women surrounding Belle? They are the boutique staffs I talked about earlier. The Captain finally made his presence and this is a photo of him:

By the time the Captain finished his speech, our table was available at Pacific Moon dining room. Belle had some bread and crackers. She got cranky before our appetizer arrived and wanted to sleep. We had a tough time putting her down ‘cos she just wanted to lie her head on her daddy’s shoulder. We managed to put her down after 15 mins but the stoopid party from the next table was so loud and woke her up. The maitre’d and waiters were very helpful and set up another table for me and Belle. So, I dined alone until Jon decided to join me during dessert.

On the 3rd day we ditched gave Belle to my in-laws and scouted the entire ship.

My mom attended a ceramic painting session. See how engrossed she was? She didn’t notice we were there snapping her pic.

We had a Mexican lunch that day and met up with the rest of the family. Here’s a pic of me goofing off with my sister’s sunnies…

A pic of my goofy sister…

A pic of my silly daughter who didn’t have Mexican food for lunch…

After lunch we changed her into her va-va-voom bikini.

Hey, good looking!

Next post, the ports! To be continued…

 Hola!

The cruise trip to Mexico was fun. Personally, 7 days on the boat is just right. Anything more than that, I think all of us will be bored to death. Don’t get me wrong, the service and food were good but a little too repetitive for us.

We took the Princess cruise and I believe all cruise lines are pretty much the same. We almost had the Home Alone scene on our way to the airport. If you haven’t watch Home Alone before, rent the video and watch the scene where the family members were frantically rushing out the house, screaming away at the airport, etc. Yup, we almost did all of those..and the most embarrassing part was to hear the intercom paging for the owner of the Nvidia hats & blue handbag. Yupz, that owner was me.

Anyway, let’s have the photos do all the talking…

These pics were taken after all the commotions and we all look so happy ‘cos we had coffee.

The check-in process took forever ‘cos our pre-registered infos didn’t show up in their system. The lady who was checking us in was quite old matured and it took her a long time type our infos. Halfway typing, her mouse konked out on her. While she went to get help, i.e. trying to flag her IT guy; Jon exchanged her mouse with the mouse from the laptop that was next hers. See? No need to flag down her IT guy, my man also know how to solve her laptop problem. Anyway, we got everything squared away but still have to wait. We were given a number tag and had to wait for our numbers to be called. Once the number was called, we would have to wait in line for another security screening before boarding the ship.

Lucky for us, we have Belle. Babies on strollers and folks who needed assistance were told to wait on another line and that line was shorter. We boarded the ship before the rest of our party.

Since Belle didn’t get a discounted rate for being an infant/toddler, we decided to use our cabin to the fullest. As you can see, we have a double bed but we told our steward to pull down an extra bed (from the ceiling). That way, daddy slept on top and Belle slept with me on the double bed.

We were greeted by our steward, Rolan, outside our statesroom. He happened to be there and welcomed us.  There was also a plate of cookies to welcome us. I was starving by that time and gulped down 2 cookies..hehe.

We were really starving when all of us got onto the ship. Every passenger we met on the elevator was telling us how hungry they were and some of them didn’t even have breakfast. We decided to meet up with my folks, in-laws and sister at Deck 14 for some grubs. They were so many people at the bbq pit. Everyone was in line for the burgers, hotdogs, sodas…we were like a bunch of hungry cows.

After lunch all the passengers were asked to be in our statesroom to get ready for the mandatory emergency drill. Again, we were lucky to have Belle with us. We didn’t have to stand with the rest of the passengers in the lounge rooms. We were told to sit comfortably in their computer room. Belle had so much fun pounding on the keyboard and moving the mouse. She even let us zip her up in the life jacket!

After we had our safety drill, we went back to our statesroom. Our room has a window and the view wasn’t too bad despite having the lifeboat obstructing part of the view. Belle the monkey queen was in action again…

Belle doing her “ugly face” impersonation.

Here are some photos of the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Jon took this while I was napping with Belle.

People were so anxious to dip into the pool. Look at the crowd (upper left pic)! It was really people mountain people sea, ????!

to be continued…

We had the family dinner at Precious Old China on a weekday. The in-laws and relatives met up with us at Central Market. My dad and cousin, Joe Shi, drove to Genting to pick ‘em up that afternoon. We walked a bit but didn’t buy much (‘cos I thought I would do all the cheap shopping at Bali).

I was told Central Market new owners struck a deal with the city (previously it was “bumiputra” owned) in which they will lease it for few years (can’t remember how many years) but the “city” will have no business rights. The new owners are M’sian Chinese and needless to say, Central Market has changed dramatically! They have revamped it into 3 major villages/wings within the building. There are the Little Chinatown, Little India and a Malay area (which looks more like a little Arab area).

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Belle received so many hong pao (Cantonese: red packets filled with money) and gifts. Daddy and I had a swell time unwrapping the gifts and counting the $$$.

She received a talking-singing-walking Winnie the Pooh from her Kau fu (Cantonese: uncle from mom’s side), my god-bro.

We had to lug all these toys and clothes back to US. Aiyo, entire luggage bag was filled with her stuff.

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While the in-laws and relatives were at Genting, we lazed around at home. All we did was eat, visited our Uncle’s shop at O.U.G. and had breakfast with my PoPo. Everyone from my mom’s family resides at O.U.G. This residential area has a lot of good eats and we always go to this Wanton Noodle store for breakfast. The owners married on the same day as my parents and their son is the same age as me.

Daddy loves his Ice Milk Coffee early in the morning.

My dad, Belle’s Gong Gong, loves this pic.

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This pic was taken outside my folks’ house. My mom loves these pics ‘cos it reminds her of my sister.

Belle loves to play with the stones every morning. My mom made sure the stones were throughly cleaned the night before or early in the morning before Belle played with them. At times Belle would try to bite on the stones.

Belle began to warm up to my mom. She would even allow her PoPo to carry her. Poor Gong Gong, still didn’t get that chance BUT that would change very soon.

We tried to snap a pic of her standing at the gate ‘cos my sis had one taken in that same pose. I had a difficult time trying to make her smile. She was just too grouchy that morning. We wanted so much to catch her at that pose to do a comparison as my mom kept saying Belle looks like Angela. But, I still think my daughter looks like me. The pic below will prove it..hehe…

We bathed Belle outside few times. Belle enjoyed the outdoor baths so much. The weather in M’sia is so perfect for such activity.

Belle’s birthday party was held on Nov 2nd at my parent’s house. My mom made arrangements for tents and had the food catered. Some of my aunts offered to cook a dish or two as well. The party was also a way for my mom to show off her newly renovated house. I must say this time around my mom actually did a pretty darn good job (renovating the house).

We had the party on a Friday ‘cos Jon’s relatives from Hong Kong arrived that afternoon. We had also planned their Genting trip with the relatives from Shanghai the following day. They had such a jam packed schedule; therefore, we had no choice but to have the party on a Friday. Friday was also a Pasar Malam (Malay: night market) day. My parents’ house located near the P.M. area and it would be difficult to drive into the road as the Pasar Malam crowd always cause traffic problem.

We were also afraid of the weather too. Ever since we arrived at K.L. it would rain (without fail) around 4pm. Luckily, it didn’t rain that evening. The tent crew came around 3.30pm and the catering crew came around 5-ish. So, what did we do during that afternoon. The pics will tell the story (be forewarn, it is quite a long post)…

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Belle’s birthday post will have to take a step back. Today I’ll post about food! *evil grin* This is for you Mamabok ‘cos you miss our local food the most.

Our relatives from Shanghai and Hong Kong were in town during our stay in M’sia. Their main purpose was to 1) celebrate this princess birthday and 2) visit Malaysia. Our relatives from Shanghai has never been to M’sia; therefore, my parents and relatives played hosts and planned trips to Genting and Penang for them. As usual, whenever there are friends or relatives visiting us, food is always the center topic.

My PoPo (Chinese: maternal grandma) insisted to treat the relatives for dinner. Hence, my folks and us have to scout for restaurants. My mom suggested Precious Old China at Central Market ‘cos they serve local dishes. The ambience was really nice and all the decos were kinda antique like. Their website will do justice to their furnishings. I did a search for the website of this restaurant and found out Boolicious had posted about it too.

Anyway, here are some pics to share…

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