John&Val's Blog

Went on a all-girls’ holiday from 17 to 19 Aug 2009. Jami and Chiew Yong were with me on this trip. You were both great fun and I think we got along very well together!

We went to ‘nuar’ at Angsana Bintan Resort. It was great time to spend away from office, and just rest totally without any distraction.

Highlights of the trip include

- Dinner at the Saffron Resturant, Banyan Bintan Resort

- Night trip to see fireflies

- all the chats we had

- Falling down and getting a hairline fracture on the right hand (not a positivie highlight)

The only time I was really worried was on Monday morning – Mdm Lim called to say that Matthew was sick with fever. Hui took him back, and he ended up with 3 days’ MC. His fever did not subside until Wed. But I trusted Hui would be in control of the situation and would know what was best for our son.

All in all, it was a good holiday. I thank my family for allowing me this precious time away to recooperate from the stress at work, and being there to support me all the way. Love you all dears!

Our travel account when we visited Sydney and Melbourne in 2004 with Matty (3 years) and Judy (5 mths).

Sat 24 Sept 2004
The plane trip to Sydney was a good one – luckily there were little air turbulance to deal with. Matty was rather excited and kept awake most of the trip. The seat was probably uncomfortable for him to sleep properly – so he was awake most of the time tossing about. He eventually fell asleep but woke about half hour later crying when he discovered he could not turn properly. His crying probably woke the whole section of the plane where we were seated. Luckily it was also about the time when they served the light breakfast so people started to stir anyway. Eventually we arrived at Sydney, but found Matty fast asleep. We got a ride in the golfcart when we came off the plane to the duty free place. Being the kiasu people, we tossed everything food-wise into the bin. We had to line up a long time before we got to the immigration. We were stopped because the immigration claimed that both our passports were “not scanned properly” – but the kids’ ones were ok.

Anyhow, we eventually trudged our way out to see Ee Jean. It was good to see familiar face in a strange land. We took the airport bus to Hotel UniLodge, which is actually a hostel but allows public to rent rooms as well. This is located along Broadway Road, not far from Chinatown.
After settled into the room, we all took a nap, and woke up later to walk about. First stop was Paddy’s Market where we bought him a mini-train set – which had numbers for carriages.

First impression of Sydney : We passed by a landfill – somewhat like Lorong Halus…. hmmm

Walked to Cocklebay Wharf at Darling Harbour. The main attraction there was the mini-train which allowed children and adults to sit and brought around the area to see the attractions.

We met up with Daniel and had a quick bite. We then walked all the way back from Darling Harbour to Broadway – about 45 mins of brisk strolling. The kids took the cool weather well, and the constant movement about rocked them to sleep.

Sun
Went to church in the morning. Got there a bit late because a bus driver would not let us aboard without folding up the prams. Humbug!!! Anyway – we saw the very same driver & bus expriencing a breakdown just a 100m away… hahahaha…. serves him right for refusing us passage aboard.
So we walked to the famous Circular Quay, saw Opera House and the Rocks. Bought some fudge and had Italian food. After that we took a cab down to Olympic Park where LH’s conference was held. Ju girl cried blue murder in the cab and the driver probably regretted taking us on board. We walked about the Olympic Park a bit and saw the crowds coming out from Telstra Stadium after their rugby match. Apparently a bloody one, with a sideline fight among the players. There is now a debate as to whether to allow the players off or impose some kind of penalty.

Mon
Wend to the “Kids in the Park” programme in Olympic Park. Got to sit this “people mover” of the train that was ferrying people about from the carpark to the venue of the kids programme site. Imagine this! we had to run after the train, but the red train driver refused to stop for us to climb on board. Luckily for us, the purple train driver was kind enough to stop and allowed Matty and me up. So Matty got his train ride. We went for another one after that too.
After lunch with LH, we took the kids to Burwood – on advice by the train station master – to get a bit of shopping done. To our horrors, when we got to the Burwood station, there were NO LIFTS!!! Can you imagine that !! We had to struggle and carry both the prams, our bags, and the kids down the stairs… huff and puff!
When we left Burwood, after buying some groceries, we were faced with the stairs problem again at the train station. We managed to struggle up with some help, only to find ourselves on the WRONG platform!!! Oh no!

So what did smart people like us do? Take the train in the wrong direction – thinking that we can get to another station which has a lift so that we can catch the train in the opposite direction. We got off at Redfern – and found (again) that it too did not have a lift. So we ended up taking the train all the way back to Central Sydney CBDS area – got off the wrong platform… and found our right platform. This time, we got the right platform, the right train… BUT the lift was out of order! This time, we were caught up with the homegoing rush hour crowd! No one wanted to help us, and even the customer service officers at the station said that they will NOT help us carry the prams with sleeping babies. Matty and Ju girl were both sound asleep…making it even worse for us, because we could NOT carry the two of them in their prams by just the 2 of us – ie Ee J & me. Eventually we managed to get help from 2 tourists who were not rushing about for time, and they willingly carried the prams with the children in them. Thank God for tourists!

Tues
Having learnt our very painful lesson over stairs in train stations, we decided to go to Paramatta – which definitely HAD lifts. LH joined us for the afternoon as he managed to catch us before we left the hotel. It was a good day out as we explored what was supposed to be Sydney’s second oldest town. Matty only chilled out when we got to the mini playground at the shopping mall and got to eat some ice-cream which Ee J got for him. Before that he was fairly sleepy and not in the mood for being pushed about. The shopping centre started to close up about 5 plus so we took a walk around the city centre where we saw the older buildings built mainly around the 1800s. Rather quaint place and definitely worth exploring – in terms of Sydney suburban shopping areas.

As for makan arrangements, this time, we bought Matty his fried rice at a Chinese restaurant – which was incidentally named “Temasek” restaurant. It was supposed to be an award-winning Chinese restaurant. I supposed the number of reservation calls , as well as almost non-stop takeaway orders calls, that came in stand as testimony to their popularity with the local community there.

Wed
This was supposed to be LH’s big day as his presentation was due afternoon. However as he also had the morning fairly free, Ee J decided that both of us should go for the buffet breakfast together while she minded the kids. It was nice having breakfast together.
For our adventures today, we decided to take on Lidcombe. This is the town which has the only adjoining Olympic Sprint platform. So for one to take the trains to the Olympic Park, you would have to change trains at Lidcombe. Actually the platform itself is situated further along Platform 1. There is a recorded message that continually reminds passengers to “go to Platform 1 to take the Olympic Sprint platform to the Olympic Park”.
Well, Lidcombe had little to offer in terms of shopping and things to see. We managed to walk about most of the town centre within 2 hours. Generally the area is very homely, and the shops are meant to serve the local population instead of incoming visitors. The place was rather small and did not even have any shopping centres. Walking further away from the town centre, one notices that the houses could do with more than a little touch-ups. It was also a rather hot day, and the kids were fretting with the unexpected heat. So we went into the local library to cool down. Matty had a nice time playing with the toys they had there. Unfortunately he also wanted to take away one of the books he saw – which was on trains – with him when we left. Of course, this started a near wailing session and we had to excuse ourselves rather quickly away from the place.
Going back to the Olympic Park, we noticed that there was a performance scheduled at 2.30pm by the Sydney Symphonic Orchestra. So we pushed the children to the venue and waited for the performance to start. Matty had a good time scaling the steel scaffolds which were used to hold up the tentage of the performing arena. He found that by taking off his shoes, he could get a better grip – so our little one promptly threw off his shoes and scaled up the scaffolds with glee. Ee J probably had her heart in her mouth while he was doing this, as she was supervising him while I fed Ju girl. However we did not last more than 5 mins into the performance as Matty decided that the music was more than his ears could bear. So we went back to the room after walking about the Park for a little longer.
One thing bad about the Olympic Park is the lack of makan places. As Lidcombe did not offer any supermarkets for us to shop in, we were practically left stranded without food. LH tried to ask the restaurant at the hotel if they could serve anything else other than the stipulated 4 items listed for room service, and was told that this was not possible. So much for service!
Ee J probably thought that she had enough of the nonsense and decided that she should take the train out to the nearby town and get makan from a Chinese takeaway for us. Minutes later, however, we got a call from her saying that the pub downstairs sold makan. So wrapping up the kids, we braved the slight rain and went to the pub for a bristro dinner. It was a good dinner as Matty got to eat a hot meal with rice and black bean sauce. I shared the meal with him, but he had most of the rice. He also pinched off his papa’s fries.

Thurs
It was our second last day at Sydney. This day, we took off for Stratfield. In terms of size and offerings, I would say that it is probably larger than Lidcombe, but smaller than Paramatta and Burwood. I guess a small to larger comparison would put Lidcombe – Stratfield – Burwood and Paramatta in this order.
At least Stratfield had a single shopping complex. The shopping bits comprise of only the first floor of the complex, Stratfield Plaza. The rest of the building served as a medical centre as well as some business offices. Matty got his third train from this place. As there was also a Coles supermarket there, we managed to get some food for dinner. Matty got his rice meals for both lunch as well as dinner. LH went down to the pub to get the rice for him. I think Ee J was very pleased that he was eating so well. So was I.
This night, Ee J came to bunk in with us as we had to give up the other room. So it was a little squeezy but manageable still. It was also packing night as we were scheduled to leave early in the morning.

1 Oct Friday
It never rains but pours…. this came true for us when we were leaving Sydney. Suddenly after a week of hot weather, the skies opened up on us and it POURED!! We all got up early and got the kids ready for the airport. After checking out of the hotel, LH saw us off in a cab before going for his conference. Ee J and I packed the kids into the cab – it was cold and wet. The cabbie driver was kind enough to put the heater on, but it caused us to feel sleepy. Matty started getting scratchy and irritated with the journey to the airport. When we finally got there, we went to the checkout counter, and discovered that we could not push the prams up to the plane. Instead we had to pack the prams and sent them through to special cargo. That meant we had to manage with the handcarry bag, plus the bulky coats and the kids. I carried the baby, and was in charge of lugging Matty about. He wanted me to carry him badly as he was sleepy and irritated. Had to resort to running faster than Matty so that he would follow. He saw the travellator and that sparked off another tussle because he wanted to keep on walking on the travellator and not get off. When we got to the waiting area, Ju girl dirtied herself, and we had to change her diapers and her soiled clothes as well. Just when we thought things could not get worse, the plane was delayed – initially for 15 mins. The plane got in late, so we ended up going in late too. THEN – the captain told us that “because of bad weather”, the airport controls closed off all the runways except ONE – and we were no. 19 on the queue to use the runway. This meant we had to wait for another hour in the plane before taking off. They could not let us out of the plane because we would not be able to get a number otherwise. Anyway, after waiting for about half hour, we got a little luckier and they opened another runway, and within another 15mins we took off for Melbourne. The journey itself was bad – turbulent. We were hungry and tired. When we arrived finally at Melbourne, it was nearly 2.15pm. Ju girl started to cry in the car, so we ended up going to Crown Entertainment Centre so that I could feed her. However when we got out of the car, Matty fell asleep in the pram, and got up later very grumpy and crying. All together it was a very stressful trip to Melbourne. Eventually LH got in @ 7.45pm. Matty ended up asleep with some dinner.

2 Oct Sat
We got up and took things easy in the morning. We went to town in Frankston to see Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. However Matty only sat through the Overture and the first 10 mins, and started weeping when they shut off the lights. So we came out and went back home. Ju girl apparently was also crying and drank up all the milk left behind for her. However she eventually slept. So we decided to take Matty and Ju girl to the nearby Karingal shopping centre after tea to see the big supermarket. Matty got excited over the trolley which had a baby car attached to it. When we completed our shopping, we walked over to Big W. Matty saw this contruction set but he only wanted one half of the set. Eventually we had to wrangle the set from him because it was closing time, and we could not find the individual toys for him. That set him off crying. When we got back, he fell asleep from 5.30pm until 10.30pm. He woke to drink milk, and LH spent a long time putting him back to sleep.

3 Oct Sun
Matty woke up at 6.30am. We got ready for church @8.30am mass. Both kids were hyper in church and because of the small interior, every sound emitted echoed rather loudly. I guess the Lord will understand their noise-making as prayers as well.
After church, we went back for a bite of breakfast. Although the weather was supposed to be sunny and bright, the skies were filled with clouds and there was just no sun. It was rather funny on hindsight, because the weather man kept promising of sunshine that would breakout any time later in the day… and we kept looking out for this but to no avail. So in the end, we decided enough of weather watching, packed the kids into the car and headed for the Dangdenong ranges where Puffing Billy was located. This is a steam train facility that travelled about 5 miles/hour along the sides of a hilly range.
Of course you can imagine Matty’s face when he saw the real steam engine train with smokes ( or ‘mokes’ as he calls it) coming out of the funnel. It was pure bliss and joy of a child seeing his dream come true! We took the train from Belgrave station to Menzies Creek which was about half hour away on train and sat on the return train back. Overall the journey took one hour to complete.
At Menzies Creek itself, LH let Matty down first before helping me with the prams and Ju girl. Before we could say ‘Thomas the engine’, our little boy scooted off so fast towards the end of the platform to the start of the train, where the engine was. I was so worried that he would run himself off the platform that I told LH to run after him and not bother about the prams. I think the little boy outran his old man, and was the FIRST person to reach the engine. Although the day turned out to be bleak and COLD, I think Matty probably did not notice it at all, and was very contented sitting (actually he stood the whole journey poking his head out of the open sides) and experiencing a true train ride.
When we finally reached Belgrave station again, we went back to the car. Ee J met us with hot coco to drink, and warm clothes to layer over the kids. I think, if anything, this has got to be the highlight of the trip for us.
On the return journey, we stopped off at Spotlight to do a bit of walkabout and bought a beanbag cover for Matty.

Mon
This is the day we took Matty to see ‘Rain, Hayes and Shine’ farm. It is a petting animal farm, filled with plenty of small animals for children to feed and touch. On the way there, Matty slept in the car, so he was probably groggy when we arrived and was not at all in the mood to communicate with the animals. In fact, he was singularly disinterested in most of the animals but Ee J managed to get him to pet the kid (baby goat) for a while. There was a train carriage at one end of the farm, and Matty kept pointing to this facility. I guess this was not unexpected. However the farmer came back in his tractor and hitched it up to the hay wagon. Now THIS my son can relate to! He suddenly snapped out of his sullen mood and went straight to the tractor. He climbed on board himself, and was soon pretending that he was driving the tractor. Again, this was probably THE highlight of the farm for him… rather than all the silly animals. Most of the time there, Matty played on the tractor. Eventually the farmer came out just as we were about to leave, and gave him and LH a ride to the carpark in the tractor.

Tues
This is our shopping day. After ensuring that Ju girl was asleep, we left the 2 grand-aunts to occupy one active little boy as both LH and I went shopping. We went to the Target shopping centre near Frankston station. Extremely good shopping and highly recommended! I found the Darrell Lea chocolate shop and managed to get the White RockyRoad chocos. Also took the time to get clothes for the children and some working clothes for myself. We came back to find the little girl still asleep and Matty still hard at play. He apparently fed himself lunch without any help!
Later that evening, LH managed to put Matty to sleep early by 7.30pm as he did not have his afternoon sleep. Ju girl was an entire different story. She kept waking up as soon as I place her on the bed. It was as if she knew that we were going out. Anyway, the 2 grandaunts decided that she was ok with them, and both of us left for dinner at the Bear House. This restaurant is located in Cranbourne. It is actually part of a motel inn by the roadside. LH had kangaroo meat fillet while I settled for the veal fillet. We reached there at 8.10pm, but the main course only arrived at 9pm. While we were just about to poke into our meals, the call came in to say that our little girl was crying non-stop and also refused her milk. So we had to gobble down our meals and rushed back to Greavillea. I think the angmohs were probably saying that these boh-doh Chinese people just did not know how to enjoy a proper sit down meal, looking at the way we wolfed down the scrumptious food!  Anyway, LH really floored it going back, and we managed to reach back by 9.25pm only to find that Ju girl had finally slept! So much for rushing back….

Wed
This day, we took to Melbourne Central. We went up in 2 cars and headed for the Crowne Entertainment centre. We parked there and walked along the Yarra River towards Flinders Station. Cutting across the river and through Flinders Station, we found the same “lift/stairs” problem – again NO lifts to manage the prams. Luckily because there were now 4 adults, we managed to lift the prams up the stairs without much problems. We headed for Pancake Parlour – this comes highly recommended for its innovative ways of cooking and presenting crepes and pancakes! Matty had a whole pancake (with cheese and butter) to himself, complete with an iced chocolate drink. He also pinched a bit of the desert pancake we shared with the 2 aunts.
We went to Big W to shop for more stuff, and got more chocolate bars for the family. Also got some other stuff, like another (bigger) Scoop for Matty.

Thurs
All too soon, it was time for us to leave Melbourne. We had a Vietnamese lunch together with Aunty PL and Ee J took us to the airport. The plane journey was more bumpy than the coming trip. However this time, we took the window seat so we were able to lift up the seat dividers and had more room for all of us. Matty did not sleep the whole journey and was quite happy distracting himself and his father. I managed to catch some winks together with Ju girl. The plane itself could have been carrying a baby’s convention. It seemed that there were 7 infants on board – at least those needing the bassinet seats. Actually I counted more than 7 – if you include the toddlers as well. So the plane was filled with babies walking up and down the aisle with their parents or (like what Matty opted to do) bouncing up and down their seats. The plane was not full, so the passengers managed to spread out a little. I noticed that the lady seated in front of Matty moved to sit in front of me instead. Probably did not like the noise he was generating.
We arrived at the airport, slightly delayed, but in good shape. We were met by our parents who took us home.

Summary & Learning Points
It was a good trip – a good learning experience for us as parents as well. Here’s what I learnt:
a. one has to be mentally prepared while travelling with young children. Even in the seemingly simplest environment where you might safe, they can ( and definitely WILL) act up.

The children were probably awed by the multitude of new sights and sounds, but they can be easily exhausted as well. This is when their patience kicks out and one’s patience, as parents, definitely have to be kicked in.

b. Plan the travel must-sees with the children in mind. They will not be very happy waiting for mummy or daddy to ooh-and-aah over tourist-y stuff while they yawn away in their prams. It helps very much to keep them constantly on the move in their prams which translate to very quick stops for buying stuff.

So one must know what one needs to buy when hitting the shopping areas. There is NO time to dwaddle about and hem-haw about it. Like Nike says – Just do it.. get on with buying with a list in mind.

c. Go to child-friendly places that will accomodate both the children and the prams they are in. This is especially important on the public transport system. We found to our detriment that the Sydney bus systems required us to fold up the prams while on board the bus, even though there were sometimes enough space to accomodate a fully opened prams. Again this lesson was learnt with the trains where we found ourselves stranded on the platforms without lifts.
One good clue is to see if the places also catered for handicapped people. Usually handicapped access means there are LIFTS around – which mothers / fathers with prams can safely use as well.

d. Have good support – like aunts to help out – and take some time out for oneself.
I think the side trips to shop by ourselves and our meal out were good bonding sessions.

My thanks:
Definitely with love to wonderful Ee J and Aunty PL for their love, consideration and hospitality – and doing everything to make this a memorable trip. This Blog is dedicated to the both of you.