Notes from PD

I’m back from PD, in one piece and suffering from a sore bum. I’ll get to that in a minute.

We suffered a 2 hour journey from KL to PD, during which I complained about the utter boringness of sitting in a car. That was when my dad told me, very succinctly, that 2 hours was how long it took for him to drive me to Sg Wang and then make the trip back himself on Friday. That shut me up pretty good.

Anyway, after the 2 hour trip, we reached the Bayu Beach Resort and waited at the guardhouse for my uncle to get us the blue parking slip so we’d be allowed into the compound. When we got to our rooms, we were greeted by this:



It’s beautiful, innit? I want a view like that in my house. While I’m dreaming, might as well wish for a better camera (Or a better camera man, snorts my bro) Ok, so my hands shake and sometimes my pictures are missing some heads, but that’s no reason to turn on your own flesh and blood. :p

This is the view from the balcony.



After dumping our bags, my bro and I decided that instead of sitting in the living room eating duku langsat with the rest of my extended family, we should make use of the remaining light and hit the beach instead. However, when we got down (apartment was on the fifth floor), it started drizzling, so after taking a few pictures we dashed back upstairs.



I am most decidedly NOT responsible for that picture. Haha, guess bad photography skills run in the family. Nyeh nyeh nyeh.

Righto, I'm done being juvenile. Fast forward all the chatting, munching on peanuts/kuachi and watching cousins drive crash-tastically in Need For Speed 2, we went out for dinner. We're near the sea, see, so what else are we supposed to do but to snack on various members of the seafood family? I gorged myself on the crabs and my bro even broke from his strict dietary regiment and ate to his heart's content.

After dinner, my dad and my 2 uncles played mahjong and my various relatives were sitting around chatting and eating more duku langsat, while I entertained myself by pranking my many many small cousins. It's good to be the eldest, muahaha. I also learned how to play Mahjong properly, so yay.



Lady on the left is my aunt's mother-in-law while the lady on the right is the woman who brought me up and contributed a lot to the person I am today. She's not responsible for the weird parts though; those I was born with. Not that I blame my parents, maybe I just got all the cumulative repressed weirdness genes over the generations.

Hmmm...A bad thing about vacationing with family members is that the nights are boring. If I was with friends we'd have a BBQ on the beach, and some booze, guitars and a campfire thingy. We'd also have torchlights and various other lighting thingamajigs like lanterns if we're feeling adventurous for beach-combing purposes. If someone has a stash of illegal fireworks we'd bring those along as well. Later in the night we'd go hunting for various shellfish while some of my attached friends would go 'crab fishing'.

On second thoughts, that's probably not a good thing to be teaching young, impressionable kids.

The next morning dawned cloudy, and since it's the ninth lunar month, that's like saying Nicole Kidman is beautiful and Tom Cruise is an idiot. I was rudely awakened by my small cousins who were banging around the living room. I'm always cranky when I'm startled out of sleep, so the day started off badly. Had 4 pieces of biscuits for breakfast cos, ugh, food is never meant to go into my stomach that early in the morning.

We hit the beach around 9 am and I played a game of pseudo-beach volleyball with my relatives. It's pseudo-volleyball because
a) the ball was NOT a volleyball. More like the rubber balls kids play, evidenced by the pictures of Pikachu plastered on it.
b) the number of players kept changing. People (related by blood or marriage, but not both) kept walking in and out of the court and getting hit by the ball.
c) it did not involve only hands. At times, people (related by blood or marriage, again not both) randomly started using their feet to kick the ball or using their heads to uh, head it over to the other side. In the case of my poor cousin, he even used his face. Which, I think, he didn't intend to.
d) the net was ignored. The ball travelled over, under and through the net. One time, it even hit the embankment next to the net posts and bounced to the other side, which of course, totally counted as a valid point for our team.

While we were doing this, the younger kids were amusing themselves by digging holes and splashing volleyball-playing adults with seawater. After running up and down the beach, we had a piggy-back racing competition and me and my bro won, yay. We got splashed by more seawater for our efforts.

I'm afraid of the sea, because I've had some bad experiences involving the sea, and because I can't swim. I'm also extremely short-sighted, and as good as blind without my glasses, so I was very reluctant when my uncle suggested a banana-boat ride. But then again, I'm on vacation, and the best way to conquer my fear is to face it head on, and my bro + dad + various relatives who can swim were with me, so I should have all bases covered, right? Recklessly, I signed up for the ride, only to regret the decision because my own flesh and blood tried to kill me.

When the man on the boat signalled that he was about to flip us, we all raised our hands the way people do on roller coasters, and duly plopped into the water. My mom screamed and got a mouthful of seawater for her efforts, heheh. I didn't fare so well. After I hit water, I was trying to break the surface when someone fell directly on top of me and, in the ensuing tangle of arms and legs, I couldn't find my way out of the water. I began to panic and just as I got free, someone else slammed a body part against my head, resulting in more panic and a noseful of burning seawater.

Well whaddya know, I'm still afraid of the sea. *rolls eyes*

After a while my bro cautiously approached and suggested we go canoeing. On top of being afraid of the sea, I'm also afraid to step on boats, cos the Titanic sank and there's nothing to stop a canoe from flipping over. However, all that saltwater must have impaired my brain functions, cos I agreed and we set off on red canoe. I even got a broken oar, how fun.



That's my brother teaching me how to paddle a canoe, because he did it before in NS. Faces pixellated for that mysterious effect. *grins*

After canoeing, dad said he rented a jet ski. Ooh, I've never been on a jet ski, but my brother has (not in NS though) so he drove it first. We had fun zipping up and down the length of the beach, and the waves made for a bumpy but very fun ride. It was very cool to watch the wide expanse of blue sky just fly through while the spray misted my face. Wish I had the camera with me then, but then again, it would probably have just fallen from my hands into the sea, lost forever.

There're no pictures of us on the jetski, cos we were too far out for my mom to shoot us. Bumpy waves makes for painful ass, which explains why I'm walking bowlegged now. :)



For lunch (at 1pm), this is the place we tahpau-ed (take away) our Bread Chicken, which is a layer of bread wrapped over a layer tinfoil and plastic wrap, which contains curry chicken. It's a pretty good dish, at RM22 for a big one, but the place only opens for business at 5.30 pm. Hence all the tahpau-ing.

After lunch, I was conked, and spent the rest of the day lazing with my cousins until it was time to head home.

All in all, it was a great trip. The beach was pretty, with none of the gravel and scrapey rocks, nor the black oil-like substances usually associated with PD beaches. My first time on a banana-boat, my first time on a canoe, AND my first time on a jet ski. Not bad for a scaredy-cat geek.