Concrete Desert

There are many things in life we forget as we grow older, more technologically advance and intense surrounding like fresh air.

As the day goes by, each waking day is better than the day before.  I remember the morning after Day 1, everyone looked like zombies. When we woke up the day after, we looked a lot more fresh. Waking up at Kak Ani's house got me feeling a lot more fresh. What's the conclusion to all that? We're breathing fresh air from Genting Highlands and now Sabak Bernam.

It only makes a difference when you have experienced it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Most of the time, I only bathed with hot water as I can't stand cold. When I've been in a place without heater, I'll make do with whatever I was given. Better than nothing at all right?

So when we stayed at Kak Ani's, it's understood that the water would be cold yet for some odd reason it wasn't as cold as I thought it was. Which is a good thing on my end :) There is one thing I was very thankful during this stay - no frogs lurking in the bathroom!

After all this is a good kampung life, and like many other kampung areas, these creatures are bound to be around somehow... a memory that I will never forget when I wake up in the morning during my younger days at my dad's kampung, only to find a frog standing at the corner(every single time); staring as I consciously refreshed myself. It's just one of the things that comes with such a life. One I am very terrified of too. :/

Kak Ani's home is by no means made of wooden structure, her house and many around this area are what I like to call the "new kampung". Instead of wood, it's made of bricks. Nonetheless, it still feels just as homey. To make this trip even sweeter, we wake up to the paddy field view!

We needed to get ready and be at the meeting area by 9AM. We managed to eat our ketupat and rendang for breakfast :) Well, Malaysians do celebrate raya for a month anyway. So why not? Unfortunately, my tummy is not used to super early breakfast but I managed to eat some anyway. Here the Malay custom would be to at least have a bite of the food that was served by the host as a sign of respect. Saying no too often offends many of them.

There is this saying that goes "Rezeki tidak baik ditolak" which translates something along the lines of sustenance or luck should not be refused. Anyone's got a better translation for that do let me know :)

When we got to the meeting point, we had to transfer our bags into the bus; just as Kak Ning and I were doing so, we saw an abandoned kite lying on the ground. She quickly picked it up; examined the structure and tested it out. She squealed in delight knowing the fact that it could still fly at that very moment.

It was as if the kite had found the kid hidden in her when she ran along the street, guiding the kite in the air at the same time grabbing our attention. My last kite experience was probably when I was 5 years old, and that was a plastic kite. This particular one was what I suspected, a homemade kite. There aren't many materials you need to make one. Like the kite Kak Ning tried out was made of brown paper, strings and a few sticks to form the structure.

I realised, I've yet to write about our amazing tour guide - Kak Ning. This extraordinary woman here speaks so many languages. Among them are dutch, german, javanese, mandarin, japanese, some tamil/hindi and she is currently learning arabic as well. That's only the surface of it. If there's anyone in this world who should have a blog (aside from cab drivers), it'd be her! I swear, she will never ever in her life run out of stories to share and tell. Heck, she could write a book if she wanted to! I'd definitely buy it.

If I have to describe her with a sentence, it would be - she's so full of life. That's our storyteller.

Alid on the other hand easily fit in with the locals. He brought smiles to everyone in an instant. Think I'm exaggerating? Pictures don't lie. It helps that he is from Java and speaks their second language. So there's no need to break the ice for him.

After going around the city and Selangor, I noticed that the friendly Malaysians are the ones who aren't bothered with the material things in this world. So it's much harder to say hello to locals in Kuala Lumpur when they are so distracted with their own life as compared to those who just enjoy life for what it is. I've discovered that KLites are easier to approach outside of the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur. The same thing can be applied to those in Selangor too.

Which is sad really.

Another few more hours passes by and we finally made it to our last destination. Sunway is like .. I don't know how to put it. It's pretty well known for it's ice skating rink (which I still love to go once in a while) and it's very own theme park. That and the many universities surrounding this area. Of course, the most iconic thing about Sunway is it's (faux) Pyramid and Sphinx. Till today, I've yet to know why. Kinda feels like Las Vegas a little bit.

Anyway, so we arrived at our hotel, Sunway Pyramid Tower Hotel; the hotel we only found out we were suppose to stay instead of the one printed on our itinerary, Sunway Resort & Spa. Just when we were all looking forward to the spa part. There were some minor glitch that hold our arrival, like the bus was stopped half way at the lobby for some ungodly reason or that we had to dumped our bags outside the door because there were no bellboys to help. A little bit strange but we're all fine. Too much pampering is not good anyway right? We carried our bags in and waited for a while until we were given our room keys by Mr. Hafeez.

Oh I forgot to mentioned, as the days go by, our bags were stuffed with things. Not the ones we brought or bought but goodies we were given by our sponsors everyday :) I'm sure if there were anymore of it, our bags would've exploded! The bags were getting heavier and bigger like monsters.

My roomie for the next 2 days was Chia Li! This girl has very long black straight hair. One I envy very much. When she sleeps. I couldn't tell if she was on her left or right... because her face was covered by her hair! Hehe. Not really a sight you'd want to wake up to in the middle of the morning and get scared off :P Still she rocks! A very sweet girl indeed.

As soon as we checked in and left our bags in our rooms, we were instructed to go to Mantra for lunch. An indian lunch sounds just as appetizing as any other because we Malaysians eat almost anything as long as it's good.

Due to some more glitches with Sunway City Berhad (who's our other sponsor), our itinerary had to be shuffled. Instead of going to the theme park after lunch, we were told that our passes will only be given the day after. So what does this means? After lunch onwards... it's free and easy baby! Albeit Monday will be a very hectic schedule for us since we had to squeeze the theme park in. Oh boy.

Some of us wandered in Sunway Pyramid shopping mall and a few went back to their rooms and kicked back or like Kemal, Sy and Victor, they camped inside Starbucks to hog the internet :P . Amelia and I headed to Starbucks for some downtime. This is something I usually do when I needed to clear my mind. That and before this trip, I was craving for Chocolate Chip Frappucino but didn't get around to do it.

So this was something I was on board for :D Hello CC Frap with chips!

It was a good thing to have some space not doing anything other than chilling for a short while. Just a little bit. Not too much. I'd like to call it an hour(or so) to reflect on everything in life. When you're on the move so much, you need at least this sort of moment to just relax and look back. Otherwise, there's no way you'll be enjoying what you're doing.

That's how I would conclude my coffee with Amelia. Made me realised about a lot of things. Thanks Amelia!

Then I went to visit Kak Zara & Denise's room. I realised although we all are bunked on the same floor, each and everyone of our room sizes varied. Like a lot. Theirs were very spacious indeed! Mine and Chia Li were alright. We didn't really mind the view (of the Pyramid wall) because we're hardly in the room anyway.

After hours of time to ourselves, we walked to Sunway Resort & Spa for a buffet dinner at Sun and Surf. This buffet, according to Sy cost RM78 (not sure if there's the +nett bit) with plain water to boot.

Being the food monsters that we all are, we headed straight to the buffet and gorged ourselves with soup, salad, bread/pita, roast chicken, sushi, rice, satay and god knows what. There were really a lot of food. One I try not to overload myself with. Wouldn't want to feel like a Michelin going back to the room later.

That is until.. I saw the desserts. No wait, that was the first thing I saw actually ;)

Looked at Spectre, by round 2, he was already leaning his back on the chair. I like to call this pose, the (very) satisfied king. He was a goner for the rest of the rounds.

However, there's one other person who is the opposite. I present you, the comical Victor.

During this time when I took this picture, I haven't indulged myself in the desserts. So he took the liberty to show me what I was about to miss. That ... fella. I couldn't even put a straight face when I tried to take this photo! Just look at the chocolate sauce dripping in his bowl. Tsk tsk.

Tempted by the force of eveeeellll..I took a hold of mine!

Unlike others, I prefer mine strictly marshmallows and strawberries because these are the only two most sinful combination that goes well with chocolate. It's been my childhood favourite this one. Now that I was given the opportunity to eat all I want ... bon voyage everyone!

However, there's one slight problem to this perfect story..Sy found a few strands of hair on the marshmallows at the buffet counter. Thank god I took these marshmallows from the other side. Phewh. He's got the whole run down of the story here. I hope Sunway City Berhad will be more aware about the happenings in their buildings even though it's managed by other people. It'd be ashame to have what big reputation they have go down the drain for something like this.

Because guys have bigger appetite than girls, it's only natural that I see a plate of oysters (after many plates of other things plus desserts) placed on our table. This is Thristhan and Victor's battle. One only Sy, Spectre and I could watch as spectators. This was when Victor was taught how to eat oysters (there are many ways). After that, he went to take another plate of it for himself.

Oyster is best served cold, raw and with lemon. A dish not everyone would like tho.

After our stomachs are filled with God's creations, we were allowed to wander on our own again.

And like many curious beings, we decided to walk around and see what Selangor has to offer for nightlife.

For the first time we got the Tourism Selangor guys to explore with us. Johan and Hafiz(yes the one who fed the monkeys). We had fun watching people performing, singing and dancing. It was time well spent indeed!

Amelia(the backbone to MSS trip) was with us too and I thought this photo which was taken with Alid's camera looked pretty darn cool. At least we know what Pentax Optio WS80 can do by accident :)

And this was also when Alid introduced us all to his dance moves...

I think he called it the "Duck Dance" Victor corrected me and said it's some finger-piano-playing dance. Alid, care to verify this? It really was called the "Duck Dance". Not sure where he got inspired from. Perhaps one of the many Hindi movies he was watching during the morning? See, I think among all the pairs Amelia's made, this one - Victor and Alid has got to be the best match ever. Their both quirky, most definitely fun and animated.. not to mentioned, love Hindi movies too. So I'd say kudos Amelia! *These photos were also taken by Alid with Optio WS80 because my P80 died half way :/ Thank you Alid!* Mind you none of us were drinking either and we were definitely having fun.

One of the other dance we did was inspired from this group of people who were doing it :) Managed to record this, thanks to Alid's Optio WS80 :) Phewh! Thank god for his camera because the rest didn't have it with them.

 

In a nutshell, I think we certainly made the most of our night here because we only have one more night to go before we say au revoir to everyone.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you like it enough to vote, head over to MySelangorStory/ConcreteDesert :)