14th year anniversary

 Shu and I had been needing an island getaway for sometime now. The school holidays were never a good time for us to go anywhere because there are people everywhere. We like less people and less hectic coz we just wanna play in the sea and enjoy the beach. As soon as the school holidays were over, we packed up our kids and headed out.

The kids enjoy open air boats now as opposed to being on closed up ferries and our drive makes the boat ride quicker to the island by about an hour. We've been doing this quite a bit lately. Also, all 3 of our kids are now able to go snorkeling so our island trips are a whole lot funner now. We spent most of our time in the water fish watching. 

Our trip this time around was fun because the beach was right at our doorstep. The corals were close and we spotted a lot of anemones with clownfish in them. There were other coral reef fish too. We even spotted a couple of baby black tip coral reef sharks. We are all super burnt now 😂 The sunblock lotion couldn't save us no matter how much we use.

I got a lot of bug bites. For some reason, sandflies really like me. There were also tiny, green caterpillars that would drop down from this huge tree near the restaurant area. I was screaming so much coz that mofo fell onto my arm and I was getting sick 🤢 Not from the bugs but I think it was something I ate........

Anywho, our next door neighbour was a Japanese lady. She was travelling alone. Next to her chalet was a chinese couple. Shu said that guy was super excited to get into the water that he was up all night waiting for the right time to go snorkeling. It was so funny. On the other side was an old chinese lady and her daughter. They were headed to Penang after the island.

It was fun. We ended up helping the Japanese lady named Miho get her bus tickets sorted out. Shu thinks she may have gotten her plan mixed up so instead of heading to the Besut Jetty, she ended up back at Merang Jetty. She was trying to get to the airport in Kota Bharu coz she was gonna catch a flight to Kota Kinabalu the next day.

It was so funny. She can hardly speak English and her accent made it very difficult for people to understand. We communicated mostly using Google Translate. We took her out to lunch coz we were all starving and the bus ticketing counter wasn't gonna open till about 2:30pm-ish so we had time. She ended up taking my phone number and I took hers in case she ever was back here and needed help with anything. We got her a bus ticket for 4pm. Hopefully, she made it to the airport tonight.

I think we had so much fun this time around. Ali Imran didn't wanna leave but we had to coz the weekend was coming and people were starting to come in. It would have been too crowded for our liking. We're already planning our next island trip in this next month ^_^ 

Happy 13th Year Together ❤️

 It's been a while and we had been sticking to routines a little too much coz Yusuf is 10 which means he has a lot more school activities to do. That also means that we as parents have to take school a little more seriously than how we've been doing all this while. Also, we try to avoid crowd as much as we can which is almost impossible considering the endless amount of holidays this country has in a year.

Anywho, Shu decided to do what we usually do which is last minute change in plans and we ended up on the island where we'd usually celebrate our anniversary at.

There were some things that we had to consider coz our kids are bigger now. We can't really fit into a one bedroom hotel room anymore. We also needed to make sure Ali Imran and Safiyya were able to get used to snorkeling before heading to the marine park straight away. Good thing they got the hang of it in no time at all.

Going along the lines of avoiding crowd and people, we've discovered that taking a boat from a jetty a bit further up from our house cuts the travel time by like an hour. And the kids enjoy speed boat rides too these days which is a plus point.

We had a blast eventhough it was a shorter trip than usual. We explored almost every place there was along the beach we could for food and hangout. The kids had fun 😊

Happy 13 years to us being together, baby! 

Shu's birthday

 It was Shu's birthday and we really didn't have any real plans so, we played along with whatever we could think of. 

The highlight of the birthday celebration was the island trip. We've never been to Pulau Kapas. The trip was a blast. We did a day trip coz we really didn't plan anything. Also, Shu said it's not the kind of island you'd wanna spend a night at. So, we packed up some clean clothes and a basket of food for picnic and headed over to the jetty in Marang. 

We've been spending a lot of mornings in Marang throughout the week. After sending the boys off to school, we'd get some food for a breakfast picnic. I love mornings by the beach. 

Oh yeah, Shu also took Safiyya and I to Pinehill Garden. Unfortunately, the grapes were not in season but the view was neat. 

On the night of Shu's birthday, we decided to use the barbecue grill we had lying around and cooked up some dinner outside. We managed to get aged beef and some sausages for the kids. Got some pizza for the kids too. It was pretty fun 😊

If plants and animals could talk.......

 They'd have a court restraining order against me by now. I seem to be drawn to touch most plants and a lot of animals I could possibly touch. I do love iguanas but they run away whenever I approach them 😑 

The jelly fish and random weird tropical fish seem to be attracted to me. I am mostly terrified of them. However, I have made progress when it comes to swimming in the ocean it seems. We recently spent a few days on an island. Not our usual island. This place is more quiet and very much less humans. It's relaxing this way........

Anywho, we spent a lot of time in the water at the beach. This one morning, we spent about 5 hours just swimming and playing sand. My dad said I'm gonna get super tanned from the amount of time I spend at the beach eversince we moved here. Well, he's right.

So, this beach....... There's a lot of baby black tipped coral reef sharks in the water and they swim with us. Sometimes, they'd come really near to us and then swim away. They've never actually attacked anyone and so far, we're not the only ones who swam with them in the ocean. The bigger ones are far off at the deeper parts where the corals are and still, people go snorkeling there.

The strangest fish were the blue hued ones with spots...... Almost orange - ish spots. They were a bit crazy. They bit my toe as I was floating on my back. Yusuf said they bit him too. Weirdos.........

Assimilation

 əsɪmɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n]

NOUN

1. the process of taking in and fully understanding information or ideas.

   "the assimilation of the knowledge of the Greeks"

   • the absorption and integration of people, ideas, or culture into a wider society or culture.
     "the assimilation of Italians into American society" 

   
   

I'm pretty good at it that I sometimes lose myself. 

I am here, not home but not somewhere unfamiliar. We just need a change of environment. A little bit of sun. A little humidity. A change of routine.

I'm still a little tired from the journey yesterday but I refused to miss my workout routine. So, I managed to get some sleep and late lunch and I was working out for about 20 minutes. I am pushing myself to stay on track with my diet and intermittent fasting but honestly, I'm not doing a very good job.

This isn't a complaint. I am blessed to be in a place where food is abundance and cheap. I see people happy just living their simple and happy lives.

I just wish that people have more sense to be more responsible towards the environment. At least the environment they borrow for free. Beaches are beautiful. Beaches are perfect for picnics. They just won't stay that way if you don't clean up your mess.

We used to think it was a generation problem. It's just a mentality problem. In the city. In small towns. In villages. There is no sense for just collecting your trash in just one place and take it with you until you have access to a proper disposal point.

It's frustrating enough to see trash washing up from the sea. You can't just leave your trash anywhere, really. It's fucking irresponsible. How inconsiderate and self-centered do you have to be to just think that someone will clean it up? Are you stupid?