We all know that treating our mothers to something beautiful on Mother’s Day is essential. They need to know that they’re loved and appreciated, and just a Mother’s Day card alone is not enough.

Mothers do everything for their families. From cooking, cleaning, educating and childcare to inculcating good values to her children, mothers do whatever it takes to impart warmth and comfort to their loved ones.

Mothers become nurses when any family member falls sick. They are always there to offer advice, be it on relationships, troubles at school or at work. Till today, I still need the wise assistance and advice from my mother or mother-in-law, especially when it comes to family and childcare issues.

What I really like about Mother’s Day is that it’s also a family bonding day. Too often, children are preoccupied with school and the husband and/or the wife are preoccupied with work. This day allows everyone to spend quality time together. It’s a good chance to bond with the other members of the family too.

Everyone gets together and share a meal. We can also go for movies or outings together. No matter how we spend the day, it usually means the same thing – spending quality time with each other AND with the emphasis on making it special for mommy.

There are many reasons to celebrate Mother’s Day but the essence of this day is still to show LOVE and appreciation for our dear mothers. I’d like to wish all Mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day!

We went for buffet dinner at Spice Brasserie in Parkroyal Hotel to celebrate this special day. Here are some family pictures to share:

During my ‘balik kampung’ (meaning: return to hometown) trip last weekend, we managed to make a day-trip to Cameron Highlands. Our last trip to this beautiful tea country retreat was a year ago and we stayed one night at a rented chalet. I wrote about it HERE.

Cameron Highlands is a fantastic escape from our busy working life and to enjoy its cool climate. It is located in the north-central part of Peninsular Malaysia. It’s about half day bus ride from KL and a full day or overnight express coach from Singapore. We drove from Ipoh through the winding mountain roads and it took us 1.5 hours to reach our destination.

Here are my top picks for the best attractions in Cameron Highlands:

1. The Impressive Boh Tea Plantation

There are various tea plantations in Cameron Highlands but the one that remarkably allure most visitors is the Boh Tea Plantation. The view overlooking the tea plantations is so breathtaking. I particularly enjoy the landscape and the green hilly gardens.

Picturesque scenery aside, visitors can also enjoy the exceptional green tea and various tea products at the Sungei Palas Tea Centre, opened by BOH Plantations. Admission to factory visit is free. There is also exhibition area complete with information about the tea manufacturing process.

2. The Delightful Strawberry and Vegetable Farms

Strawberry and vegetable picking is the perfect activity for children here. There are numerous strawberry and vegetable farms in this highlands. As far as I know, most of the farms allow visitors to pluck strawberries on their own and they will charged according to the weight after that.

Little Edison certainly enjoyed the strawberry plucking. He pulled too hard until one of the pots almost crashed onto the floor! He said that the strawberries plucked by him are very sweet although it’s a known fact that most strawberries from Cameron Highlands are sour.

We visited the Green View Garden that has a strawberry farm and hydroponics vegetable farm that are open to the public. There is also a café that serves a superb variety of strawberry desserts from strawberry strudel, strawberry steamboat, strawberry salad, and strawberry milkshake to a variety of scrumptious strawberry ice cream desserts.

Last but not least, there is also a wide varieties of local products made in strawberries like chocolate, cookies, jam, juice etc.

3. The Beautiful Flower Nurseries

Being the leading producer of fresh flowers in Malaysia, Cameron Highlands has a lot of flower gardens and nurseries that are open to visitors. The common flowers grown here are roses, carnations, chrysanthemum, dalia, geranium, fuschia and gladioli. The prices are very cheap too!

4. The Lovely Butterfly Centres

Visitors can walk through an enclosed area where different species of butterflies are happily floating around in a lush, plant-filled garden. There are two butterfly farms here. Unfortunately, due to the heavy traffic jam, we had to give it a miss. Otherwise, I’m very sure the kids will enjoy the sight of butterflies in the open air.

5. The Sweet Honey Bee Farms

There are three honey bee farms where visitors can learn about bees and their honey production process. Various honey products are also sold here too.

If you wish to have a glimpse of the Cameron Highlands or check out the best place to stay, you can visit their official website HERE.

[Just came back from Ipoh yesterday. So sorry for my lack of post this week. Busy, tired and ate too much!]

Going back to my hometown in Ipoh used to be a long and dreaded 8 hours journey by coach. Hence, my ‘balik kampung’ (meaning: return home) trip was always very tiring. Imagine spending 8 long hours on the road, with an active toddler and bringing my entire luggage to be checked through two immigration counters. It was a nightmare!

Firefly, who billed itself as “Your Community Airline“, started flying the Ipoh-Singapore route since July 2009. The new ATR 72, which is a 72-seater aircraft, takes off from Changi Budget Terminal and lands at the Sultan Azlan Shah airport. The flight duration is only 1.5 hours. It was indeed good news to me!

Five things I like about Firefly:

• Unlike other budget airlines, Firefly provides free refreshments (fruit juices, coffee or tea) and snacks (bread, cake, peanuts etc) as well as free 20kg baggage allowance for check-in baggage.
• The seats and leg rooms are more spacious than Air Asia (not sure about other budget airlines).
• The seats on-boards Firefly are leather seats and they can be reclined quite comfortably.
• With the small number of passengers, boarding the plane is smooth and easy. Don’t have to worry about long queues!
• Soft background music is played throughout the journey. It makes the whole flying experience more enjoyable and fun.

The ATR 72 is a twin-engine turboprop short-haul regional airliner built by the French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR. Passengers are boarded using the rear door as the front door is used to load cargo only. Being a ‘light’ plane, ATR-72 flies at a lower altitude and thus it is more exposed to clouds and turbulence. As a result, the flight can be slightly bumpy on bad weather conditions.

Another problem is that the sound from the engine can cause minor discomfort during take-off but it only lasted for about a minute or two. Little Edison didn’t make any complaint, thus I can conclude that it isn’t that bad after all.

Last thing to note is that the overhead compartment is much smaller as compared to those on Boeing 737. You can only put in your handbags or laptop bags. Thus, I would advise you to check-in all your luggage bags to avoid inconvenience.

One common question that people ask me about Firefly is the noise from the propeller. It’s actually not loud or irritating as some people described. If you dislike sitting next to the propeller, please avoid line 5 and 6 when you’re making seat selection online.

This is my second trip home via Firefly. I paid RM1000+ on my first trip (two-way for 3 passengers) and about RM400+ on my second trip. You can see the huge price difference here. The fare price for Firefly is not as low as Air Asia, that’s for sure. The earlier you book, the cheaper you get. Do check out Firefly website or Facebook for their offers and promotions.

All in all, I really enjoy flying with Firefly. It makes my ‘balik kampung’ trip so fast and hassle-free. I couldn’t ask for more.

Okay, this will be my very last blog post about our recent HK trip. And it’s gonna be a long one too. Hee!

It’s Day 4 of our trip. We planned to visit the famous Ocean Park before we returned to Singapore the next week. The weather was not too promising in the morning – light rain, moderately windy and the temperature dropped to about 12 deg C. It was quite cold.

To get to Ocean Park, we took the train from Disneyland Resort Line to Admiralty MTR and changed to Citybus 629. It’s about 20 minutes bus ride.

As an introduction, Ocean Park is a sea life and animal theme park offering more than 30 attractions including shows, exhibits and thrill rides for all ages. Prior to my visit, I had an impression that this theme park is rather small and old but I was completely wrong. It’s even more exciting that the Hong Kong Disneyland. The visitors were overwhelming too!

Ocean Park is indeed a nice day out for families. It’s small enough to enjoy in a day without feeling rushed but big enough that you don’t feel getting stuck repeating the same rides. It’s a little of many good things to see and experience here.

Here are some of the attractions that we like in this theme park:

• Giant Helium Balloon – Marvel at the breathtaking view of the southern side of Hong Kong when soaring 100 metres into the air in this giant helium balloon. Little Edison loves it!

• Cable Cars – The cable cars take visitors on a very pleasant ten minutes ride from the Waterfront to the Summit. Each car seats about five people. The views over the South China Sea are absolutely breathtaking but the waiting time was super long!
• Ocean Express – This is another alternative to travel from the Waterfront to the Summit. Perfect for impatient visitor who doesn’t like to wait (just like me!). This train is designed to resemble a submersible vehicle and it travels between the park’s two main lands in just 4 minutes! Visitors with children and strollers are given priority to board at the front of the train.

• The Grand Aquarium – Similar to our UnderWater World, visitors can experience the darkest depth of the ocean floor here. At the touch pool, children get hands-on experience with sea cucumbers, star fishes and other small fishes. For the adults, there is an inspiring 13m wide acrylic viewing panel where we can see 5,000+ fishes from over 400 species.

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I’m so exhausted. There is simply not enough hours in the day. And there is not enough energy to survive on either.

I was swamped with works ever since I came back from Hong Kong. After work, I want to spend quality time with Little Edison. When he goes to bed, I’m struggling again to finish what I wanted to do – laundry, ironing, packing up Little Edison’s stuffs for the next day and sometimes office works.

Last night, I slept quite late. I need to pack our luggage again. We’ll be flying to Ipoh, Malaysia this Thursday. I so miss my parents, siblings and home-sweet-home in Ipoh. Really look forward a long weekend with my family members.

May should be a better month as there are so many public holidays to look forward. Labour Day replacement holiday on 2 May, Polling Day replacement holiday on 9 May and Vesak Day on 17 May. Cool! And the June school holidays after that. I can’t wait.