Things that happen in October

Last month has been the best month ever in the 10 months so far. The best thing will start later but I'll get more about that soon. We start with every early of the month with our cheat day. So that means we ate food that usual we can't eat during the program. But this month is going to be different since I am not going to the program. This is because my great friend from Scotland is coming over and I planned to bring her around. So you remember last month that my friend stayed over due to his house being renovated. They came to the house and made 3 big trays of lasagna. I think we ate it for 2 days... and it was awesome.So without further ado what made this month awesome

Day 0
So they left Scotland on this day and I needed to get everything ready. So I bought supplies (lots and lots of snacks and junk food) and went to their Airbnb to check them in. Their apartment was not bad and it was quite high up there.

Day 1
They arrived a bit earlier than expected and I was a bit late in picking them up. It was rush hour so I wasn't that late. Said hello and brought them to the car.  Brought them to their apartment for them to settle in and then go to meet the misses at work. And then we brought them out to ate dim sum with noodles and crispy noodles. The were OK with the flavor but think is was bland. That means we know how much spice to give them later. Pick up the kids and brought them to the apartment. We let them rest due to the fact that they haven't had any sleep since 26 hours. In the evening we brought them to ate Balinese food. They loved it... So far it has been a good start. Food includes chicken in special sauce, ribs, mango drink, fried ice cream, and pudding. The son loves to drink a lot of coke 😳😳 (which is probably a good thing I guess). Kids wanted ice cream after their meal. We bought them out in the town for a while but they were really tired so its time to head back. Tomorrow is another busy day.

Day 2
The whole family is going on a holiday. I book a big room with 3 big beds and a pool inside 😳.. you heard it right a pool. Everyone was so excited and happy that they all got their own big beds and the pool... Did I tell you about the pool...🤣🤣. I do notice my friend and her son do horse around a lot which is fun to see. We all had nasi lemak for lunch... Which they find is was lovely. I found out that she doesn't like fish that taste like fish and her son doesn't like egg. So after lunch we went to the beach to see if we can rent a boat for tomorrow's activities. We book a boat for tomorrow and we just went around the resort and just check out the amenities. In the evening everyone went to the indoor pool. The pool is freaking cold. But after we move around everything seems fine I guess 😅. In the evening we ate the same meal... there was a lot of it. The adults (including me) went down to listen to some life music, drink (non alcoholic for me) and play some pool. We came back at close to midnight. Another great day tomorrow.

Day 3
We all woke up early for breakfast since we have the boat trip at 10am. The breakfast spread was good but I do notice they don't eat anything heavy for breakfast unlike us who eat a lot of food 😅. So for today's adventure we are going on a coral spotting via snorkeling. Its been like more than 20 years since I've done it so I am quite excited. They offer us to go on a banana boat (its basically a boat shaped like a banana). My youngest was scared so both of us sit on the boat. I really wanted to go on the boat by I don't mind seeing the others have fun. The boat ride was bumpy as hell.. The boat was actually going around 130km\h but you don't actually feel it (probably because we are in the water). Oh yeah less than 5 minutes in by cap flew off my head... 🤣. So since that I need to hold my head while the boat is moving in breakneck speed. There was nothing but the vast ocean and some island a far. It turns out the boat driver has been doing this for 30 years +. Now the driver is the second generation (his son) and they have a steady stream (no pun intended). It turns out the boat was small so it needs to be refueled halfway in the middle of the sea. Once we are at the place we went in. The kids were not intersted in snorkeling. I think its due to the fact that the life jacket was really uncomfortable and most of them didn't know how to wear the snorkel. So just the 3 of the adults. So now the issue is that this day is the day where the water is in the lowest tide ever. So we are literally arms reach with the coral. So what does coral feels like? Very squishy and gooey. Dead coral just feel hard. So we were warned not to step on the coral since we don't want to kill them. They are some fish as well but not much. So after 1 hour of doing the coral hutning we wanted to go back up (since the sun was scorching). The problem is that the boat can't come to pick us up due to the tide being low. So we need to swim in the middle of the sea 😰😰. So the 3 of us did actually that but the problem is that the waves are hard and choppy... so the more we try to go to the boat the more we are pushed away. In the end the 3 of us just stayed in the middle of the sea and waited for our death 😰. Finally we got back on the boat (and I got to ride in the banana boat for a while). Once we reach back the shore the kids were hungry so we ordered some room service. The room service was a so-so pizza but because we were hungry we just ate them all. After that we are took a shower and rest. The adults play some cards and the kids play soem scrabble which is so much fun due to the fact our guest was learning how to play gin rummy with 13 cards (they usually play it 7). We've laughed a lot. In the evening the kids were hungry but they rather have McDonalds and KFC so I went with my friend to take it. After dinner we all turned in a bit early due to everyone is so tired.

Day 4
With that our vacation is done. We packed our bags took one final group photo and head off. During the trip back home we saw a stall selling jackfruit. My friend has never seen jackfruit before so we bought some along. We stopped for lunch to share will be her favourite place to eat this whole trip which is Papparich. We both shared a bowl of porridge and her son ordered a peanut butter sandwich. When we arrived home I manage to book a masseuse to come and give both of them a massage. In the meantime I get dinner ready. Dinner was Nasi Dagang. A traditional Malaysian dish consist of coconut curry and chicken with egg. After the massage I send my youngest home since tomorrow she will be following us for tomorrow adventure and send them back as well.

Day 5
Woke up early and pick them up as well as my daughter. Today we are heading to city centre. Basically going to show them how is different is this country compared to Scotland. When we arrived at the place my daughters dress was broken. My friend was kind enough to take her shopping and bought two new dresses 😳. That’s really very kind of her. So we went for lunch first before going on our adventure. We ordered chicken rendang (that will eventually be their favourite meal throughout this whole journey) , fried chicken, chicken curry and chicken rice... 😳😳. There was a lot of chicken. After lunch we tour the park and she took lots of pictures. She brought a new camera so it’s great to see her having fun... After the park we went to the aquarium. In there we manage to touch some fish and see the shark feeding session. Everyone has a blast in there. I think we spend close to 2 hours there. After the aquarium we just rested and had some tea and catch up on talking with each other. Nothing special but just catching up.  We are supposed to go to the top of the tower to see the city centre at night but it was closed. So we went to another tower to see the sights of the city in nightfall. After that we head home and have to plow through the massive city jam. They’ve never seen that many cars before. We stop by for dinner first at (you guess it) Papparich before sending them back home. Another day done on to tomorrow

Day 6
Today I’m brining them to a Indian Temple. This is the biggest Indian temple in the country and to get there we need to climb 272 steps up. Before that we stopped for some lunch. Today I am bringing them to eat some Laksa Sarawak.. they really love the meal and they say this is the best meal ever 🤣🤣 (they do say that a lot). Now we are off to the temple. Once we reached there we started to climb up only to be stopped by someone there. It turns out girls can’t go up with their shorts but guys is acceptable... 🙄. No idea why. So after renting a shawl we climb up. That climb was super tiring. We take breaks after every 30 steps. Once we reach the massive cave we found that is cold and wet (the wet part comes from stalagmites from the cave. And there were also lots and lots of monkeys. These are wild monkeys if left uncheck will steal your babies food (we saw one did that 🤣) and also drink you water. Climbing up was the easy part. Going down for me was hard. My legs can’t stop shaking and the height didn’t help me at all. Once we are down we headed to our next location which was a 3D art museum. That we going back to the city 😅. I don’t mind the driving. That means we can talk some more. Once we are there we took a lot of pictures. The best part is we were the only ones there so there were no queues. And then they gave us to try to augmented reality room. This is a room where they show a video and on the screen it looks like we are in the video with the object itself. The funny thing is that on one video there was a scene with a polar bear coming. The son ran too fast and hit a step that he didn’t see and he was in agony 🤣🤣... and both of us thought he was acting and I still laughed 🤣🤣... the lady was nice enough to let us reset the video and try again. It was fun. At night we picked up my wife and we went to a place that serve steamboat for dinner. It turns out in the UK you can’t cook your meal yourself. It’s grounds for being sued. Over here we are just willy nilly cook our own food. She enjoyed it at lot cooking her own meal. The thing she noticed about us is that we share our food which they don’t do. We eat with a spoon which they only use with soup 🤣🤣. It’s a good education in culture. Tomorrow is another busy day of going to the mountains.

Day 7
So today me and my wife took them to the mountains. It’s 32c-36c everyday with the occasional rain in the evening. It’s great to go a bit higher up to experience colder weather. We haven been there for around 16 years so a lot has changed. There is a cable car ride. We opt to pay for the see through cable car so we can see how high we are (man it was high 😰😳😅). The mountains is basically a resort with an outdoor and indoor theme park. At the outdoor theme park there was a fake snowy mountain. Her son thought it was actual snow. It was hilarious 🤣🤣. Once we are there we went inside and have a stroll around. After much debate we decided to do the VOID. The VOID turns out is only available in 4 places around the world. It’s a state of the art virtual reality experience where you wear special VR helmets as well as suits and guns . What makes it special is that we can actually feel the heat/cold from the simulation as well as vibrations when the suit gets hit. We played a 15 minute Star Wars experience and it was awesome... really it cost $100 but it was so worth the money. I want to go again in the next couple of months for the Avengers one. After the game we went to go to a zombie outbreak haunted house. First of all it’s a lot of jump scares and everyone was shouting scared. I don’t find it scary that much probably because I know the humans can harm you.. if they do I’ll probably kick their butts. My wife heart did went up to 140bpm 😅😅. So it’s timing for lunch and we went to (you guess correct again 🤣) Papparich. Their food just work. Fun fact that a bowl of noodles cost £3 over here and the same bowl cost £13 over in the Uk. So food is cheaper here a lot. Once lunch is settled we went to another mountain which was 30 minutes away since we are in the neighborhood. It’s just a nice view with a lot of photo opportunities. Nothing much to it. At night we ate at my favourite burger place (but they were not adventurous enough to try the weird burgers 😜) and we call it a night. Busy day today. Tomorrow we are going to the water park

Day 8
Today my eldest turn to follow to the water park. The water park was far away so we had to leave extra early. Once we arrived there we had a lot of fun. I went on a couple water slides which was awesome and scary at the same time 😅😅. We ate at Burger King and I got myself a free t shirt (which made me look like a walking billboard). My wife joined halfway and at 2pm it started to rain heavily that we had to stop. We ended up going to the mall and look around. We ate something call the kürtökalás. It’s basically a donut shaped cone with ice cream inside. It was yummy but it’s so messy to eat. After a couple more hours of going around we ended up having dinner at a Thai restaurant. The food was great and it was time to call it a night. She has two more days here

Day 9
Today was all about his son. His son wanted to do some rock climbing so I took him to the largest indoor rock climbing area. But before that we went to have some Indian food... it was okay I guess, nothing special. After that we went back home to have dinner with the family. It turns out my wife was not feeling well. So dinner for 6 became dinner for 5. She ate a traditional dish call “salad rice” it was very unique taste as she said. Coming home the kids and wife surprised her with gifts from Malaysia. They are really welcoming her in the family. She is sad... probably touched at our hospitality.

Day 10
The last full day before she heads back... so today we decided that she will stay in our house of the night so that the kids can play the switch together. They had lunch at my mom in laws house. They cooked two types of rendang (beef and chicken) and some dessert as well. They all love home cooked food. It’s different to store bought food I guess  So this afternoon we are bringing the kids to play at an adventure park while the little one and us when to go spice shopping. And boy did she bought a lot of spices... but you know what they say. You can’t never had too many spices... after that we brought the kids for some waffles and ice cream. Ended the day with them spending the night...

Day 11
Final day... helped her checked out of the apartment and packed. She had one final lunch at Papparich and then went home just to hang out before the final hours to go. She was so sad leaving everyone and while I was sending her to the airport I can’t help but cry. I was so sad that my friend is leaving me and this was the best vacation for me as well. But I know that this was not the end and we will meet again. Plus technology makes us close than ever before. Thank you for your visit. Hopefully we can come to you next year... as I said goodbye I know that I will see her again.

And now back to my normal programming. After my friend left is was back to business as usual. But the normalcy is a bit weird since you’ve been doing something different for 10 days. It really felt like a dream when she came to visit but as they say... life goes on. We were the guest of honour 😅🤣🤣 at my daughter school graduation ceremony (the kicker is that my daughter still has another 5 years till graduation). My wife has pull in the school so we are put in the vip table. The sucky part is that they separate me and my wife to gender specific tables.... and my table was filled with foreign people who doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t really mind since I was there for the food. We went to a baby shower which doesn’t contain a baby nor a shower which was fun since we get to hang out with friends 😁. My car is getting repainted black due to it being 10 years and the paint has to be repainted again before it gets worse... my friend ask me for a sample... I showed him the batmobile 🤦‍♀️🤣🤣... I just say make it black... black is black. And we end the whole month with my youngest who is turning 8. We bought a cake for the class and celebrate it with her classmates. At night we ate some ramen for her birthday dinner. With that ends the longest month in the months of months. I won’t change it for anything... best month ever...