At the beach

Pantai Remis is only a few minutes' drive from our accommodation.  It hardly qualifies as a beach though, consisting mainly of rocks.  We made do with the scarce patches of sand.  Oh this creature looks rather cute...

Strange creature spotted at the beach

A close up.  Oh it has a tail.  Cute!

Close up of strange creature

Disappointingly this beach wasn't happening with stalls and activities around like there are in Sekinchan beach.  Anyway there wasn't anything left on our agenda so we went again the next day.

Tiny bit of sea and sand

SE busied herself doing something with seashells.  Finally she unveiled her 'masterpiece'...

PIGLET!

Haha.  Spot the little white face of the toy.

After this beach visit we went back to our accommodation to chill until it was time to check-out. Lovely holiday!  I must check out where to take the kids on holiday next.

Food n firefly

One of the things I was looking forward to in Kuala Selangor was seafood.  When we finished the nature park though, it was raining (thankfully after holding it in the whole morning!).  So in the interests of time and convenience and to the delight of the kids, our first lunch in KS was... McDonald's.  No pics of this meal obviously.

Luckily managed to have a seafood dinner at "Grandma Restaurant".  Although apparently Waze thought it would be funny to lead us to the opposite side of the river from where the place actually was, with no way across except by stealing a sampan and rowing ourselves.  

It took a while for our orders to be taken, but after that food arrived fast.  Food was pretty good - ordered lala clams in superior stock, nestum squid and kangkung belacan.  JE liked the drink of lime assam boi.  More so since she'd assumed we would be drinking plain water haha.  Well I don't normally buy into the idea of sugary, over-priced drinks!  Unless it's special and lime assam boi qualifies.

SE liked drawing in her book

After the wrong turns and whatnot, we couldn't make it for the firefly tour I'd booked.  But it was fine, they had a later trip.  

On our way to see some fireflies

Hmm it was boring actually.  I'd gone for this many years back with my parents, that time I remember enjoying the sampan ride in the night air where we were rowed by humans.  THIS trip was by motor boat which isn't fun.  There were plenty of twinkling fireflies in the trees by the river.  We drifted along for 10 mins then headed back. RM90 for this - RM25 for adults, RM20 kids.  Oh well, at least the kids had tried this now.  We went to a nearby Speedmart for drinks and snacks before heading back to our accommodation half an hour away.  Smooth end to our first day at KS!

The next day lunch we made our way to Grandma Restaurant again (totally patting myself on the back for the smooth drive this time) only to have the operator inform us they were closed for repairs.  Checked out a few places which were only open for dinner.  Finally ended up at this unassuming place called Hong Eng.  The Thai-style squid on crunchy kangkung turned out fabulous!  I would almost purposely come back just for this dish.  The other dishes of salted egg mantis prawn and braised pork with yam were decent.

Hmm quite yummy

Sasaran Art park

We stopped by this place as well.  It's not bad actually, can get some good photos if people are cooperative,  (obviously MY people were not being cooperative).  The installations are easily accessible by the roadside on a small patch of land.  There was a building with what looked like a shop downstairs - locked so we couldn't access it nor the upstairs level where I could see contained more art.

I didn't realise the kids kept their masks on initially.  After lots of yelling from me, we got these pictures...

Fine we will stand here

A fish. We don't really like fish

Noo getting roasted by this firefly!

A flying baby hehe

Anyone thirsty?

Black and white is always cool

Mummy says if we don't pose properly, we can't go check in

 Quite nice I thought.  No complaints since the place is free and nobody else was around.

KS Nature park

Our first stop in Kuala Selangor was the nature park. I did try to plan activities this trip which hubby doesn't like. With his aversion to heat, he definitely wouldn't have been an asset here.

It cost us only RM10 to visit (RM4 adults, RM1 schoolkids).  

The indicators for the ladies/gents were cute and functional!

Toilet stop first

We managed to spot an orange-fur baby leaf monkey on our way in.  A quick pic first (no, baby monkey too far to include)...

We are ready!

I do love this kind of nature trails!  This place was perfect, very easy to walk yet plenty to see.  My city kids weren't as thrilled and I had to insist they pose for photos. 

Mummy says pose or we will be here all day

So serene

The weather was great, cloudy.  Ah but we did almost get eaten alive by mosquitos. The repellent we were armed with didn't seem to deter them at all.  It's a mangrove area so there was water everywhere. 

There were some informative signboards around.  Most visitors would be fascinated.  Meanwhile, SE:

Me: ...Read out interesting facts from signboard

SE:  Disgusting!

Me: ...Read out more facts from another signboard

SE:  Ew.

Do we have to go there?

We took 2 hours to finish at our leisurely pace.

We have walked all over

When we had looped back on the trail, went to check out the remaining path against the kids' protests. We arrived at this watchtower. The kids were dead set against climbing up.

Noo! We don't want to walk up

So I made them walk up hehehe.  We had to brave a swarm of insects which was halfway up.  SE had to carried up as coaxing and yelling didn't budge her.  I was glad hubby wasn't around or the kids would have stuck to him and nobody would have gone up. 

View not too bad

When we'd finished, it started to rain. Never mind, we'd completed the visit and it was a good one.  :)

Kuala Selangor trip

Made a 2d1n trip to Kuala Selangor for the school holidays. It's the first time without hubby and I was a bit anxious. What if we get a tyre puncture, what if things happen. Comforted myself that according to Waze, it takes less time to drive to Kuala Selangor than to my office. :)

The kids were so excited, especially SE.  She kept saying we hadn't gone on holiday for a long time.  Which is true, it has been 2 years.  I have been printing out a photo book yearly, and for 2021 we really didn't go anywhere at all.

Then 3 days before going, SE developed rashes all over.  These were identified as ringworm (nothing to do with worms but a fungal infection).  She was still fine to go so we went ahead.

And this is where we stayed. 

The A-shaped house

Staircases almost as steep as ladders

Everything very... triangular haha

Got a balcony

More about what we did there later.  We of course made it back safely too.  :)

Although... SE's ringworm problem is still around.

The New Piglet

Right everyone, meet the new Piglet!  As I posted 2 months ago, we had a lost piglet situation. This had a big impact as it was a toy which was played with so frequently.  In the meantime, according to SE, the ghost of Piglet now resides in this white creature.  It's a Moomin which hubby bought from his trip to Hokkaido where this creature (created in Finland as characters in books and comics) is popular.  So now this Moomin talks and acts exactly like the old Piglet.  Except every so often it will burst into loud wails that it misses its old body.

Now we have 'the day that Piglet died' in our history.  I checked online for a replacement - couldn't find any in that same Easter bunny costume, only those in a bee costume.  Offered to buy it for SE but Moomin-Piglet vehemently protested.  And indignantly reported to JE that 'Mama wanted to buy.... a FAKE PIG!!'.  Hahaha.

So now we have this pig which looks nothing like a pig.

This is Piglet's new body

It's squishy!

Face hug... mmmmm

SE is continuing to build it up.  It has a specific voice, its own cadence and manner of speaking, likes and dislikes. It calls JE 'Potato' and SE 'duck'.  Like it will say, goodbye Potato... goodbye Duck...

JE's young transporter mates noticed this little white creature which comes down (carried and operated by SE) to wave goodbye every morning, and would be peering out the car windows trying to figure out what it was.  Among their guesses - a unicorn, koala, lion.  One day an observant girl excitedly pointed out that the Moomin has a tail and concluded it was a monkey.  The next morning Piglet decided to hide its tail to confuse them. JE is maintaining her cool older-kid Standard 6 persona and not bothering to enlighten them.