Give them roots and wings

Ever since I heard about the concept of a family sabbath, I wanted to have one for our family. We tried it for the first time in December 2015. We spent two nights at Port Dickson, one night at Ipoh and six nights at Cameron Highlands (where our Sabbath really started).

This post is about the 4D3N at Port Dickson and Ipoh. The 7D/6N at Cameron Highlands is here.

Nowadays we like to drive further into Malaysia, but we would always stop over either at Malacca or Port Dickson. This time we decided to skip Malacca and try out a new resort in Port Dickson (instead of our usual favourite – Avillion).

We drove off at 7:15am. We had cleared the Tuas Checkpoint by 8:14am and reached Yong Peng for breakfast at 9:20am.

We always have fishball noodles at this shop.
But we didn’t like the food as much this time.

We listened to Francis Schaeffer in the car, while the children played with Trump Cards. We reached Port Dickson about noon, and went shopping at Giant – we bought milk, fruit juice, bread and snacks. We had lunch at a small cafe and continued shopping at “Mr Fix-it”. It was so fun.

After that we checked-in to Grand Lexis. The first thing I did, was to organise the room. We had a little pantry near the entrance to our indoor pool, and lined up all the shoes (10 pairs – walking shoes and slippers for each one of us!), luggage and swim stuff, and allocated space for each of their books, stationary and toys.

We each have our “working table” to begin with,
but everyone has their preferred place and style of “working”!

We settled down and had a short rest before having our first Family Altar Time (FAT). After that the kids made use of their… erm… working table, and did some work. Edmund brought Elkan and Samuel out while Elias and I completed our work.

Edmund, Elkan and Samuel took a walk around and took pictures for us.
(And yes, we got a fruit basket, and used whatever we had to cut up the apple).

After that is dinner at Pizza Hut. It is something which we always do each time we go to Port Dickson.

One of the things Elkan brought along for this trip are poker cards.
He was into playing the game “Dai Di”.
Elias had a little contraption – a “butterfly knife” made of lego
– which he practices opening and closing
– as cool guys do, with real butterfly knives.
We celebrated my birthday there.
And as you can see, we brought our walkie-talkies.

The next day we had breakfast in the room (the stuff we bought at Giant) and then Elias and Samuel played in the private pool. I think Elkan was reading a book (New Evidence that demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell).

One of the two things I liked about Grand Lexis was the private pool.
We had bought some water toys for them at Mr Fix It
on the first day we arrived at Port Dickson.

For lunch, Edmund and I walked out quite a distance to get some Chai Peng back.

The second thing I liked about Grand Lexis is that their rooms and bedding arrangements are perfect for us
– with two king sized beds.

We lazed around in the room after lunch and watched a movie, before going out to try out the activities.

The boys tried Archery, and we all did the Sega ride.
We wanted to try the KMX but it looked like it was gonna rain
so we decided to postpone it.
As it turns out, we should have done it
because it DIDN’T rain so soon,
and I misplaced the vouchers which we only found
after we had left Port Dickson so… oh well…

We went to the new PD Waterfront for dinner. The dinner was so-so but the view was nice. It was an interesting new addition to PD which had remained the same since we started coming here for family holidays more than 10 years ago.

Where we ate our dinner the second night at PD.
Edmund brought the boys to the waterfront to play.
As usual, he tried the game of skipping stones.

After that we shopped at “The Store” – something which we always do each time we come to PD. It was not great, but something familiar and somehow we enjoy it. Samuel used the money we gave him for the trip to buy some sticky tape for himself and pens for me. Two of us had ice-cream (I kept written records of the expenses, but didn’t take photos or record who were the ones who ate the ice-cream…).

The next day the kids had to do some work again in the morning while Edmund started packing up. Later the boys went swimming in the public pool and I went to the gym.

Somehow we didn’t explore this place very much.
We didn’t fall in love with it the way we did Avillion.
Anyway, the gym was over-looking the pool,
which was good because I can exercise while watching over the boys in the pool.

After we had all washed up, we checked out.

We got MacDonald’s lunch, pumped fuel,
and bought a special Shell Lego toy for Samuel.
Of course we had to drive by and take a picture of our beloved Avillion.

We drove past the Port Dickson Army Museum and popped in for a visit.

These are mainly photos of Elias because Elias loved the museum.
He wanted to take a photo with everyone of these machines.

We finally reached Ipoh at about 7pm (we were stuck in a jam for 45 minutes).

We stayed in this little hotel – DWJ. It was ok.
I thought it was interesting that they sold these stuff at the lobby.
Dinner was at a cafe nearby.
We had ordered fish before I saw how they looked like in the tank.
Well, we were none the worse after eating it… I hope…

While at the cafe, they were showing Star Wars (Episode 4). So we went back and continued watching it from our hotel room TV. (We walked back to the hotel while Edmund went to the nearby shopping centre to buy breakfast).

The next day we had breakfast and checked out. We went to Ipoh Parade. Again, we have come to enjoy going to Ipoh Parade each time we come. We stumbled upon it the first time and fell in love with it.

We like shopping at Living Cabin and we would always catch a movie there. In 2014, we watched “The Hobbit” together. This time however, we watched three different movies. Elkan watched “Victor Frankenstein”, Edmund and Elias watched “Mocking Jay” and Samuel and I watched “The Good Dinosaur”.

We had our lunch and went for our respective movies and had dessert after that (Teochew Chendol).

This was lunch and dessert.
We had bought some little toys for Elias and Samuel while shopping around earlier on,
so Samuel assembled his toy while we ate.

After that we continued shopping and had ice-cream. Again, it is a tradition for us to have “Baskin Robins” at least once during our Malaysia holiday.

Finally, we drove off at 3:50pm for Tanah Rata. We went up on a Saturday, which was a big mistake because there was a huge jam. Finally we reached Tanah Rata at 6:45pm. We bought KFC takeaway to eat at the lodge.

Here’s the end of our 4D3N at Port Dickson and Ipoh. We continued on with Cameron Highlands here.