B Squad Sailing Expedition

A couple of B-Squad parents, together with the Club's sailing staff, organised a sailing expedition for the B-Squadders to the Sembawang beach area. As the Sembawang Park beach was closed for renovations, we decided to beach the craft near the PA Water Ventures (Sembawang) and Bottle Tree Village area.

We had a total of 16 Optimists and 1 Pico (Wen Xin's Father, Eugene). This was accompanied by 3 power boats - Uncle Low's, Monster and a RHIB provided by Yazid for us to beach the parents who were following on board the safety boats.

Uncle Low doing the brief before setting off

The next few photos are of TP sailing towards the destination. We had a nice tailwind with favourable currents so the journey there was fast. Less than 1.5 hours.

The Optimists beached at our picnic lunch venue. We had a nice potluck lunch provided by the parents. A highlight for many of the kids, besides the food, was re-kindling the smouldering ambers of a campfire that was probably not properly extinguised by some campers the night before. It was the first time many of them had seen a campfire, and I suspect many of them learnt the fire making skills from watching Survivor.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for too long because the tide was rapidly coming in and the Optimists were starting to drift away. After a quick group photo, we were off again, back to the Club. The sail back was challenging, with barely any wind and with the current against us.

Eventually, we decided to tow the sailors back as we were not making much progress. The kids thoroughly enjoyed being towed back as well as they were getting restless with the lack of wind.

Phuket Gathering 17-22 Dec

We had a big family gathering in Phuket this year. Altogether there were 21 of us, including ST and E who flew in from Australia, E's Mother, KK, AC and their families. 18 of us stayed at Courtyard by Marriott in Kamala while KK and family stayed in the Laguna area. We like the Courtyard at Kamala because they have 3 bedroom units and it's considered tsunami-safe in our opinion. The breakfast is also good, especially when the staff remember what we like for drinks. While we like this hotel, we're unlikely to return in the near future as we're not confident that this hotel can manage the taxi mafia situation at their front door.

The next few photos show the kids (and teenagers) having fun in the pool.

M is always a favourite with the kids

HY broke the little finger on her right hand during gym training 2 weeks before we went to Phuket. Here you see her with her cast wrapped in plastic bag for splash-proofing. The X-rays below provide better clarity.

One of the highlights for this holiday was our fishing / boating trip on Dorado. Unfortunately we didn't catch anything this time even though we passed by schools of fish in the Racha islands. The Captain, Eke, thinks it's because of the bananas we brought on board - a taboo for fishermen in the Alaskan areas. I googled this and found out that this superstition was most enduring among crab boat fishermen, and many charter fishing boat crews have restrictions against bananas on boats. In fact, some even have restrictions against Banana Boat sunscreen or Banana Republic clothes. Fish or no fish, we had fun anyway.

Boat people. This sampan was used to transport the party to the Racha Yai beach. 400 Baht return journey was costly for the short journey, but there isn't much competition around to drive prices lower. I think it was 300 Baht the last time we used this service in 2010. Anyway, just for fun, KK asked for the price for the journey back to Phuket and we were quoted 2500 Baht.

This is a nice photo of the HY and TP generation

Another highlight for this trip was the kart race that we had. Everyone, from JY to AC (the oldest driver that day) had great fun. It was a pity that AC didn't manage to get to race the race karts (ie really fast karts) as they allowed only 3 on the track at any one time and it rained just as we were about to start the 2nd round of race karts. We are currently planning a re-match. Will need our other cousin E (the p-p) to up the ante.

TI was in a tandem kart because of his height. HY was also unable to drive on her own because of her hand injury.

Neck to neck between TP and AC? Actually it's AC lapping TP (btw, TP is using the kids' kart : )

Foodwise, we always enjoy the Thai food in Phuket. After our fishing / boat trip, we hopped over from Chalong pier to Kan Eang @ Pier. This was organised by KK to celebrate AC and TI's birthday. Here's the photo of the birthday boys. The Mickey Mouse cake was for TI and the Hello Kitty cake was for AC.

HY with JY at Sunset Restaurant in Laguna area. Sunset is one of Dada's favourite restaurants in Phuket.

HY and TP enjoying their Tungka Ice Coffee. I'm glad they're starting to enjoy real ice coffee, rather than the Starbucks lifestyle coffees.

We tried this interesting restaurant called Mor Mu Dong, whereby we dined in Salas (huts) on the mangrove. It is located near the Phuket Zoo and was featured in the Andrew Zimmern Bizarre World/Foods show. Interestingly, the owners didn't realise that their restaurant was featured in an international food show. The photo above shows TI being himself again - he was the only kid that went down the steps from the Sala, and got stuck in the mud.

Dino Golf. HY and TP do not play golf, but always enjoy coming to Dino Golf whenever we're in Phuket. Note the similarities in character between HY and TH, and between TP, TI and JY.

ST and E (EC, not to be confused with E the p-p) went back on New Year's Eve. A family photo before the next family gathering planned in June 12.

Back on line - Shanghai Nov 2011

I happened to look through this old blog of ours this morning and realised the commentary in the blog was quite useful in helping us remember the events associated with the photos. I remember starting this blog when the family was dispersed across Singapore, Australia, Europe and Hong Kong, for family members to keep track of how HY and TP were doing, hence the title of the blog. This was before Facebook (I think Friendster was the in thing then if I recall correctly).

Anyway, after a 3-years hiatus, I thought I'd get this going again as I think I'll tend to write more in a blog, rather than just posting photos on Facebook. To start, the first post will be our family trip to Shanghai in Nov 2011.

This was HY's second gymnastics training trip to Shanghai. The first time was with her school. This time, it was organised by the gym club, and the whole family decided to go. TP, needless to say, was overjoyed because it meant skipping 1 week of school.

The gymnasts at the Bund

As always, the food is an important aspect of our holidays. The organisers for the trip included dinner for most nights. But the food was terrible - there was always fried eggs, egg and tomato soup, fried vegetables with slivers of meat. My friends who are more seasoned travelers in China tell me this is something peculiar for Singapore groups in China because it seems we are not used to the typical Chinese cuisine, which often tend to be more oily. Our friend, Joyce, who were with us on this trip told us that the fried eggs was always the highlight (i.e., most edible dish) of her previous trip to somewhere more ulu in China. Anyway, we decided to eat out on our own whenever possible and found the food really good. Maybe this is because we were in Shanghai.

Here is TP enjoying Peking Duck at Duck King restaurant. The Chinese style Peking Duck is quite different from what we have back home as we only eat the skin in the wraps. The one we had here included more meat, and we did enjoy it as much, if not more.

We had Hai Di Lao for lunch on the recommendation of Howie. It was good and we decided to bring HY and some of her buddies back another night.

The street food was also good. TP really enjoyed this roadside lamb satay. I guess barbecued meat is always tasty. And barbecued lamb in winter is always unbeatable. TP asked me to include the following photo of what they do with the satay sticks after consumption. I won't be surprised if the sticks are also recycled. It's probably good for the environment, but I just don't want to imagine how they clean the sticks, assuming they do clean the sticks.

This is the Shanghai street version of popcorn. It's oven roasted in a cast iron container and tastes pretty good too. It's probably more healthy than the ones we get with butter or salt.

HY didn't get to do much sightseeing as she was in the gym all day, everyday. Fortunately she went to most of the usual touristy places in her last trip. Now that she's older, she's also got new interests. Her favourite place we visited was Tao Bao Chen, a small shopping centre that sells just about anything that we normally cannot afford to buy in their original boutiques.

TP enjoying the view from the glass floor 300 ft above ground at the Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower

For our last day in Shanghai, the local gym where the girls were training opened their doors for the parents to visit. This was an opportunity for us to see where all the money went, or will be going to. Anyway, the girls enjoyed the gift exchange and photo sessions.

Some of HY's friends from her previous trip

Besides Shanghai, we also spent some time visiting nearby places. One interesting place was Zhou Zhuang, which is a water township in the Jiangsu province. We were lucky that it was hairy crab season. Instead of choosing hairy crabs with all their limbs tightly bound in the fridge, the restaurants in the area had tonnes of hairy crabs swimming in the fish tanks. We actually contemplated making the trip to Yangcheng Lake for hairy crabs, but decided against it after we heard how hard it was to get authentic Yangcheng hairy crabs that are born and bred in Yangcheng. It seems that quite a lot of farmers breed the hairy crabs in some other location. They are then harvested and placed in Yangcheng lake for a duration so as to qualify as a Yangcheng hairy crab, complete with microchip. Here's a photo of TP with HL on the streets of Zhou Zhuang.

We also had a quick tour of Suzhou and Hangzhou. It was a really quick tour through these two places. Here's a photo in front of Hanshan Temple in Suzhou.

The Master of the Nets Garden

Here's a photo of us at Westlake in Hangzhou. It's a nice place, but I can't stop thinking of Kong Bak Pau when one mentions Westlake.