Tag Archives: travel

In April, we nipped over to the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu, on Borneo, for a long weekend at a modest resort. We had no plans other than relax and rest, and that’s pretty much what we did.

The resort was right on the water, with a coastal boardwalk, swimming pools, landscaping, and views of Mount Kinabalu — one of the tallest mountains in Borneo and Malaysia — looming off in the distance.

Here’s our silly little family, doing silly things.

As we said, we didn’t do a whole lot on this trip, although one night we did go downtown to check out the night market. Chock full of fruits, vegetables, meats (raw and cooked) and other goodies for sale. Where they had active grills, it was quite smokey, which made for some nice atmospheric effects.

KK is well known for having great sunsets, and it certainly lived up to the hype. We even saw the mythical green flash! Turns it it’s not mythical after all; it exists! (Didn’t catch it on film, however.)

Finally, some shots of our hero as we traveled.

In December, a bit before  Christmas, we flew up to Thailand’s Krabi province for a little beach R&R. (It was a pre-Christmas holiday to avoid the crowds and inflated prices over the actual holiday week.) Our destination was the island of Koh Lanta, about a two hour drive, and a car ferry  ride, away from the airport. It was a lovely time. Let’s take a look!

Here are some random shots from the car ferry. It was only about a 20 minute sail.

Our resort was built on a bluff overlooking the Andaman Sea, with its own little rocky beach down a flight of stairs from the hilltop. We had a room facing the swimming pool, and it was all quite nice.

There was a big pond by the lobby filled with fish, which you could feed. Which we did.

The resort also featured a “reggae bar” (a bit odd in Southeast Asia, but hey) tucked into a cliff, where you could get decent food and drinks and watch the sun go down. The seats were basically cushions on the floor of a private room; they also had a few seating areas up a steep staircase in a treehouse.

Koh Lanta has lots and lots of gorgeous beaches, which we spent a lot of time on.

Who loves long walks on the beach? Nyan does.

Nyan also spent a lot of time at the resort’s rocky beach, which featured lots of amazing rock formations. He also met a little boy from Malaysia who was staying at the resort, and they became fast friends.

They built contraptions out of rocks and driftwood:

And dug in the sand, as kids will do.

Nyan also spent some time swimming in the calm, shallow waters of the little cove.

One day, Daddy took a kayak out for a blissful spin in the sea.

Mommy found a great open-air yoga studio on the island and visited several times. When we learned they also offered a kid’s yoga class, we signed Nyan up. His little beach friend joined as well. Nyan had a blast and did great!

He also practiced some yoga moves at lunch one day.

While Mommy and Daddy were doing yoga, Daddy went scuba diving. And what diving! Cuttlefish, turtles, pufferfish, and more. The dive boat had a professional photographer taking shots, so here are a whole bunch.

Another day, we hired a driver to take us around the island, including a visit to the little fishing village on the far side of the island. It was mostly tourist-free and had a few little shops on the nicely-maintained main drag.

It was, in general, a lovely little island (even if, like so many places in Southeast Asia and the world, it had a pretty bad litter problem in parts).

We leave you with a few random shots of our goofy little family, enjoying their holiday.

After our visit to Hong Kong Disneyland, we popped over to Macau. The former colony of Portugal is now part of China, but has its own identity, including old colonial buildings and a growing number of super-mega-casinos. We figured we should check it out at least once, though we had pretty low expectations, to be honest.

But Macau surprised us very nicely! The casinos were as gaudy and overdone and gross as you’d expect, but the rest of the town was charming, the food was great, and it was just a very pleasant, if quick, trip. Let’s take a look.

To get there, we took a ferry from our hotel near Disneyland to downtown Hong Kong, then walked over to another ferry terminal and boarded a high-speed boat bound for Macau, about an hour away.

We had about 36 hours in Macau total, which we filled by walking around a lot and just playing tourist. Here we are in various poses and positions (click to enlarge):

As mentioned above, we liked Macau quite a bit, and much more than we expected. We didn’t take any pictures of the casino resorts, but we took quite a few elsewhere.

One of the most popular attractions is the old cathedral, which burned down a few centuries ago, somehow leaving just the facade standing. Well worth a visit. (It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, too.)

We also checked out an old church, which definitely had us feeling like we were in Europe. 

Our hotel featured a very nice pool, which we didn’t use, and a kids’ playroom, which we did. We had trouble getting Nyan out of there, in fact. (There was also a big desk in the lobby that he had fun with.)

Macau has an excellent museum housed in an old fort, on a hilltop just above the cathedral. You can walk around the top of the fort and check out the views and the cannons, and you can walk around inside and gawk at the historical displays and play with a computer program that lets you design an old sailing ship for trade with the outside world (Macau was a big trading port back in the day). We did all of these things.

We also took a cable car up to the top of another hill. 

Up there were more great views, hiking trails, and random pieces of exercise equipment, which we had to try out.

It was a whirlwind tour of Macau, but we left satisfied and wanting more, and we decided we would happily return to Macau for more exploration. Will we actually do so, given all the other places around Southeast Asia to visit? Hard to say. But if we do, we’ll be quite happy.