Couples’ Rights Action Force (CRAF) Cawangan Selangor’s Port Dickson and Malacca Road Trip

Here’s another 56k killer post from my overworked yet trusty external hard disk which houses all my thousands of backlogged photos.

Today we go back in time to Boxing Day 2007, when Mel, her boyfriend Timothy(who was visiting from Australia!), Ck and myself took a trip down to Port Dickson and Malacca. This trip was also the reason why I stayed behind in Malaysia while my parents and brother went to Vietnam for a short holiday. =( I was left at home for a grand total of four days. It was scary for a bit but I think I adapted pretty well.

Anyway, it was sort of a double-date trip kind of thing. Hence the CRAF joke for the title. If you don’t get it, you’d have to read through my Langkawi entry again.(Punishment for not paying attention earlier!)

On our way out the highway behind USJ, we indulged in that famous dimsum shop(Fong Hong?) at USJ21.

Me looking totally glamorous with the whole fishball held between my lips.

Me being modest when Melody(who was taking the photo) complimented me on how absolutely gorgeous and seducing I looked with aforementioned fishball.

L-r: Chee Kiang, Mel, Tim and myself.

Mel here doesn’t trust my driving, it seems. Oh yeah! I managed to persuade my parents to allow them to let me take the Carens down to Malacca.

Anyway, proud to report that I managed to find my way to the hotel(which I booked via the internet) from Subang to the highway to Seremban and then to PD! All without the help of a map! I’m so proud of myself. It’s like I got from Point A to Point B without getting lost. 😛 Hehe, Chee Kiang didn’t have that much luck when he took over from me while driving to Malacca. We ended up on the trunk road and consoled ourselves that it was because we wanted Tim to take in the sights of rural Malaysia. Ya right.

Back to the hotel part. So, we arrived at the hotel and yay, there’s the beach and all but to my horror it was one of those run downed resort apartments. Dodgy carparks, a reception area with TILES on the floor,TILES I TELL YOU! ARGH! TACKY!, an elevator that was wet and soggy inside and stank and only worked once during our entire stay there which led to us having to climb up and down 16 flights of stairs(8 floors, you see) that was not lit up at all.

While we were there, we also saw a sign stating that the pool would be closed.

Then we found out why. How gross it that?! That’s got to be one hell lot of peeing from the guests or algae, which is still pretty bad.

Just because the stupid place offered barbecue pits for rental I immediately snapped it up. Only Rm160 per night for the entire apartment. Divide by four people, too good to be true! I will not believe cheap prices anymore. *turned cynical*

The beach looked pretty alright for Port Dickson’s standards.

Chee Kiang and I with the red walls in our apartment. The apartments were surprisingly okay but still dodgy with gross toilets and gross refrigerator(super smelly, couldn’t put anything inside).

Mel and I in our sunnies.

We got possessed by the Sunnies Effect for awhile.

See, the lift needed fixing. I asked the guys to smile. So nice of them to layan!

The scary staircase I was talking about. Tim had to use the light on his phone to light the way for us.

And so we arrived in Malacca.

Here’s Chee Kiang posing next to the Malacca river. My granddad used to own three shop lots along Malacca river and converted the upstairs of the three shoplots into apartments for him and his brothers. I think it was on Jalan Munshi Abdullah? Mum said that as a kid, she’d sit on her study table and look at the Malacca river. 🙂 So fun right.

Me presenting the Malacca River.

Mel and Tim taking a photo of me taking a photo of them.

Chee Kiang was really proud of his new Samsung phone.

This was actually my first time touring Malacca! That’s usually the case isn’t it. The locals(not quite….but I did spend almost all my school holidays there!) never do the whole tourist thing.

Cool..internet surfing by the river!

Whatever that red building is called. Christchurch? Stadhuys? Meh. Kajian tempatan is irrelevant now. Do they still teach Kajian Tempatan to primary school kids these days?

Ah, there it is. Christ church. This looks like post card material!

As you can see, it would soon be pouring cats and dogs. Oddly romantic but pretty annoying at the same time too.

This is my boyfriend who takes photos in this stance. According to him it’s because he’s too tall so he has to bend.

Hehe, it’s an ongoing Malaysians-in-Singapore thing to not like Singaporeans all that much. My boyfriend would get bitchy whenever he sees a Singaporean number plate. =) Aw, it’s all in jest. He has quite a lot of Singaporean friends whom he adores. But we enjoy playing this game, “Guess who’s Malaysian and who’s Singaporean!” Very easy to spot one. Singaporean boys are always without sleeves.|

Me waiting patiently for Tim to be done with his phototaking.

But of course.

A scenic shot of the river! I didn’t know they offer boating services there too. I’ve always thought of it as a drain of sorts. I have lots to learn of my pseudo home town.

And….*drums roll* my first time on Jonker walk. Shy only.

Real nice. Leaving the paint to look all rustic like that.

l-r: Chee Kiang, TIm and Mel.

I made friends with the statue. We speak in sneers.

Somehow or other, we always end up wearing the same colours. I swear it’s unintentional!

Yeah like I care.

This would have been nice if I was a few years younger. I’m like so matured and grown up now that shooting bits of things at random stuff isn’t all that enticing anymore.

Melody and I attempting to hug to celebrate our first holiday together. Interact Club district conferences don’t count.

The Baba Nonya houses were turned into pretty boutiques such as this.

The air well that always makes for good photos. Imagine sitting at the table on a rainy day watching the rain pour into your house, down a drain and flow away.

I really enjoyed browsing through the souvenirs. They were all so pretty!

I made Chee Kiang buy me the letter J! 🙂 I LOVE DIAMONDS! Even if they are fake.

It’s those pretty coloured metal keychains. 🙂 I think these were selling for about RM12.

A bear with a big heart.

We found tofus too!

This is starting to look a lot like The Curve. Same manufacturers perhaps?

At RM25, these paper lanterns were very enticing. Just that I have too many lights in my room already. Fairylights lah, paper star light, table lamps, fluorescent lamps lah. Aiyo.

They would make for good presents though. 🙂

Cheerful looking ear diggers! But I like my ear diggers to be made of metal with a tiny scoop at the end. Oooh. *shivers in ecstasy while thinking about it*

Ah, clarinets. Are these calls clarinets? Or is clarinet a wind instrument? Anyhow, those clamp-clamps that one uses in Yamaha JMC classes!

I adore shops with many many cute things!

AHHH TOFU HEAVEN!!!

This oil burner sucks ass. What idiot would design an oil burner with a concave(convex? Whatever lah, it was like a dome) surface? My candle didn’t balance too well.

My birthday is coming up. I demand for oil burners with functional surfaces. 😛

Some cool looking decos at the back.

Wow, this man actually makes his own ornaments. How very rare.

Really cool looking masks. I wonder about their origins.

Whoever goes to Jonker Walk(or even Malacca) and NOT have Durian cendol?!

A pot of sinful gula melaka. I hate those stuff. I hate sweet things actually. No, no, it’s not the dentist in me talking. I need lots of water as my throat clamps up if I swallow something really sweet without water.

Mm-MMMM-MMMM!

Beautiful antiques are placed on the staircase as deco.

Small place but good desserts!

Mel lovingly feeds cendol to Tim.

I like this photo alot. I actually don’t look fat in this one. Yay me!

While walking around, I thought this door would make for good photography. And right I was.

I’ve always loved capturing the colours of a graffiti. It’s amazing what people can do with a can of spray paint huh? I don’t understand how they manage to make colour toning and stuff. It boggles the mind.

This graffiti is super trippy. You have a ghoul-like thing with a Santa hat holding what is suggestively a joint, looking down on beautiful psychedelic fonts sprinkled with glitter.

While browsing around an antique shop. This is an antique mirror by the way!

They were selling bathroom tiles with prints of old painted ads. Something along the lines of those old cigarette ad posters. Or maybe it’s a collector’s item?

This is a peephole in the masterbedroom of the peranakan houses. It’s for them to see who’s at the door. They’d pour their waste from their pee containers(again, there’s a word for it.) if they don’t like the person. Must have sucked to be a salesman back in those days.

CRAF Cawangan Selangor group photo!

We paid eight bucks to go into this extremely well preserved heritage house. Everything in the house belonged to the family who owned it. There was a tour and everything. There were old beds, old kitchen stuff..even an old typewriter. It was all very intriguing.

I was telling Chee Kiang that in a couple hundreds of years, somewhere in Subang Jaya, there would be a heritage house too. The tour guide would point at my overstuffed (and by then creaky) wardrobe and say, “A typical Malaysian chinese suburbian girl would usually never know when to stop buying clothes.” She would then pull out a tube top or a halter and say, “This was what a typical Malaysian Chinese Suburbian girl would wear when she hits the clubs or go for parties with friends.”

She’d then go to my brother’s room and pick up my brother’s (no longer functioning) ipod nano and will tell the befuddled tourists all about the ipod craze that the legendary Apple company managed to make back in those days.

Someone would then ask, “What’s that square thing in every room?” The tour guide will then touch it lightly and say, “Ahh..those are laptops. The people in that era usually communicated through it.” and someone would whisper, “Ya lah.. like our compu-glasses.” and another person would go, “Ohhh..” and tap the side of his glasses to snap a picture of the (by then ancient) laptop.

While waiting for the rain to subside, we took a few photos.

Our pathetic attempt at trying to take dramatic shots. Position not good lah, didn’t know what look I was going for also.

Team Red and Team White!

It was still drizzling a bit so we decided to have some fun with the colour red.

Ahem, my hollywood moment. 🙂 Melody has one too! I’m not the only one!

I know my dad will call me up to have a say about this photo if he sees it, but I’m a woman in love so I hope he understands and won’t scold me. 🙁

Awww..young love.

And then since we had Tim with us, we had to the whole hospitable Malaysian thing and go see everything else that makes Malacca, Malacca.

Saw this on the ground. Doesn’t it looks like a rose?

The sea out in the distance.

We were at St. Paul’s Hill. I think.

One of my greatest phobias is to be placed in a corner with moss growing. A wet corner. Ewwww. Bathroom corners scare the shit out of me too.

I didn’t like going into the wet and dark areas so I stood around and did a bit of photographing.

A man busks in the middle of the relic.

Going down the steps after visiting them Dutch tombs.

I was smiling like that because of how cliche it was to visit A’Famosa in Malacca. Anyway, I totally freaked out when I saw that I didn’t suck in my tummy.

So I demanded for a retake.

LOL Chee Kiang looks like my three year old son, wanting mummy to take his picture for him. *heart*

Strange order of photos, but anyway, here is the apartment that we stayed in. Looks quite decent right?

Don’t be fooled.

The stench was so bad you could puke. For all I know, they probably cleared a body out from the fridge hours before we arrived.

Amazingly, the counter top was pretty spotless.

Even the floor looks clean. Hmm, dubious.

So how we can go to Port Dickson and NOT go down to the beach? Here’s Ck being emo/taking a leak. Hehe.

Us in the morning. A time that the both of us do not belong in, judging from the size of our eyes. My eyes usually reach their maximum open-bility about after lunch.

“Promise me you’ll never leave me!”
“Okay, but why must we stand in the sea to make promises..*sweat*”

This was commanded by Melody. Chun Leen already took a similiar one before! Sorry for ciplaking ourselves, people. I feel SO unoriginal. Haha.

The boyfriends. 🙂 The dahlings have always wanted their boyfriends to be gathered at one place. Would make for good photography.

Mel adopts a cute stance while taking a picture of me taking a picture of her.

Mel and I being cute. We’re trying okay.

“Promise me you’ll never leave me,”
“If you don’t lose that tummy, damn right I will,”
“Oh.”

WAHAHAHAHA, this was damn fun to do.

It was on burst mode. So i have like another ten more of us running. 🙂

One last CRAF Cawangan Selangor photo to sum up the whole entry.

I’m actually trying my very best to remain cheerful throughout the entire post. I’m on the verge of going mental with the thousands of green bugs (I ran a google and found out that they are called leafhoppers) infiltrating my room. I don’t understand, I can’t find the opening that allows them easy access! Arghhh!! It’s everywhere where there is light. Then some die and fall onto any available surface. But most like to explore. So there are bugs flying AROUND ME. It doesn’t help that they are hard-shelled, hence they bounce off surface with a very annoying ‘tak’ sound.

OH FUCK ONE JUST HIT ME IN THE EYE.

A few days ago, I was reading in bed and one went in my ear. I’m dying here.

One just bit me on the elbow….what. the. fucketty. fuck…

As I was saying, yeah, on my bed, there are about 300 of them. I shall sweep it off later. And I shudder to think of the amount there are on my floor. I’ve yet to sweep them up. Let’s just say I have to shake my legs before climbing into bed.

As I’m sitting here, there is easily about 50 on me. On my arms, up my legs, and I can feel them crawling in my hair! I would scratch my hair and I can feel things taking flight from the top of my head.

Stupid municipal council. Can’t they figure a better way to curb the problem? It’s such a nuisance. And for the first time, google has failed me. I tried googling leafhoppers to see how I can kill them but all I got were some stupid bug enthusiasts websites going on about how amazing these little creatures are.

Anyway, it’s all over Sungai Petani. Just a scan through my classmates’ and juniors’ MSN nicks and they would all be about how angry they are about the bugs.

Here are photos, as usual:

They’d just fly onto my hand and any other part of my body like that.

They’d flock in groups around fluorescent lamps.

Can you see the mess on my bed???

I’m too pissed off to study tonight. (I swear it’s not an excuse.)

I actually spent four hours in the study area in campus today. Hehe, me being me, this is the first time I’m utilizing the study area. I now feel like a proper uni student. Studying on campus and all.

me being very studious. It was very very productive okay! I managed three chapters! On average I need to cover 2.4 chapters per day by the time the exams come around. So it’s pretty good! Wanted to do four, but see where I am now. *shrugs*

Another angel! 😀 It was nice, being next to a floor to ceiling glass windows and a view of rolling hills in the distance. 🙂

See Lie Yuen’s sms. Cis! This also goes to show how lazy I usually am. Hahaha. 🙁 She sounds like my wife right! Haha.

Gaaaah. New year’s resolution. No more sleeping in class. TAKING NOTES IS A VERY IMPORTANT TASK!!!!! It’s very strange. I have this very very weird ability to fall asleep if I forget what the lecturer says while writing his notes down, as in my brain will go into recalling mode but while it is doing that it shuts the brain off at the same time. Circuit fused eh? 😀 Hahaha. But according to my classmates, I also have this strange talent of being able to continue writing the moment I open my eyes, which is usually like 10 seconds later. I just doze in and out of sleep for seconds at a time.

🙁 I don’t want to be like this!

I’m going back there again tomorrow. Gonna sit from 1-6. Then from 8-11. Yeah baby. No bugs there, that’s for sure!

Sorry, just got to gloat about the beautiful study area and library(which was closed, godamnit!!! It closes at 1pm. How inconsiderate right?! I say a considerate library is one which opens till like….11pm. Even better if they adopt a 24 hours service. 🙁 🙁

Anyway, goodnight for now.