Awana Kijal (10 June 2005, Day 1)

Very Important Lesson learnt - never ever try to do errants on the day you want to go on a holiday. ahaiks! Both Mrs B and I took leave on Friday so that we can leave for Awana Kijal. But our work schedule was so tight that we have two important errants left that morning. No.1, I had to send our 1997 Wira 1.5 (M) to the workshop because water was seeping into the boot. No.2, we had to go to the bank and settle some matters. :(

At 12.30pm, the whole Belacan family had a quick lunch at Pasar Rakyat and finally hit the road towards Karak Highway at 1.30pm. Another important lesson learnt - must leave KL before the Friday prayers! wahlaueh, super jam. We only managed to hit the Karak-Kuantan (East Coast) Highway at 3.00pm!
I found the new highway quite lonely, with few cars in between that afternoon. Most of the cars kept to the 110km/h limit but there were a few BMWs and Mercs zooming past at 140km/h and above. The stretch was unbelievably straight and I was secretly wishing that our car had cruise control, lemahlah kaki. The weather was sunny and bright, with little cloud coverings.

Mrs B and the kids were at the back seat. By this time, I was getting quite adept at snapping blind pics e.g. shoot from the fingers/hips. Here's one of Suzanne seated behind me.

We finally arrived at the Kuantan exit at 4.15pm, slightly more than an hour after Karak. Not bad, but soon I was caught behind lorries and trucks and trailers on the Kuantan-Gebeng-Cukai stretch. Fuiyouh! Damn frustrating man! At several points, we were only driving at 40km/h! Memang beh tahan. Most of the slow drivers were C plate i.e. Pahang drivers themselves. I was so fuckstrated that I began making vulgar names out of their number plates e.g. CBK = Ci***Kia and so forth. Mrs B said she needs to dettol my mouth, hahahaha!

Oh, must share this with everyone! Along the stretch, we saw a guy selling Toys-R-Us toy animals by the roadside like selling durians! bwahahahaha! This is a first for me. :)

Very entrepreneurial chap, don't you agree? And this particular spot was pretty strategic because a police roadblock is just 50 metres away, thus cars definitely have to slow down! Talk about high traffic.... ;)

We finally checked into Awana Kijal about 5.30pm. Tired is definitely an understatement!

We had a seaview room, but I didn't like the 2nd floor room they initially gave us because it had neither sea nor pool view! All I could see was the wall of the other block and worst, people walking along the corridor could peek into our room through the window. At once I requested for a change and the friendly front office gave us another seaview room but with a queen size bed. Baby SueAnne and Suzanne seems to like the queen size bed. No complains *grinz*

After a quick room administration i.e. steriliser put here, baby clothes there, foodstuff here and etc, I drove the Belacan family to Grandview restaurant for dinner. FYI, at the entrance to Awana Kijal are two row of shophouses. There's a western bar, sundry shop, a cleaner and even a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet! Grandview is located at the far corner. It is a chinese restaurant with reasonably priced food. We ordered 3 baked stuff crabs - the heck with high cholesterol, muahahahar!

But Mrs B and I were dissapointed with the baked crab this time. When we came last year, the baked crabs were much tastier. This year, it was still nice but it wasn't as delicious - maybe not enough MSG? hehehe.

After makan-full, nothing to do... we walked into a souvenir-cum-sundry shop operated by Awana Kijal. We bought one Awana Kijal t-shirt each for Mrs B and myself (RM9.90 each) and 2 baby Awana Kijal t-shirts for SueAnne and Suzanne (RM10 for 2!).

Back at the hotel, all of us were quite tired from the 4.5 hour journey. Everyone hit the bed early, except me because I was watching Discovery channel, hehehe. Oh, we also brought along my Toys-R-Us Red Buaya and Suzanne just cuddled it to sleep.

- End of Day 1 -

Tomorrow, Day 2!

Belacan says... "a buaya in Pok Ku territory, woohoo!"