last weekend, i've decided to introduce my kid to outdoor adventures via this same company. more than a month ago i saw a meetup for a family edition trip to muar, a historic town in malaysia. after reading their pitch about why parents should include kids in outdoor activities, i was convinced it is a good chance to put lovro's curiosity to test. my 4 year-old, while adorably well-behaved, seem to be too careful and not very adventurous. he won't even walk on sand! once, i tried to take him to walk the imbiah trail in sentosa with me, but he freaked out as soon as he saw a spider! but i thought that if i take him on a trip with other families and kids he might be enticed to be more receptive and come out of his comfort zone.
before this trip i kept setting up the expectation that we were going on an adventure, to get him all excited. it totally worked as he didn't complain about waking up at 6:15am to get on a cab. we met with the group in woodlands mrt at 7am and left promptly.
it was quite a drive, but he got a chance to sleep somehow. we arrived in sabak awor resort just before noon. the room was quite basic, but functional. AC, water heating and toilet works great. after all, we were not planning to stay in the room other than to sleep! our day was packed with activities that we're very much looking forward to.
after a quick check-in we headed straight to the restaurant for a highly-anticipated lunch. the buffet was very good, but we were so hungry we forgot to take photos 😁
after a quick break we started our first activity: tarzan jungle park. initially i thought it was going to be a 'real' jungle exploration, so when i saw jungle park i thought it didn't look very impressive. however, i was proved wrong. there was much to do and see in this small park!
i was taken back to my childhood. as a kid, i loved climbing trees. our neighborhood had a lot of kerson cherry trees, and even though i never liked to eat the fruit, i enjoyed climbing up the trees to harvest them. i'd give them to the neighborhood kids, or even feed them to the neighbors' goats! but i loved getting high up the tree, looking over the horizon or just down to see what's going on around the village. i haven't climbed trees in a very long time, and in this jungle park i got to realize that i still enjoy it.
lovro also got a taste of it as simon steadied him as he navigated through the tree branches, then richard held him for photo ops. i was so proud of my little explorer for such a daring move!
there were a bunch of other fun things to do in this park. it's too bad that the guide were explaining about the park in mandarin so i didn't follow much of what was said, but the folks in the group would kindly translate some stuff. from what i understood there were some kampong games we could do like walking on 2 sticks or a 3-people relay while walking on logs (i don't really know the names) but we all took a shot at those. they were not easy!
after a sweaty recreation, we earned our right to the next activity: otak-otak challenge! we were to make otak-otak (not from scratch though, just to put them on the leaves and grill). the host said the mixture was meant to make 25-30 pieces of otak-otak. we were split into 2 groups, and tasks were delegated. i helped to scoop the otak into the leaves and lovro was the designated stapler guy to secure the otak for grilling.
our team made 29 pieces while team b made 32. our team won! we earned the otak-otak badge of excellence 💪 lovro was very happy!
after that tasty snacking, i was glad we had almost an hour to rest. lovro definitely needed a power nap before the cruise.
we started the eco-tour cruise at 5:30pm. in our itinerary we knew that we were going for a firefly cruise, but we started out early so we can see the sunset and the mangrove. it was quite an educational cruise, again as the group would translate snippets of the information from the guide in english so that sucan and i could understand. that said, i couldn't share much information about the history of the muar river and the surroundings, but we saw a lot of interesting wildlife there! lucky for us we had richard and his amazing camera, who were able to take good shots of the animals we could only see from a distance. i especially loved the dusty leaf monkey, its face was so cute!
we ended up going back right as the sun set so we could take nice sunset photos as we got off the boat. however, it was not dark enough for us to see fireflies. so the plan was to go for dinner first then come back for another round for the firefly cruise.
while we all stood in awe to enjoy the sunset, lovro was enjoying playing with uncle sucan and the rest of the folks. and then, it was time to eat again!
we set back out to the river at 8:30pm to see fireflies. it was magical! some of the trees had a lot of fireflies in them they were blinking like christmas lights. we couldn't capture this magnificence in photos or videos though, but it was probably the higlight of the trip for me. it was so special to experience it with my darling son, who'd happily point out where the fireflies were while locked in his mama's embrace. awww 💓
the next morning, the group was to set off to bukit mor for a short hiking. it was not suitable for lovro so we opted to sleep in and just chill. we were able to have late breakfast (that porridge with pumpkin was so shiok!) and just chilled by the restaurant as we watched a man catch some prawns. lovro enjoyed cheering him on. he would say nooooo! whenever he'd pull the fishing rod without a catch, and encouraged him to 'try again!'. he also had fun chasing roosters haha
after that we meant to go to the donhu jurassic garden but as it rained heavily we had to wait it out. we still visited although rather late, around past 11 and we were to leave by noon. luckily i brought the scooter with me, which made it a mere dash to get to this place. it seemed that an hour visit was just nice, we didn't need that much time to spend there. it was free to visit the dinos, but i got lovro to ride on a dinosaur for 5 ringgit, which he enjoyed very much.
the merry holidays bus just came around past noon to pick us up from the jurassic garden and then we were off for seafood lunch!
we had assam fish and other seafood for lunch, which was initially planned for dinner. it worked out quite well in fact, when sucan told me that the other parents wanted to be back in singapore early and skip the group dinner in malaysia: i also didn't want to be out too late as lovro would have classes the next day too.
post lunch was the muar town tour. we stopped to take photos of the loving sisters mural, then had afternoon tea/coffee break at 434 coffee. then we raided an otak factory to tabao some otak and then finally glutton street ave 4 for some street food and beverages. yes, we did a lot of eating in this trip!
we reached the malaysian checkpoint before 8pm and it was surprisingly smooth on the way back to woodlands checkpoint. it was such a pleasant surprise to get back without the human and traffic jam!
we got home past 10pm and i hurriedly tucked lovro in bed. before he dozed off, he said, "i like malaysia! i wanna go back to malaysia!" i suppose i could say with confidence that he definitely had a blast in this trip, and i'm glad we did it with adventures unlimited. i'm looking forward to the next one.
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trek for hope - family edition: muar adventures
organized by adventures unlimited
june 2-3 2018
most photos borrowed from richard chia (the really nice photos!)
special thanks to sucan and simon for being such wonderful hosts and very awesome with lovro! but i'm sorry sucan, he said uncle simon is his favorite 😝
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