First of all, I would like to wish each and every human sitting in front of your computer or staring at your handphone screens a warm MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Every family has their own ways in celebrating Christmas, it's either eating Turkey or buying KFC or just sitting around doing nothing like every other day. For my family, the culture is to travel somewhere away from home for Christmas. Preferably somewhere cold (like winter) y'know what I mean? *wink
Of course, not forgetting to tell the whole world that we are going on a road trip away from home.
Like what the title states, our vacation spot would be in Pahang, the largest state in Peninsular Malaysia. Because there are so many mountains and vacation spots in Pahang, and we had visited many of them, we chose Kuantan this time (Because why not visit the state capital of Pahang?!) and Sg. Lembing (part of district Kuantan).
Through writing this post, I hope you can sense the urge in my writing telling you to
PLEASE VISIT THESE PLACES THAT YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ FROM MY BLOG BECAUSE THEY'RE PERFECT FOR FAMILY GET-TOGETHER.
.___. Sorry didn't know my urge was so HUGE.
The journey was a long and boring one. We departed from Klang and arrived approx 4 hours later. But we did stopped by Bentong for some curry mee and chicken rice. A simple lunch goes a long way. We continued our journey to Kuantan after eating. No time to waste bud!
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| The curry mee we ate. Not bad not bad. |
Mom looked up on other people's blog and she found that they all went to the rainbow waterfall in Sg. Lembing, apparently it is a hotspot for tourists where you can take pictures of yourself with rainbows just around you (I've seen the pictures, packed with tourists, not attractive at all). But because God decided that it is too dangerous for us, he summoned upon the monsoon season, so the waterfall is closed until next year. We had to look up for other spots to fill-in the empty slots in our
We stopped by the waterfall before checking in our homestay, looked up from Airbnb. We'll go into that later.
It was drizzling all the way to the waterfalls. The rain came and stop repeatedly. TBH, it was really annoying, but on a side note, the weather was extremely pleasant for some waterfall fun. We don't even need to apply sunblock! We can avoid sunburn totally. But knowing that its monsoon season, and the fact that it's raining, we are really brave to step foot inside the compound of the waterfall.
A lady came to collect our fees. Adults - RM2 and Parking fee - RM3. Didn't know if she's a legit ticket collector, we pay because we just wanna have some fun. And we did. The waterfall is just stunningly eyecatchingly breathtakingly beautiful. I swear it's even beautiful-er than rainbow waterfall! Rainbow waterfall is just meh. And this is like WOW YAS OMG altogether. Don't believe me? See for yourself.
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| Best thing about this? It's not flooded with tourists. We had most of the spaces to ourselves. |
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| With my FAMA. To have long legs or to capture the waterfall behind us? We chose the former. |
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| Last photo before I got wet all over. And yes, the water is freezing icy cold to the bones COLD. I ain't lying. |
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| The outer layout of our stay for the first night in Kuantan. Love love love the bamboo and red-brick themed design. It has a spacious car park which can accommodate for enough cars for the residents. |
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| These are their main dishes and famous dishes in the restaurant, we ordered most of our food from this menu right here. And it was no disappointment. |
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| Dad's cousin came to visit him while we are still waiting for our food. |
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| Ta-daa! And these are the food we ate for the night. More than enough for the eight of us, boy, we were so full. |
We spent hours in that restaurant, and came out satisfied. Just in time for our Christmas eve mass at St. Thomas Catholic Church. We headed there and there were so many people already seated inside the church. There were hardly any seats left, so we grab our own chairs and sat at the very back of the church. That's why, listen to your mother, kids. Always be early.
We took pictures all around the church.
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| St. Thomas's statue. |
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| Another St. Thomas |
It was really nice to have spent my Christmas eve with my family, and a very big one yet, together with Jesus. Later, we headed back to our Airbnb hotel and started watching movies from the television hanging on the wall. Real Steel was playing. I was having trouble sleeping from all the tea I drank during dinner, i ended up sleeping at 2am. Dad didn't managed to sleep, so he slept only in the morning, at 6am when all of us had woken up and gotten ready for the sunset by the beach. Dad didn't come with us because he was just about to head to bed from a night of sleeplessness.
The beach is 5 minutes away from our hotel, it was a small place after all. Name of the beach is Teluk Chempedak beach. We woke up early for the sunrise, but when we arrived, the sun was already up. But due to the thick clouds roaming around the sky, we can hardly see the egg yolk that we meant to see. It was just, spreaded egg yolks all over the sky, like you know how your friends always like to mess up your egg when it's perfectly safe inside the egg whites? Yeah, that's how the sunrise looked like that morning.
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| Perfect depiction on what I described about the sunrise. It still looked magnificent though. Made by God anyways. Can't be picky with it. |
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| Did I mention that the beach was in poor hygiene condition? There were trashes everywhere! And monkeys too! Probably monkeys are the one that messed up the trashes and dump it all over the beach, but I'm pretty sure poor monkeys aren't the only one to blame, because they didn't take any moral lessons cuz they didn't go to school, but humans are really inhumane to be throwing their unwanted wastes all over the beach. TOTALLY SPOILED THE VIEW c'mon. |
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| They had many big rocks too, nobody knows how they got there. They just exist before I did. |
And if you're in Kuantan, and like to drop by to show some love for his famous Char Kuey Teow, you can find him at TC Kopitiam.
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| Their Hor Fun was really good too! |
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| Some good food that you'd like to try in Kuantan. |
The end result?
Dad likes it. Everyone likes it.
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| And look at the amount of cendol flooding in that oozy-goodness santan gula melaka yumms. |
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| Cendol Air Putih. Be sure to stop by when you visit Kuantan! |
After eating Cendol, we started out to Sg. Lembing. It was another road trip journey. Sg. Lembing is part of district Kuantan, but a more secluded town I'd say. Why? Because the town is so small you can basically finish walking the whole Sg. Lembing in one day. By WALKING. And I'm serious. When we arrived, there's not much humans there. The town was like a ghost town. Such a secluded small town, with a tin mining history,
"Sungai Lembing has been the winner of the International Awards for Liveable Communities (LivCom Awards) 2012 held by the UNESCO at the Al Ain City in the United Arab Emirates. "
But Sg. Lembing is my average go-to place because it's so peaceful. Basically everything about it is nature; and due to the monsoon season, the place is COLD and the weather is just purfecto!
This photo was taken on the next morning, more humans are seen flooding in from Kuantan because they went there to hike the hills of Sg. Lembing. At least then, the town seemed a little bit more normal and noisy.
Another specialty about Sg. Lembing is their hand-pulled/hand-made noodles! They called it the Lembing noodles! They're handmade so naturally they are VERY TASTY. It can be cooked in various ways, and we all loved it, regardless of how it's cooked.
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| Here's three ways on how to cook a Lembing noodle, except that fried rice. HAHA. Hokkien fried noodles. ๅฎขๅฎถ็้ข Tomato noodles. ่ๆฑ้ข Stew noodles. ็้ข All made with Lembing noodles. |
We booked our hotel from Mr. Foo through WhatsApp Messenger @ +6010 929 7892
In the hotel, they provided us with BBQ service, but we didn't use that, and there's the Sg. Lembing river just behind our hotel (you'll read that towards the end of the post) where you can play and have fun in the sand, or in the river.
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| Our stay for the second night, along with our travel car, Serena. |
Followed by a spacious living room, where they have lots of sofas and a television, cards, Jenga, and other stuff to play with. They provided us with Wifi, but the connection is very limited, and very slow. I was greeted with "Emergency calls only" for my signal all the time I was in Sg. Lembing. Umobile service couldn't detect any signals whatsoever in Sg. Lembing. That's when Anna knew, she messed up.
Moving on, we entered our room (Sorry, it's a bit messy). There's air-conditioner, and a bathroom attached.
Sg. Lembing is a town with a tin mining history, it used to have a population of 10,000 during its glory days. But when the tin mining industry died down, the same applies to the population there, as many left to seek for more opportunities outside the world. What's left are the elderly, the ones who still stayed loyal to their hometown, people who manages the homestay, and those who catered for the tourist industry during peak season.
A town with a tin mining industry would naturally have a tin mining museum. Thus, the Sungai Lembing Museum is a MUST GO-TO place when you visit Sg. Lembing.
You had to buy your entrance ticket first before going in, it's RM2 for adults. Children and senior citizens RM1 if I'm not mistaken. It's very affordable. But if you feel like you really don't have that RM2, then you can just skip a lunch or a dinner and GET TO THAT MUSEUM! Or you can just camp out, sleep under the trees, no kidding, the trees are all very old and tall, you will feel very secure.
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| Sitting down like nobody's business whilst waiting for our ticket. |
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| Finally got my ticket! |
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| The entrance to the museum. |
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| The museum started with boards and boards of history about Sungai Lembing. Of course, we read all of them. Gotta make sure our RM2 is worth it, right? |
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| Then we proceed into something more concrete, like looking at real tools left behind from the past, and the ways they do tin mining. From the traditional ways of Dulang washing (we learned all of them from Sejarah during form 3) to the big big Kapal Korek. |
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| Here are the tools that they show us regarding tin mining, enclosed by a layer of glass. |
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| The old calculator, fax machines, typewriter, and so on and on and on and on. |
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| Residence of the 4th Sultan of Pahang every time when he visits Sungai Lembing. |
That's that about the museums, I can't show you everything, because then this post would be very lengthy wouldn't it? Sungai Lembing is also very famous for their suspension bridge, or what I would like to call it, the rocky shaky bridge. Many motorists past by this bridge to go to the other side of the town. I guess this is where most of the residence of SL stay. We were lucky we had the whole bridge to ourselves with no other tourists. There are altogether 3 rocky shaky bridge in SL. It's a fun and thrilling experience to be crossing this bridge. Apparently, Louis is having huge fright when crossing the bridge, which adds more fun to the whole crossing of the rocky shaky bridge experience.
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| Taken outside SJK (C) Lembing, a school with SLIDES! #Goals |
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| There was only one customer sitting inside. |
We went to bed pretty early, because we were told that we had to wake up at 5am tomorrow to see sunrise from the Lembing Hills. And so we did, waking up at 5am in the morning, arrived at the hill just 5 minutes later (The town was very small, remember?) and already there were many cars parked below, and many had already started hiking their way to the top of the mountain.
How was the hike?
Endless stairs.
But compared to Broga Hill or the To'kun Hill that I hiked, this was pretty basic. It didn't take long for us to climb all the way up.
But did we see the sunrise that we wanted to see? Nope.
I hiked all three hills, Broga, To'kun, and then now Lembing, I'd never seen even one sunrise before. I'm starting to believe that sunrise from these hills are just a myth. They never really existed. All these while blocked by mischievous clouds that loomed around the sky like nobody's business.
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| This wasn't the direction of the sunrise. Many took photos here because it had a clear view and the backdrop is really amazing, d'cha'think? Just look at that MIST! Or clouds? Or fog? idk anymore. |
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| With the family. |
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| The youths |
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| Here's another view with the clear view of the Sungai Lembing. Legit, Sungai Lembing. With clouds/fog/mist whatever you name it. |
Remember the stairs I mentioned? Here you go:
Steep, and energy draining. But really, I'd prefer stairs any other day compared to steep roads up the hill. You know how those workout enthusiast always like to workout on the StairMaster? Well, apparently those staying in Sg. Lembing are lucky! They don't need to waste money buying that artificial stair thing, they have one already! With nature all around as well! How lucky. *Envy
After sitting around on top for idk how long, many started going down the hill, and the next stop would ultimately be ๅฑฑๆฐด่ฑ่ San Sui Tofu that is really famous there, and of course, the Lembing noodles again. There were so many people there at the hawker stalls! Maybe they'd all come from Kuantan for a one-day trip to climb the Lembing Hills, but the big difference between morning and evening-night really shocked me. The town was so lively in the morning.
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| On top: San Sui Tofu Bottom: Lembing noddles and some add-ons (depending on what you choose) The noodles come in soup, curry, dried,... |
They sell souvenirs too, that comes in the form of food. There's CNY cookies and some Lembing goods, as well as the noodles.
The Lembing noodles are all handmade, and we are allowed to watch them make the noodles in the process.
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| Dad blended in quite quickly. |
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| Sungai Lembing food industries. The banners are rather self-explanatory themselves. |
Before going back to pack our stuff and to conclude our stay, we did not forget to take pictures at the very extremely small town, with the old big tree. Yes, this is the tree that I am constantly talking about.
My brothers still had the energy to go to the Lembing river behind our guesthouse, so I followed suit. And i saw them making this raft. The river was like a beach, with many stones, of course, we threw lots of it inside the river to make it jump three times. My 2nd brother made it jump seven times on his first try, muscles make a difference.
And yes, their raft floats.
Then, my big brother started building mini Stonehenge.
And nobody actually appreciates my gifts. Except 2nd brother, who had taken the unwanted wood from 3rd brother for his moss collection.
Watch my Snapchat timeline here so you can understand what I am talking about:
kthxbai
