When the holiday is over...

When the fun is over, reality sinks in..

Yeah, I had one whole work-free week. One whole week of just relaxing and having fun - but knowing that at the end of it, would be deadlines upon deadlines till God knows when...

At this juncture, I will not write a detailed travelogue of my holiday with photos.. well, the photos will be uploaded to my Facebook and Flickr eventually.. but right now, I just don't want to neglect my dear blog here.. and just shared a little bit of my trip!

But before that, would like to announce that last week, to be precise - on May 9th, Jess' two Js had turned 3! Yep, three full years of blogging life and it's still going on pretty strong, while some friends who started around the same time have already fizzled out.. hehe :p

Anyway, back to my holiday! This is an interesting one although the destinations weren't exactly those that I would have chosen for myself. But I had fun - and the main thing was for a family gathering to celebrate dad and mom's 40th anniversary!

One of the most interesting bit about our journey was our transportation! We flew, took ferry and boat, bus, shutter bus, taxi, underground train, on foot.. within that one week travelling from KL to three destinations. The only transport we didn't use was the train i think.

We flew Air Asia to Macau and stayed at The Venetian for two nights and our room - well, it's called a suite - was lovely! Spacious and luxurious! We spent quite a lot of time at the resort although we also went out to the tourist site in city for half a day. The main attraction at the resort was its Grand Canal Shoppes with shopping and dining places. It's an indoor make-believe Venice was quite well done up we thought - with canals, Venetian building facades, gondolas, and even a replica of St Mark's Square and other land marks. Of course nothing close to the real Venice but what's impressive was the false sky which actually gives you an outdoor feeling while actually it was just a very high ceiling!

Here're some pix of the place.. and there are many more!

Next, we literally crossed the border on foot into Mainland China and hitched a shuttle bus at Zhuhai with my sis' family in it that brought us to the Ocean Spring Resort. The place was HUGE (5.1 sq km!), however it is just very `Chinese'-looking (the website also reflects it!). But we were pretty awed by our bungalow villa which was MUCH BIGGER than we all have expected. It was literally a huge double-storey bungalow house with very huge living and dining area, kitchen, three bed rooms with bathrooms and also an outdoor private hot spring and veranda!

But the theme park was only so-so to me and other facilities weren't really of international standard. There are definitely rooms for improvement. The highlight for me there was trying out its many hot springs - outdoor and indoor.. That was pretty cool, and I had a good massage as well..

On my parent's anniversary day - May 12th - we took a ferry back to Hong Kong. And later we learned of the terrible earthquake in Sichuan that happened the same afternoon.. We still didn't know how great the magnitude and damage it was when sis and brother-in-law treated us to a lovely Western dinner at the Football club.

We had three nights in HK - me at my sis' place while dad and mom put up at a hotel very near by. I had vouched not to shop much so the next day I stuck to that.. but on the last day, since I was in Causeway Bay, I ended up buying a few things. Actually I had already started shopping at the Venetian too!

Besides a bit of shopping (as compared to the scale of it I always did), I was glad to manage to catch up with two friends as well as done assorted things like seeing a rather cool new shopping mall Elements, had tea at The Peninsula, spent time playing with niece, nephews and Ginger the cute dog, catch up on Internet and of course FEAST OUT!! I was so stuff that I rather eat sandwich and salad on the second last day..

There were some not so happy moments during the trip too.. and that's mainly due to some tiffs with dad. Yeah, it's harder when you spend almost 24/7 with someone who is easily provoked and angered. Well, I don't claim to be a saint but I felt quite sad the fact that those episodes had to happen when it could have been a much more `harmonious' holiday.

However, all's well now and although i wished mostly to be on a holiday still, I know I need to have my feet back onto the ground and start doing those work that would be due pretty soon!

And of course, one of the happiest reason I want to come home is to my two Js, who really missed all of us so much!

I'm now looking forward to my next holiday in July!! More later...cos when the holiday is over, I still have to go back to work!!! :((