It's not too hard to get a short break nowadays. Just have to be patient a bit, listen to some 1 hour presentation (sometimes can drag on till 2 to 3 hours), "thick skinned" enough to face the notorious and aggresive salesperson and be demanding to ensure you get your reward for your kindness in listening to them.
Sometimes you would be tempted to part with your money and fall into their trap, but trust me, DO NOT DO THAT! Sometimes, after shaking your head vigorously after their managers and top senior managers come to persuade you, you might be shown the other side of their smiling faces, BUT don't fret, you exit with a complimentary voucher in hand to enjoy a short free stay at one of their top resorts! There you go!
Then again, you might come across some obstacles. They don't give freebies whole-heartedly, you know. They ensure it's not that easy for you to make a reservation. So, the best thing is, before you even go to listen to their presentation, ask and understand first how the procedure for reservation goes. As they need you to be willingly sit down, they would still be smiling at you and answering your questions.
Anyway, it's getting boring here..
So, that's how we managed a "free" stay at this Swiss Court Holiday Apartment in Lumut for the long weekend when the whole nation celebrates our50th merdeka bash.
We got to book Sat and Sun only, that leaves our option to stay in Ipoh for 1 night and shift to Lumut on Sat, returning back to KL on Sun. Plan sounds fine for me, I don't quite believe that the resort has that much to offer as well.
By Sat, we arrived without hitches at around 3-4pm. Travel was smooth, roadsigns were ok, apart from a turn without any, but fortunately, we did our homework, and we reached the place safe and sound, right in good time for beach fun.
After checking in, (sigh! it was just the apartment and not the hotel rooms on the main building), we packed our stuffs and called the hotel van to take us to the main building which is about 2-3 mins away.
Looking eager and happy travelling on a van to wherever we were going.
Behold, the swimming pool is quite friendly-looking. It was a good crowd there too, like a public pool. Some company was holding their annual family trip for the weekend.
Seriously, it does look like a public swimming pool, with mainly the swimmers there not in their proper attire.
Nevertheless, the mood was cheerful and joyous, seems like everyone has a smile plastered on their faces without any worries in the world.
KT wanted to check out the beachfront first, here's one route which leads to a boring but shady beach...
.. and here's another, with the name "fun" in it.
These are the hotel rooms which would have make Swiss Resort looked really generous if they had given out the free complimentary stay to us here instead.
Looking out at the fun beach, there's this restaurant which serves BBQ buffet on sat nite. Costs us around RM200 for us, but I told KT, "Suan-le-pa, at the very least we got the free stay la". The choice of food was not excellent, but the BBQ range was satisfactory. KT had a lot of succulent "pissing urine prawns" (lai-liew-ha) that nite.. gosh, all the cholesterol..
He knows I was taking picture of them, so they pose this pose for me. hehe..
On the Fun Beach, there's this bamboo walk which makes my legs go weak. I was surprised they dared to take up the challenge to complete the walk, but I guess they had no choice, since they can't u-turn, especially the little one in front.
Whew! Finally made it! I was soooo.. relieved.
We then ran to the sea. Well, of course, after changing first. The kids have no problem changing to their swimsuits in public, but my, oh my, I had to look for some place to do that and probably need to walk up some far away distance. Then again, when I saw how the children looked fearless of the waves in the sea, I was rather worried. Dad might not be able to take care of them, given that he's not that concern about the waves could really be gobbling them up.
I did the most unthinkable thing then. Using just a towel, I changed to my swimsuit on the beach! Worried (of lari cahaya and some people video taped it and putting it on youtube!) and excited (it was such a crazy thing to do), I quickly get myself changed and ran to join them in the sea.
Oh dear, but it really felt like swimming in a pool of mud! The water is really muddy and the sand on the beach was rough and spikey. Really have nothing good to say about the beach there. We hang on for awhile and I was so relief to be back in the friendly looking pool.
As usual, they would have a splashing time in the pool. Nothing else matters.
I like this waterfall too. Fronting the waterfall, there's this area where we can play ball with 2 goalpoints opposite each other.
So much for the 1st day, this is the 2nd day at Lumut town where we had our breakfast. It was drizzling and that dampened all the plans for 1-day Pangkor trip or all other plans. We waited for their 4 grandparents to arrive to join us. What we can manage was just to snap some pictures at the pier area and then to have lunch at nearby Sitiawan.
Signs of the camera getting old and need to be thrown away. Hmm.. good excuse to get myself a SLR! Wonder when hubby would take care of that.
The pier had really changed quite a lot since I was last there. Now, when was the last time I was there. I guess it could easily been more than 10 years.
It was comfortable enjoying the breeze. Without the hot sun at that noon time, and the cooling breeze, I felt very at ease.
Boy! It was such a tiring trip, he can't keep his eyes opened even for the short drive to Sitiawan for lunch. Was caught napping at every possible opportunity. Little children.
We went back to the resort and swam another time before calling it a day. As the weather had been rainy, the water was rather chilling, but fortunately, all went well.
We bathed, packed and started our journey back to KL at about 5pm. KT commented before the departure, it would be a 3 hours journey, so we had better emptied our bladder nice and clean.
From Lumut, we went through the trunk road through some small towns until we reached Bidor. Getting on the PLUS highway, we were greeted with a crawling traffic! It just crawled and crawled, we were getting pretty fed up.
Eventually, we stopped by at Tanjung Malim for dinner at about 9pm, rather than being optimistic we would be back in KL half an hour later.
It was such a slow moving drive until we reached Rawang, and could only speed back up all the way, reaching our home sweet home at 11+pm. 6 hours on the road! That's it, we are not going to travel back during long weekends or festivals anymore.
