Building An Ark in Singapore

Jun. 15, 2008

Not exactly a holiday

Posted in Family

It's been almost 3 weeks since my last posting, just before we went off for a church camp at Desaru, Malaysia, courtesy of Singapore Christian Canaan Church!

The camp was great! The people of the church were very warm and friendly. We had a great time there! We spent 4 days and 3 nites at The Pulai, Desaru Beach. We did not venture out to check out the beaches or any tourist attraction since this was basically a working holiday for us.

The only downside to the trip was the awful spread of food available! You know how one usually puts on weight after a break of sorts? Well, the younger kids and I certainly didn't! Everything was spicy. The only non-spicy stuff were soup and bread and a fish dish which was cooked in the same way every lunch and dinner! The only variation was the gravy/sauce poured over it!

The lack of food unfortunately contributed to a milk supply dip! The baby was definitely not pleased and she didn't like the fish either! Lol!

We were given a huge loft bedroom, a 2-storey room. The downside of this is that the stairs connecting the 2 levels were rather erm...basic?! Check out this photo of the rooms. Our loft is similar to the picture on the extreme left. See the stairs? It had "holes" in them and the railings of the banister were like one metre apart! Highly stressful for me since we have a crawling baby who love stairs!

But the kids had a blast sleeping together downstairs while dh, the baby and I slept upstairs. The group had organised a durian/fruit farm tour which I unfortunately had to miss in view of a tired 3yr old and the baby. And I also had to miss out on the seafood dinner!!!

But it worked out well since the durian farm tour took place at the peak of the noonday sun and lasted 1 whole hour! And the seafood dinner though yummy to me, did not appeal to the younger ones. Also, the dinner didn't end till past 9pm and by the time dh and the older ones returned it was past 10pm and everyone was so so tired. Those who stayed behind with me had a treat though! I brought them to the brand new playground and we ended the day with a bubble bath in the hotel room! The older ones were so envious!

Despite all the fun we had, it was not a real holiday. Dh had to work hard, he preached 5 sessions over the 4-day camp. We all sat through the teachings* and had our little break in the afternoons when dh was free. But it was a break from our usual routine and was great for memory making!

It was also our 1st road trip as a family! You American moms can stop laughing at us. Singapore is so small that our usual car ride is at most 30minutes long. So any car ride over that time frame is considered long! Driving to Desaru from our home took us almost 3hrs due to the bad congestion at the border (we took the Tuas link). But coming back via the Causeway link was a breeze. The journey was under 2hrs!

The children behaved tremendously well considering this is their maiden car trip, even the baby. She only cried when we were stuck at the border congestion for 40minutes. After I nursed her, she went right back to her carseat and dozed off.

The success of this trip has made me more confident of taking longer drives up to Malaysia for future holidays.

But upon coming back, I spent 4 days clearing laundry by the loads! Thankfully, God granted us great weather so the clothes dried pretty fast. Since we went by car this time round, we had to be economical in our packing. Our Honda Stream has a miniscule boot space so we brought the bare minimum only. And this helped me when we returned home. Much easier to unpack and laundry was a much lighter load.

All in all, it was fun and the 3yr old is still praying every night, "Dear God, thank you for bringing me to Desaru." Amen I say!

* The older 2 were required to sit and listen to daddy preached while I brought along activity books for the the younger ones to occupy them.