We had a wonderful family holiday last month at Port Dickson with my parents, sister and brother-in-law.
It was the first time we went on a long-distance drive since we had baby Caleb.
It was a nice to get a chance to relax and enjoy ourselves away from the stresses of daily life. I enjoyed the chance to spend time with my family, and the kids really enjoyed themselves.
We stayed at Avillion Admiral Cove again. Daryl was not even born last time, so it was nice to go back.
This time we managed to stay in the new Vista wing, which was still under construction the last time we were there.
The rooms had a different theme compared to the old wing. It felt like some sort of garden / victorian theme.
I didn’t adjust the white balance on the previous photo so you could see the room in actual light.
There was a daybed in the room so we had extra space for the kids to sleep.
I always have this bad habit of taking photos of hotel bathrooms. I’ve been doing this since I was young. I guess I’m always fascinated by the luxury, something I could never afford to have in my own home.
I liked the experience of rain shower, but it was quite difficult to bathe the kids because they were terrified at first because we couldn’t prevent water dripping on their faces.
We also had to bring a basin to bathe Caleb.
We arrived in Port Dickson on the day after Christmas, and the traffic was horrible. We were stuck half-an-hour at a 5km stretch from PD hospital to Teluk Kemang.
We had our first lunch at Weng Yin seafood, which we tried last time. Last time I remember we ordered just some fried rice and a vegetable dish which was okay. This time we ordered a few Chinese dishes and we were quite disappointed at the taste and rather costly price.
After another round of traffic jam we checked in to the hotel and rested.
I saw this insect that looks like a stick. I had no idea what it’s called but I found it fascinating. Its feet could stick to a plastic sign!
Sadly I later found someone had smashed the insect.
For dinner we paid another visit to Kemang Seafood and it was much better compared to lunch, in terms of taste, portion size and pricing. We arrived around 7 but by 7:30 the place was packed.
We ordered crab, fried squid, prawns and there were people hovering around waiting for our table when I was eating my crab. I need to take my sweet time because it’s so hard to extract the crab meat.
My sister said those people drooled each time I dipped my fried mantou in the sweet and sour crab sauce hehe.
We went to bed early because we were tired from all the travelling and traffic jams.
This is a sunset photo I took with my phone.
The next morning we brought the kids to the beach after breakfast at the hotel. Just a quick note about the breakfast. It was the typical hotel buffet breakfast. Nothing too fancy. The normal Malaysian and Western choices, and we had to go eat before 8am to avoid the crowd.
It was Daryl’s first encounter with the sea, safe in yeh yeh‘s arms.
We borrowed a sand toys set from Rachel’s cousins and they proceeded to play with the sand. If you look back at the very first photo in this blog post, you will see Rachel found a coin.
I was so excited because she found it within seconds of digging. “Rachel! Rachel! You found money!”
Rachel: “No la, cannot take”. Then she threw the coin away.
I went to retrieve it, “No no, this is TREASURE!”
Rachel: “No, cannot simply take”. Throw away again.
Sigh.
Daryl concentrated really hard trying to scoop sand in the bucket.
Rachel was enjoying herself at the beach and at the swimming pool after that.
A nice family photo. Poor baby Caleb stayed indoors most of the time.
For our second dinner at Port Dickson, we hunted down the new McDonalds that just opened in PD.
There’s this whole new commercial area that opened on a piece of reclaimed land near the Store Oceanic Mall in PD. There’s a seafood restaurant already opened, and another Chinese restaurant being constructed.
It was predictably packed but we managed to find a table upstairs. It was nice because this McDonalds had a sea view and you could feel the sea breeze. There were a lot of flies too, so they should probably install some bug zappers.
We spent the night playing Risk. I last played the game when I was 14 and I’ve forgotten everything. It is such an interesting game!
On our last day, we spent some time taking photos. Rachel and Caleb.
Rachel and Daryl on some sampan display.
We visited the little petting zoo at the hotel. There was a rabbit, some tortoises and some hamsters.
Daryl kept touching the rabbits and called it a “cat meow”. Rachel kept screaming each time the rabbit came near.
A final photo before checking out.
We paid less than RM400 for two nights stay. Not bad considering it was super peak room rates (public holiday plus school holiday).
I hope we can go for another holiday at the end of this year, but definitely during off-peak season.
