Just when I thought birthday was going to be a quiet one since my parents are going to be away, I was asked to go on the Royal Caribbean with my parents. Although the Legend of the Seas wasn't one of the biggest ship in their fleet, it was quite a decemt luxuriuous cruise. To be able to go on the cruise with my favourite cousin, XiaoMeiren and her 2 girls on board, I couldn't have asked for more. Doing silly stuffs like taking endless pictures and putting out of whatever rules you can think of on the mini golf turf, I got to momentarily leave the stressful thoughts at home. In fact, our schedules were so packed, I didn't had time for the pool despite packing in 2 sets of swim wear nor the mahjong game my nieces were looking forward to play.
Our first port of call was Penang. Believe it or not, this was my first time in Penang. When we were planning to sign up for tours, we had a rather long discussion on where we wanted to go which essentially was between a "makan (eating)" tour and a heritage trail to check out on the Peranakan culture as well. Thinking democracy is the best way out, we had to vote. Eventually, it wasn't the voting that mattered. Long story short, we went for the "makan" tour because the other tour was cancelled. It couldn't have been more boring than to visit tourist shopping shops for local delights and a batik factory where the batiks are hand-made. Over priced batiks drove us out of the shop pretty darn quick. By the end of the tour, we were too eagar to go back to the ship for a repeat of our scrumptious dinner the night before. Needless to say, food was endless and amazingly, it was good. Friends would know me as someone who's very picky about my beef and I'll have it no other way than medium rare. It was done very nicely and the quality of beef was better than expectations. The array of starters also provided the right waist widening tools. I think "overdosing on escargots" is an understatement altogether.
The next stop was Kuala Lumpur where our free & easy tour brought us to shopping haven, Bukit Bintang and the next few hours were crazy shopping. It was a relieve to be buying things in ringgit after a few days on board where everything is priced in USD. To be fair, we didn't need to spend those money because everything was taken care of but we just got to fork out the gratuities and whatever extras we wanted. As for me, Coke deprivation was serious business.
On the last night, my cousin organised a cake for me and to my surprise (horror at times due to the embarrassment), the entire crew of waiters came over to my table to sing the birthday song for me. I'm really thankful to have a cousin like her. It's not about the gifts or money but the effort. She was the one who remembered the day. I would imagine my parents to forget that it was my birthday although over the past years, we did try to arrange dinners within my immediate family whenever there's a birthday to celebrate. Over the years, I just paid lesser and lesser attention and didn't even felt like it was a special day. Maybe because I'm getting old...
Lunch today was with 2 of the SBW, namely Daftbitch and Road Planner. Bster was with us in spirit because the poor boy's stuck in reservist. It was just our usual lunch until Daftbitch said it was time for dessert. At that point, I was contemplating between chin chow or cheng tng. Then Road Planner took out 3 slices of cake. My face was red and not because of the chemical peel I did yesterday, it was utterly embarrassingly. It was a very simple act and we didn't had like mega celebration but it was fun and definitely memorable. Thanks guys...
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