Weekend round trip

It was the weekend leading up to my first year anniversary and I had plans to go to Melaka on Sunday to celebrate. The weekday was quite a hellish one as there were endless meetings, presentations, arrangements, last minute requests and dinners that I had to entertain. So I was looking forward for the one night stay in Melaka and just hang out.

Then, my other half decided that we should go back to Batu Pahat to pick up some durians from his abah's kebun. I was not too excited about it but I was telling myself that I only had to endure it for one night and the next we will be off to Melaka. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we went to BP on Saturday and Sunday we were off to Melaka. But we stopped by at Ayer Hitam as my mother was asking me to look for some souvenir items for my brother's kenduri. I have now officially became my brother's wedding plannner team. My task is mainly:

1. scouting for appropriate souvenir items to be given to guests; and

2. procuring the said souvenir items.

If I wasn't married to somebody from BP, I wouldn't have known about Ayer Hitam. The place is like shopping haven for Malaysians its like Bukit Kayu Hitam or Nilai 3. You can buy all sorts of gifts, hantaran arrangements, bunga dulang, ornaments, wood products, kerepek, plastic flowers, etc. Anyway, this was my second time scouting the items. The first time my mum's theme was bakul mengkuang, which I had bought a few samples but none of which she liked. This time around it was swans, so I had to scout for replicas of swans, which I had found and again, she didn't like any of it. So she decided that we should go to Nilai 3 this coming saturday.

Coming back to my journey, on from Ayer Hitam, we drove to Melaka and arrived around 4pm and checked in to Aldy Hotel. The room was quite small and typical of a 3 star hotel but the toilet and wardrobe area was quite new which I can tell by the look of the tiles. I always thought that I can travel cheap and easy but years in tourism have spoilt me and now I have developed a liking to luxury hotels. Well, who doesn't? But you need enough dough for it, and of which I am seriously lacking of :P

Nonetheless, I think that Aldy Hotel has the best location in Melaka as it is situated in front of the strecth of road from the Stadhuys leading up to A'Famosa. Walking around all the historical places was easy and the first place we visited was the A'Famosa, and we actually went to the Dutch graveyard after the azan maghrib, it was creepy thinking of the dead people in their tomb but we walked on till we reached the end of the graveyard leading out to the back of Stadhuys. Then we went for some ikan bakar at perkampungan Ikan Bakar Terapung Umbai which only took 20 minutes journey and a very excellent place for all the fresh seafood by the sea. Our meal of half kilo kerang, half kilo kupang and one ikan siakap was only RM38 ringgit. Compared to the RM7 prawn each in Langkawi, i think this meal was comparatively cheap. Definitely a must if do in Melaka! My other half even suggested that we do it again if we go back to BP via Muar, hence save toll and also have a delicous meal on the way.

All in all, it was a good getaway and not such much on the anniversay celebration but the most improtant thing is we have spend it together in a meaningful way. Can't wait to plan my next holiday :) now, just to persuade for my other half to agree for the snorkelling thingy at Pulau Lang Tengah in Terengganu....