We started the new year of 2015 with a short holiday.
It was a holiday long in the making, as Afi and I always wanted to go, or rather return, to Port Dickson. Still, we made the hotel reservation only three weeks prior to the trip. The semester had just ended, and we picked the dates which were supposed to be in the first week of the new school year, sparing us both the school holiday crowd and its accompanying peak charges. As it turned out, massive floods in parts of the country extended the school holiday by another week, though. Having had a great time vacationing at the Avillion Port Dickson with her sisters some years ago, Afi looked forward to visiting the hotel again.
The drive was the farthest and longest we ever took the boys on yet, which they slept through most of the way. We drove down the North-South Expressway through Seremban and took a short tour around the city before stopping by to buy grilled chicken at Ampangan, when Omar woke up. The weather forecast predicted heavy rain all along the West Coast that day, and indeed it rained particularly heavily as we left Seremban, but thankfully the sun was cheerfully out when we reached Port Dickson.
We hit the beach, which was almost directly in front of our chalet, later that very afternoon. The sand was great, but the water not so, though we didn’t plan of getting wet anyway. There was so much garbage in the water I even saw a disposable diaper. Later we found out that the hotel stopped maintaining the beach when the district office declared the whole stretch public property. No wonder, though public or private, it wouldn’t hurt the hotel one bit to keep the small stretch clean for its guests. Again, we weren’t planning of getting into the water anyway, and the boys had a great time playing in the sand.
Our stay package included, among others, a family dinner and art activity for the children. The clear favourites, however, were the pool (and bath tub!) and the pet farm. The pool was a no-brainer; few things kids love more than splashing in the water for hours. We even brought along water guns for them to play with. Then, there was the absolutely brilliant pet farm. The hotel had a pet farm stocked with chicken, rabbits and tortoises we could hold and feed, which Omar really loved. He had a great time feeding the chicken and rabbits while the tortoises just went about their own business. On the other hand, Imran treated the animals with more caution. There were also peacocks roaming free on the hotel ground that joined the feeding session. Unlike chicken, peacocks had a nasty peck. We even saw a giant one-legged peacock swooped down, picked up a chick and swallowed it whole!
While not exactly part of the hotel, one feature we loved (or source of annoyance, depending on how you see it) about the location was seeing airliners flying low overhead on approach to KLIA. Mostly we saw Air Asia Airbus A320s but once we did see a Malaysia Airlines A380.
Overall it was another great holiday especially as far as the boys were concerned. Omar as usual wanted to stay longer. We stopped by Seremban again on the way home to visit some old family friends.
