Snow, snow, snow…

Lots of cuddles and sledding…

Big boys toys…

Family, friends, fun…

Some of the more interesting costumes I came across during the night was DJ Deadmau5. I’m not sure if anyone else knew who she was, but it was a very cool costume:

There were plenty of drinks being poured, lots of moves burning up the dance floor. Kudos to the organizers of the event for a great night! Here’s a few highlights from the night:

Don’t forget to check out the gallery and please feel free to leave your comments. If you would like the photos in high resolution please email me.

Our first destination was my home town of Perth. What can I say… not much has changed and the pace of life is definitely a few gears down. Still as beautiful as ever, other than a few renovations and couple of buildings not much has changed with the skyline. Well, other than the addition of the new Ferris wheel attempting to replicate the London Eye.

The highlight of that trip for me was meeting my little niece for the first time. Little Ella-phant has got to be the cutest thing in the world, and I’m not being biased. It was great to spend a lot of quality time with her doing everything from feeding her to playing at Gymbaroo. I love her to bits and the hugs and kisses are never ending with her.

Apart from trying to catch up with as many friends as we could we basically had a routine of meeting someone for breakfast, lunch and dinner! It was so tiring and we managed to recharge ourselves with a quick escape to the winery region about 3 hours away in Margaret River. I loved this place… the house we stayed in was at the top of the Hill overlooking the beach (which was walking distance away) and it was so good to be able to walk on a REAL beach with proper sand! For those of you who have been to Vancouver, you’ll know what I’m talking about…

4 Days of indulging in wine, chocolates and cheese and it was time to entertain the young one so during the trip we revisited The Sunflower Farm. I’m not sure if that stop was for Ella or Natashia. When it comes to all thing furry that are great and small, Tash definitely is like a kid in a candy store. If she had it her way we would’ve not “wasted time” at the wineries and we would’ve spent the whole time at the farm.

A trip down under wouldn’t be complete without having a Brethren reunion. What better way to have one by mixing hi octane, guns and alcohol and buckets of deep fried chicken… (not necessarily in that order). We took to the go kart tracks and burned rubber over a few lap. Jamie on the other hand didn’t as he picked the short straw and ended up with the slowest go kart on the track… After that we hit the shooting range and tried our hand at using a 0.9mm Glock, 45 calibre USP (that’s a monster hand gun) and finally the tame rifles. It was all fun and games until I realised that with all the flying that I was doing, I’m sure homeland security was going to have a field day with me. Other than being pulled up in general for “random security checks”, I was sure that all the gun powder residue all over my camera bag from the shooting range was going to set off every alarm. Lucky for me that wasn’t the case.

Next stop was Tash’s home town, Surabaya – Indonesia. This is the second time that I’ve been there and it many ways it is quite similar to Sri Lanka as far as the roads and how the buildings look including the food vendors on the streets. Being a glutton for punishment we were on a flight the very next morning at 6am to Bali. This was the relaxing part of our trip where we got to vege out by the pool, eat exotic seafood meals on the beach and get much needed massages. I couldn’t believe how cheap the food was there! We had seafood and about 4 other dishes and to feed 4 people we spent less than $20!

The highlight would definitely be swimming with dolphins at the Dolphin Lodge. Tash has always wanted to do this only it’s always been so expensive in the other places we’ve visited like The Bahamas. It was such an amazing experience… definitely worthwhile! No matter how hard Tash tried, she couldn’t quite fit the dolphin into our luggage and I’m sure that it wouldn’t be able to fit into the bath tub in our apartment.

Back to Surabaya and we were back on the family outing circuit. We met up with some of Tash’s old high school friends and it was good to hear all of the stories about how they used to get into trouble. For Tash it was a very nostalgic leg of the trip because certain smells, food and even sounds would bring her back to her childhood memories. With the squeak of a horn or the ring of a certain type of bell she was able to tell me what type of food that particular mobile vendor was selling while we sat in the lounge of the house she grew up in.

Finally, we finished our trip in Hong Kong. We stayed in the Kowloon district and did a bit of sightseeing but the main attraction was the cheap shopping! The markets are a great place to pick up some cheap bargains or excellent quality bootleg designer bags or accessories. As fun as it was, the whole bargaining process is so tiring! By the end of it all we were just over having to spend 10 minutes going back and forth with pricing and then having to play hard to get by walking away just to force the seller to succumb to your price. At the end of the day it didn’t make much difference to us because when you converted it you’re still not paying any sort of premium prices, so either way we ended up with a great bargain. I really like Hong Kong. The food is great, the city limits are extremely clean albeit, densely populated with a lot of apartments. The public transportation (MTR) makes getting around so easy and I was so amazed that there was no graffiti or vandalism on the trains or the stations. In contrast the new railway line in Perth which is only a couple of years old looks like its 10 years old with all the vandalism on it! I’m definitely “for” capital punishment to maintain the quality of public transportation… ok maybe capital punishment is a bit harsh. Let’s settle for harsher penalties and better policing of it all…

By the end of it all, I think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday! Is it a bad thing to be thinking about your next holiday less than a week from when you arrived back from your last holiday?

Hit the gallery for all the happy snaps…

Off to Australia, Bali and Hong Kong for a month… See you all when I get back!

What I loved about Disneyworld is that they have rides to accommodate both adults and kids. So for the more faint of heart there are the Dumbo and Giant Tea Cups rides, while for those who were after a bit more adrenaline there was the Hollywood Tower, Space Mountain, Rolling Thunder and a few other rollercoaster thrill rides. My favourite ride by far was the Toy Story Ride. It was an amazing interactive 3D shooting gallery that you ride through. At the end of the ride you score is compared to the other competitors in your team.

On a  funny note, while Cyrus and I were about to go on the Hollywood Tower ride, we were joking about how funny it would be to see our Mother in Law’s reaction if she went on it. We then though oh wait… maybe not because she’s got high blood pressure and probably would have a heart attack. She would never go on any sort of rollercoaster or thrill rides EVER. So with this ride, basically you sit in the carriage and go through a haunted tower in total darkness in your very own episode of the twilight zone and enter an elevator shaft. Once you’re in the elevator shaft the carriage free falls about 2 storey’s and then starts to rise again. After it goes up to about the 20th floor you see a window in front of you with the view of the entire theme park and you realise how high up you really are…. and then you free fall… This happens over and over from varying heights, so once you hit the bottom you might go up 8 floors before falling again. Each time you go on the ride you get a different algorithm for the free falling so its never the same and you can’t prepare yourself for how long you’re going to drop. Back to my Mother in Law… She unsuspectingly lined up by herself for the Hollywood Tower ride thinking that it was just a ghost house where people would jump out of a dark area and scare you. Little did she know that it was a free fall ride and she told me that she felt like she was about to die and was yelling “JESUS! JESUS!” the whole ride while her handbag was flying around because she didn’t secure it.  

The funny thing is, right after that ride she went into another line because she heard Aerosmith music and she thought it was them playing live. Little did she know that it was one of the most scariest roller coaster rides in the park (Route 66) and after about an hour waiting in line she approached the front and heard screaming. She turned to the person behind her and asked her what it was and after hearing that it was a rollercoaster she was outta there  like a bat out of hell… We can all laugh about it now though…

I must admit I was blown away by the quality of service during our entire stay at the resort and the parks. They’ve thought of everything that you would need at your disposal to make your holiday as pleasant as possible. The little things like “one check in only” for the cruise and resort, the baggage service where you don’t even need to carry anything because they include porter service, and also the free transportation between the parks and the resorts every 20 minutes.

All in all, I thought the parks were really awesome, the decor of the parks, the grandeur size of everything, and especially the fireworks spectacle at each park EVERY night… It truly does make it the most magical place on earth.

We spent 4 nights at the Dolphin Disney World Resort and 3 nights at the Disney Wonder cruise. My sister and I grew up with Disney cartoons and comics, we used to watch/read them all the time, although most of the classic ones weren’t really showing good examples for kids: Mickey Mouse always beats up Pluto, Minnie was a total bitch,  Daisy was a money hungry wh*re, and Donald was a grumpy old duckling… He always wanted to kill everything and anything especially Chip and Dale. And not to mention the environmentally UNfriendly story lines: whaling, fox hunting, hunting in general, war, Donald chopping up trees, and racism just to name a few.

Despite all that, I love Disney especially all the original characters. I love, love, love, them! We were very lucky and got upgraded throughout the holiday. We got a deluxe room in the resort and an outside cabin (with a window) as opposed an inside cabin. The resort was so beautiful. It had a man-made beach next to a lake with hammocks! I love hammocks, they are so comfy and Saj and I fell asleep on one… That one snooze accounted for Saj turning 3 shades darker… we have the tan lines to prove it!

We visited all the 4 theme parks, and I personally really liked the Disney Hollywood Studios. It took me by surprise; I thought I would’ve liked the Animal Kingdom the most knowing myself but I found that the sites were so far apart, it took so long to get from one place to another, therefore we lost a ot of time just by walking from one end to another. I got my face painted, so I guess that was the highlight of my day… until I sweated so much and smudged the paint.

Another cool thing that we enjoyed was having lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. It’s the coolest restaurant I’ve ever been in. The interior is so amazing, it is fully decorated with robotic animals and sound effects. You could be sitting underneath a tree where the snake will crawl down to just above your head and will hiss at you every few minutes. It’s an awesome place with good food and great service, it’s also very child friendly if you have small kids.

The Disney Wonder Cruise was also so fantastic, we were very impressed with the service that was provided. Every night we dined in different restaurants and were served by the same waiters (Vitcharon from Thailand and Raphael from Romania). Victcharon has such a good sense of humour, on our last night he asked me what would I like for dessert and I said “nothing”. A few minutes later he served me a plate with “nothing” written on it in chocolate sauce. Too cute!

The ship docked in 2 places: Nassau (Capital city of Bahamas) and Castaway Cay (a private island owned by Disney). We went on a local tour in Nassau (it’s much cheaper than purchasing  a shore excursion from the ship, so make sure you think twice before you buy). Our tour guide-Rodney took us to the Atlantis (the largest and most expensive resort in Nassau) it has the 2nd largest Aquarium in the world and also a private beach, we went to the local market, he drove us around town and residency areas (both the upper class and the ghetto side). The tour was about 5 hours for $30 per person which is CHEAP, compare to $45 for 2 hrs if you book from the ship.

Castaway Cay is a beautiful secluded island, and we spent the day basically sleeping on the beach (left with a few sunburnt spots) and we hired 2 bicycles and we pedalled around the island.

I couldn’t get enough of taking photos with Disney characters- although, who knows who was inside those Goofy/Donald/Mickey/Minnie/etc costumes, it could be some ugly sleeze mofo that put their arms around me and kissed me. Hell, it could’ve been a man in that Minnie Mouse costume! But I can say that I don’t care coz I love Goofy/Donald/Mickey/Minnie/etc too much to pass, and as long as I don’t see the true self inside… fine by me. Just like the old saying “Some things are better left unsaid seen”.

Our holiday was very memorable and we loved every bit of it, although all good things must come to an end, I would like to go back again one day, maybe we could go on the Disney Magic cruise next time. Just like what Mickey Mouse says: ”we’ll see you real soon!”

Hell Yeah!

I guess the magic button is broken… I should ask mom where it is…