Heidi @ 14 months

Baby Heidi (no longer a baby actually!) is now 14 months, coming to 15 months. She is a cheerful, happy go lucky baby and all too cute when she flashes her signature grin! Amazingly enough, she has 16 teeth (8 upper and 8 lower) which is way more advanced than Hannah at 14 months. So it's no longer a toothless grin, and she can eat most things, munching away with all those teeth.

Vocabulary and speaking wise, she is still slower than Hannah, but what she cannot say with her mouth, she points with her finger! And she understands everything we say to her, do this, take this etc. She can also make signs for "no" - either shaking her head or wagging her index finger (she knows the difference by the way, shaking her head for something she doesn't want and wagging her finger for something she knows she's not supposed to do) and "shhh" when she's supposed to be quiet, besides the usual "bye bye" and "flying kiss" which she could do much earlier. She can also imitate very well - if I stick out my tongue she will do the same, if i do the sign for "stinky", she will do the same ;) If I say "cold" she will put both her hands on her cheeks. I did that for her one day when she was standing in front of the open refridgerator and she remembered that her hands were cold when she put them on her cheeks. She can also do the sign for "no more" when she has finished her food. Speaking of food, she can now (finally!) hold her own milk bottle. She could actually do it much earlier but she was probably just lazy too laid-back to do so ;) The words that she can say now are "ah-mah", "ah-gong", "deh-deh" (for daddy), "ko-ko", "jie-jie" "mum-mum" "nen-nen".

She can also walk quite steadily now since about 13 months so no more crawling for her. She still falls on her bottom quite a bit, but she picks herself up quickly with no fuss, unless she realises someone is watching her and then she will make her "pitiful" face ;) With all the walking around, she has lost quite a bit of her baby fat and chubby cheeks.

Don't grow up too quickly Heidi - Mummy misses her little baby!

Cameron Highlands trip

During the school holidays, Hubby's family wanted to go for a short vacation and take the kids somewhere, so they decided on Cameron Highlands. It had been ages since Hubby or I were last there, and neither Hannah nor Heidi had been there before, so we decided to go along.

It wasn't that cold when we arrived and the sun was shining, but it was quite chilly when the wind blew. We took a picture in front of our serviced apartment. We rented two apartments (total of 6 rooms) as we had 15 adults and 7 kids with us.

After putting down our stuff, it was time to go out and explore. It was in fact a good thing that our first day there was a Friday, because the jam on Saturday and Sunday was really horrendous. A tip - don't visit Camerons during the weekends and on school holidays. It's possible to get stuck for several hours for a mere 2km road in the jam, in view that there is only one road going up and down to Brinchang from Tanah Rata and vice versa.

So anyway, our first stop was this place that sold vegetables and flowers and little souvenirs. Heidi had her first (and very small) taste of a strawberry ice - very yummy!

Later on, we visited a bee farm and Hannah had a pure honey stick. It was super sweet, and even with her sweet tongue, she couldn't finish the whole thing.

The bee farm was also a strawberry farm, however it was not the strawberry season so many of the strawberries were not yet ripe.

After that, we went to the Cameron Valley Bharat tea plantation to have tea and cakes. The view was really spectacular.

Heidi was more interested in her cake though :p

Later on, we took a walk down to the plantation to take some nice pictures.

Heidi loved running around in the open spaces.

After a day of activity, we headed back to the apartment for a delicious steamboat dinner. We especially liked the sweetcorn bought earlier at the vegetable shop, it was really really sweet and juicy.

Everyone was tired after a long day, so we knocked off quite early for the night. It was quite cold at night so there was no need for any fan or air-con at all.

The next day, we couldn't go to many places as the traffic was very bad so we decided to go and have a look at the Boh tea plantation. The road driving up to the place was very windy but the view from up there was worth it. Compared to Bharat where we had to hike down the plantation, in Boh we had to hike up. I didn't go all the way up so I stayed at the tea house with Heidi, but Hannah and her Daddy and some of her cousins braved the hike.

Little girl managed to climb all the way to the top and I love these pictures of her with her Daddy with the view of the plantation in the background.

There were also some silly pictures with her cousins, like this.

Since there was not much else to do after that, the kids had to amuse themselves at the apartment. We took lots of pictures of the kids smiling and doing silly things ;)

We headed for the night market later that night, but no pictures taken as we walked 1 km to the market and 1 km back again to the car, because of, yes you guessed it, the jam! Hannah walked all the way with us and she beamed with pride when everyone said what a clever girl she was for walking the whole way.

The next day, it was time to go home. We couldn't use the way we came up the hill because of the traffic, so we used the old Tapah road. On the way, we passed a waterfall which was really popular with tourists. So we stopped to have a look.

We were not prepared with towels and extra clothes, or else the kids would have loved to go in. The water was really cold, though.

But in the end we let Hannah dip her legs in the water and she really enjoyed it.

Final family picture with the waterfall in the background before saying goodbye and heading home to Penang:

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This year, our firm lawyers' retreat was held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where we have an office. It was over the long Wesak Day weekend, but Senior Associates departed a day earlier for additional training sessions held for us. I did look forward to the trip, as this would be my first time in HCMC, but also missed my hubby and girls because this would be the first time that I left all of them behind since Heidi was born.

So anyway, as we had to transit in KLIA and take a connecting flight to HCMC, we were all up in the wee hours of the morning (4.30 am to be exact) as our flight from Penang Airport to KLIA was at 7 am.

We arrived at HCMC at around 10 am local time and there was a bus chartered to take us from the airport to our hotel. The firm put us up at Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers, not as fancy as the Four Seasons in Bangkok but still pretty nice. The location of the hotel was really good, as it was right in the middle of town, and just down the road within walking distance was the Saigon Opera House, Notre Dame Cathedral, Central Post Office, not to mention a fancy shopping mall (Vincom Center) and all designer shops lining the streets.

After checking in, we took a stroll down the road to look for some lunch and took some pictures along the way. The Saigon Opera House was just nearby and we even saw some of the performers in costume walking around outside.

HCMC is surprisingly advanced, and the architecture of many of their buildings are really nice, as you can see from the background.

LV!

We had to head back to our hotel for training after that.

After the training, we got ready for dinner hosted by our Vietnamese colleagues at this restaurant called Hoa Tuc. All the food was very good, and quite authentic Vietnamese. 

One dish in particular was quite interesting for me. It was a vegetable flower, stir fry with garlic. In Vietnam, it's called "thien ly".

Later on, we headed up to our hotel bar and restaurant on the 23rd floor to get a drink and to catch the view. I was pretty full so I didn't have anything, but the guys tried the local beer - Saigon beer. The view was pretty nice too, and we could get a glimpse of where our HCMC office was located - the Bitexco Financial Tower (the tall one lighted up).

The whole of Friday was packed with training, but our other colleagues arrived about lunch time, so we all had lunch together at this French restaurant near our hotel. The food was really good, but we learned a lesson that we should always ask them to split the bills, otherwise calculating the figures would be a real headache. (RM1 is equivalent to about 6,500 Vietnam Dong)

In the evening, we had our Gala Dinner, where there were prizes for the best performances (every branch and regional office) had to do a performance. In the end, the prizes were won by the Myanmar/Singapore combined performance in first place, KL office in second place and HCMC in third place. The KL performance was simply hilarious and they deserved their USD1,000 win. First place won USD1,500 and third place won USD500.

The theme of our dinner was "Starry, starry night", so everyone was mostly dressed in black.

The hotel also decorated the ballroom according to the theme, and it was so pretty.

On the far right and far left are two of our Vietnamese colleagues who were such wonderful hosts.

There was no "after party" for us as we were just too exhausted, so we slept until the next morning. Also, we wanted to get up early and enjoy breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast spread was very good, and they had really excellent pho. Most of us ate it every morning. I'm not much of a beef eater, but this was really too good to pass up.

After breakfast, it was time for the "Amazing Race"! We had heard that the first prize would be USD2000 so it was good incentive for us to participate. The teams were mixed up from different offices so it was a good chance for us to get to know one another. As part of our strategy, we had hired a driver to take us from place to place (apparently it only cost RM80) and we were later glad that we did, hearing some other teams' horror stories on taxi drivers.

What I liked best about the race, however, was that since we had so little time for sightseeing, in the 2 hours of the race, we covered almost all the sightseeing spots in HCMC. First stop for us was the Saigon River, and then we needed to take a photo with a "cyclo" (some sort of trishaw) in front of Ben Tanh market.

Along the way, I also managed to snap pictures of the Notre Dame Cathedral, Central Post Office, War Remnants Museum, Reunification Palace, and HCMC City Hall. Pictures below are in order as listed.

After a two hour exhilirating race, we made it back to the hotel in good time and waited for the other teams to arrive. When they announced the results, we won first place! It was great team work and we had an excellent team leader. We divided the prize money among us, and we had a special surprise for our driver who was still waiting downstairs for us. We gave him the good news and he was really genuinely happy for us, and then our team leader presented him with USD100. I think he must have been pretty shocked as in Vietnam, that may well have been more than his monthly salary. He had proved a tremendous help however, as he had even given us answers to the questions and also called up his friends to ask for the answers. Others even joked that he was the 10th member of our team, so we felt that he indeed deserved to share our prize with us.

Finally, after all the training and activities, we had the whole afternoon to ourselves without any programme lined up. We had lunch at a little Italian place near our hotel, Ciao Bella and after all that running around, we were super hungry. It cost 210,000 Dong for a 3 course meal (around USD10) which was really worth the money.

The firm had organised a tour to Cu Chi Tunnels but we were glad we didn't go (I tend to be claustrophobic) so that we could have more free time. We walked around, had a good rest and headed out for dinner to a little Japanese restaurant. So in total we had sampled Vietnamese, French, Italian and Japanese cuisine in HCMC and all of them were really good!

The next morning, after breakfast, it was time to head home. I had chosen to take the early flight so I could be home in time to celebrate Hannah's birthday with her as it was her actual birthday.

Bye bye HCMC, but I hope to be back sometime in the future! :)