Showing posts with label holiday with children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday with children. Show all posts

Friday, December 19, 2014

Johor - Kluang UK Farm 2014

Continues from here.

We spent 2 nights in Kluang. Stayed in a nice hotel, Hotel Merdeka, which has been refurbished recently. The family room is extremely spacious and the big beds very comfortable.



Of course when in Kluang, one must go to Kluang Rail Coffee to have breakfast. There are a few Kluang Rail Coffees in Kluang, all under the same company serving similar stuff, but the original one is located right at the Kluang KTM Station.

Honestly, there's really nothing great about the food or drink, but it's something you have to do when you are in Kluang.

Even after spending a full day at Kahang Organic Rice Eco Farm (KOREF) the day before, the girls wanted to go back there for a second visit; since they like farm visits so much, we decided to bring them to UK Farm, which is on the way from Kluang to Ayear Itam toll.

There are different packages for visitors in UK Farm, adults and children pay the same amount. We took 2 x RM30 package and 2 x RM45 package. Both include guided farm tour, but for RM45, a bottle of passion fruit drink, a muffin, an ice cream are given to the guest, but the main reason we chose this package was that it also included animal feeding.

UK Farm is a much bigger farm, we had to ride on a bus to tour the farm with a guide.

1st stop, goat pen. The girls get to feed the goats dried grass provided, and also bottle feed the goat milk.


The goats were quite fussy, the girls discovered that once the (bottle) teat has been sucked or licked by one goat, the others won't touched it any more.


They had a chance to cuddle a baby goat too.


Next we were brought to see goats being milked. The goats with full udders were herded to the milking station, and while being fed, they had their head locked behind bars to prevent them from escaping while being milked. Their udders and teats are sterilised before being attached to pumps goat by goat to milk them. We could see the udders shrinking once the milk has been pumped out.


We were given some goat milk produced in UK Farm to try, hmmm, no one liked it, too errr muttony? If there's such a word.

We met a group of Anqingban (安亲班)kids on a field trip at the next stop. The girls have to wait for their turn to feed the ostriches and turkeys with the feeds that were part of the RM45 farm package.




The animals at UK Farms all look pretty healthy, they must have been well taken care of.


Together with the big group of kids on field trip, we were brought to the Jakun Village next. There's only 1 Orang Asli hired to stationed there, with a couple of houses built to look like an Orang Asli's house, not really a village per say. The Orang Asli did a blow pipe trick to the cheers of the kids, and then we were free to enter the bare "show houses".

On our way to the next stop, the mushroom farm, we saw a herd of sheep in the big grass field, like the picture that attracted most on the UK Farm's website.
We probably missed the sheep herding timing, the tour guide didn't stop for us, but continued to the mushroom farm.





The mushroom farm was the last stop of our guided tour, being close to the main entrance, we were left to explore the rest of the farm on our own.

There's a big wishing tree next to the mushroom farm with a small tree house, the girls fooled around there..


while I took a rest on the hammock.


Walking back to the entrance, we saw healthy looking horses behind horse rail.
There were more horses in the shed near by. The girls, romancing the thought of riding on a horse galloping across the meadow, asked that we let them go on one.

We paid the extra, and they went on the horses, but both claimed it was so boring since the horse they rode on was led on a reign by the horse handler.


The girls were unwilling to go home after the horse ride, so we walked around more, and found not far from the main entrance, away from the horses, was a small enclosure where chickens, guinea fowls, ducks and geese roamed freely. The girls dug out their last packs of animal feed and had a swell time feeding the birds.


Zaria found her equal here, a duck glaring at her asking for seconds.


They had fun chasing after the birds too, making them all excited/scared fluttering about.


Further in the enclosure, Zaria found this little cutie at the side of the pond.


The duckling was joined by mother duck and more ducklings when Zara tried to go near it.
However, with Zaria's agility, she did manage to catch one of the ducklings with her hands. She was quite reluctant to release it after.

UK Farm over all is a very well run farm with healthy animals, their produce here is goats milk and passion fruit juice, but both are not found in Klang Valley.


Both girls had a great time here, and Zaria prefers UK Farm over Kahang Farm (KOREF) because of the animals found here, Zara likes the latter because she enjoyed the rafting so much.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Japan 2013

We just got back from our holidays to Japan.

We bought our tickets to fly to Kansai International Airport early this year when Air Asia was doing a promotion, thinking it was a great deal. A couple of months later, MAS had their promotion, and tickets were even cheaper. A few of my neighbours actually managed to grab the tickets and theirs cost less than ours! Bummer!

Due to the busy schedule this whole year, we only started to plan for the trip 2 months before our holidays. We decided to only focus on a couple of places around Osaka and Kyoto area even though we have 12 days there, preferring to take things slowly.

This is the map of where we'd been.


Did the girls enjoy Japan? They sure did! They asked us to extend our stay, they wanted to go there again; and we have to keep reminding them Japan is an expensive holiday destination. Accommodation, transport, entrance fee are all very expensive! It's not some where we can go every other year.

Here is Zara's thought about Japan written in her journal.




Note :
1) Travelling around Japan.
We traveled around Kyoto using the bus and train. The (bus and train) maps available are quite easy to read/understand.
In Osaka, we took mainly the subway, it looks complex, but lines are clearly coloured with station numbered, see this; i.e. Y15, S16, M20 for Namba 難波駅, なんば駅 (as it can be reaced by 3 subway lines)
We rented a car for 4 days and requested for an English GPS. To get to a place, we only needed to enter the phone number. Traffic updates however were announced in Japanese.

2) People are extremely friendly and courteous in Japan, even if they don't understand you, if you asked for help, they will patiently listen to you and try their very best to help you. We seek a lot of help from people at subway stations, bus stops, convenient stores. A couple of times, we asked for directions at shops, and they whipped a copy of maps, charted out the route, and gave us the map. Amazing people!

3) Chin Nee asked how do we read menu in Japanese. Usually, they have English menu. When they don't, they will have some pictures/photos of what they served. I read Chinese, so I look for key words as well in menu, e.g. 豚 (pork), 鶏 (chicken), 魚 (fish), 焼 (grill), 揚 (deep fried), 野菜 (vege) etc etc.

And posts will be added below as and when I'd finished writing them.
Part 1 : Day 1 – Nara 奈良
Part 2 : Day 2 - Takao 高雄
Part 3 : Day 3 - Arashiyama and Sagano 嵯峨嵐山
Part 4 : Day 4 - Nijo Castle 二条城 and Nishiki Market 錦市場
Part 5 : Day 5 – Eikando 永観堂, Kiyomizu-dera 清水寺, Higashiyama District
Part 6 : Day 6 – Fushimi Inari Shrine 伏見稲荷大社, Tofukuji 東福寺, Gion 祇園
Part 7 : Day 7 and 8 – Road Trip, Exploring Takayama 高山 and Epic Lunch at Turuturutei つるつる亭
Part 8 : Day 8 and 9 – Snow at Shirakawa-go 白川郷 And Gokayama 五箇山
Part 9 : Day 10 – Gero 下呂 Friends Making and Osaka 大阪 Takoyaki Making
Part 10 : Day 11 – Osaka Castle 大阪城 Dotonbori 道頓堀 Shinsaibashi 心斎橋
Part 11 : Day 12 – Osaka Doguyasuji 千日前道具屋筋商店街 and Shinsekai 新世界
Useful links :
Japan Guide - I refer to this a lot when planning the trip
Kyoto Tourist Guide Book - I printed this out to bring along as a quick guide.
Frommer's Japan Guide

Maps:
Official Kyoto bus map - here, and here This is a must have if you took the bus in Kyoto, hotels will be able to give you a copy too.