To start things off, we finally managed to bring our friends across for some makan-makan (eat-eat) session. This was something that we wanted to do since we got back from summer, but the combination of work, school and just plain day to day life meant we kept pushing the plans back. This time around, we limited the attendees to our neighbors and friends from the kid’s school. The big plan is to have another one for the Malaysian ones sometime next month, when the kids have their end of the year holidays.

I was too busy to take photos of the function, but I wish I had at least taken some shots of the food that Linda had prepared. She was up from 4 in the morning cooking the stuff that had taken days to prepare. It was nice to have our friends over, though we had to re arrange the furniture and get some benches from Mestermann’s next door to fit in all the people that were there.

Due to scheduling issues, we had to have our function a day before Eid. Thus on the day of eid itself, it was pretty much a clean up day. I had gone to the mosque near our place for Eid morning prayers and got back home to help prepare breakfast for some friends who were coming over for Eid.

We went over to Jumeirah to celebrate Eid with some friends who were having a big open house function. And to finish off Eid in Dubai, we went over to Festival City (while the plan was to drop by Dubai Mall to enjoy the fountain, the row of cars lining up to enter the carpark threw us off that idea).

As luck would have had it, there was something to enjoy after all at the Festival City.

We did not really expect to see the show. We knew there was something going on as there were loads of people sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Just as we found a place to sit, the show started and we realized that the site that we had chosen was possibly the best seat in the house!

While the kids enjoyed the show, I think Linda had the best time of all. Her 'ooohs' and 'aahhhs' drew looks from people all around. It left such an impression on her that she dreamt of it the next night and woke up to tell me how wonderful it was to relive the whole experience.

We were pretty close to the action, and at times the fireworks seemed right over our heads. Unfortunately the phone camera does not do justice to the scene.

The Fireworks show lasted for a pretty long time, close to 10 minutes at least. After all that, we went over for some coffee and pastries. It was the school holidays and the twins were up a lot later then what they are used to. But, they definitely had a good time and were not as cranky as we expected them to be.

While the grown-ups were having their coffee, the kids were literally lounging around. Dina had a cute Baju Kurung, but Irsyad unfortunately has overgrown all his Baju Melayu’s.

The twins early in the morning, doing their stretching before getting ready for school. Bedtime is normally around 6 to 7 pm, thus by the time they awake at around 6:30 am, they have had a good 11 or so hours of sleep. Like anyone who is that well rested they are usually in a pretty good mood.

Every year the twin’s school holds a swimming gala, basically a swimming competition to select swimmers for the inter school tournament that will begin soon. While this is a serious issue for the older kids, for the KGer’s like the twins, its basically another day of fun and games, with the plus point of having their parents around to see what they have learnt so far.

I unfortunately was not able to attend the swimming gala, makes it two years in a row now, but thankfully Linda was kind enough to bring along the camera and share some shots with me.

Irsyad with his good friend Rheeder. He likes the full body swimsuit a lot more than just the normal swimming shorts. He says that it makes the water flow around his body faster and he can go underwater like a shark!

The boys all lining up for the swim. They did not actually swim, as I gathered, but more like water threading. Anyways, there was some sort of ball finding competition, and Irsyad won. He was so happy and kept asking Linda if she ‘saw or not’ that he was No. 1. And while Irsyad’s class were limbering up in the pool, the girls were gossiping at the back!

Dina with Zara and Kylie in the water with the rest of their class. As can be seen, they were a lot more relaxed then the previous class. We are in fact having issues with Dina with regards to her swimming. She conveniently ‘forgets’ to bring her swim suit to school so that she can miss her class. When asked, she says that its too much work to change from her uniform to the swim suit. Sigh...

The swimming gala was a half day event. Thus they were done pretty fast and instead of going back to class with all the energy and excitement, the teachers were more than happy to have the parents take them back. Linda felt that the twins deserved a treat and they dropped by the nearest food court for a McDonalds fix.

After the swimming gala, the next big thing on the school calendar was the International Day. Representative of the multitudes of nationalities that we have here in Dubai, the kids school is pretty much a mini United Nations. As such, a day is set out every year to showcase the various nationalities. Last year, Linda was the Asian manager and we had a table set up in the gym for each nation. This year, the school have scaled it down to only a march past, with the children encouraged to wear their national costumes to show the different color of their cultures.

Parents were invited to attend as well, and each family was encouraged to bring in food representative of the their nation to be shared with the rest. Linda made some ‘cekodok pisang’ or banana fritters as she called them. Unfortunately, the Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, one of the seven states that makes up the UAE passed away a couple of days before and the nation was in a seven day mourning. As a sign of respect, the national day march past was cancelled, but the the costumes and food portion of the celebration was still on.

A posed shot while waiting for the bus. Dina is doing her Ultraman imitation, while Irsyad is trying to look like a good boy!

I got the kids some chalk to play with some time back. Somehow, kids like to leave marks on things, and to let out their artistic instincts, we allowed the kids to use the driveway as a huge canvas. This was Dina’s rendition of her and me under the sun, before setting off for a drive.

Baby Jahan came over on his morning walk (or I should say, morning push!). A shot of 2 handsome boys eh? One who is teething (hence the finger which is constantly in the month), while the other has got a loose teeth that will drop any day now.

Not quite Wisteria Lane, but this is pretty much the scene on N street every morning. Lea and Hannah looked very nice in their German girl outfit. Kate was busy till the last minute braiding Hannah’s hair.

And the end result, a scene right out of Heidi? Hannah had some chocolate in her hands for the German food that they were taking to school.

Once the school bus passes, the street calms down again. Only the young ones are left, till its their turn to board the bus in a couple of years. Jahan still has not decided how he feels about me. More than 6 feet away, he finds me amusing and interesting, but anything closer than that, he is pretty sure that he does not want my company. This shot is possibly at exactly 6 feet, as he looks in the middle of both emotions!

Sigh…While the rest of the crew breeze through the immigration check point, I would have to go to a small holding room where they hold suspected passengers with dodgy tax records, criminal files and expired visa. Our details are then taken and sent to the FBI database somewhere in Washington for clearance before we are allowed in, or otherwise.

Apparently, there is someone with the same name who has done something very naughty, and they have to make sure that I am not the same guy. You would have thought that with the fingerprints, photographs and every other details that they have of me, they would have figured out that I am not the person that they are looking for, but hey, the American agents are the most ‘friendly’ ones around and something that looks very obvious is apparently not.

But, even after all the trouble, I keep wanting to go to NYC. Why? Well its hard to explain. Of all the layovers that we go to, I enjoy the 27 hours that we get in NY. Its a vibrant city, with lots of things to do and being open 24 hours is a big plus for us who are jet lagged. While it gets pretty cold during winter, the other seasons can be very nice. I was lucky this time around as even though it was supposed to be rainy, it turned out to be a very nice sunny day!

Linda often has a shopping list for me when I am in NY, so the time that I have is made up of walking (or taking the subway) from one item on the shopping list to the other!

The view from my room. We stay smack in the middle of Manhattan Island, on the 53rd Street on the 6th Avenue, a stone\'s throw away from the main shopping areas of 5th and Madison Avenue. Lots of apartments all around with quint coffeeshops, very much along the vein of the TV Show \'Friends\

I have seen this fountain on TV so many times, that the first time that I saw it 'live' it was a very de ja vue moment! Its just a block down from the hotel and there are ample places to sit and enjoy a sandwich or coffee nearby.

Surprisingly, it’s not that difficult to get Halal food in NYC. Nearly every other street vendor sells halal rice with chicken, lamb or beef. They are mostly middle eastern, thus the food has an arabic slant to it. The vendor near the hotel has a sign that proudly proclaims that their food has been recognized as “the best halal food in New York” by some local magazine. Looking at the line of office workers waiting patiently for their lamb kofta fix in front of the vendor during lunch time makes me think that there is some truth in that best food claim.

But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, it was the chicken/lamb combo briyani. I wished that I had taken some photos of my lunch, because while the look might not have been great, it was really good. Some nicely kebabed lamb and grilled chicken, with fluffy yellow rice, with a side salad thrown in.

I took my lunch to this spot near Central Park. It was a nice day out, with the autumn temperature hovering in the low 20's. Central Park is a venue where lots of Hollywood movies have been shot, so lots of the places looked really familiar. Its amazing to have such a large park in the middle of city, but I guess thats one of the attraction of New York.

And when I turn around, this is the sight that I see, not forgetting the smell! The Horse ride carriage is a standard New York attraction stationed next to Central Park.

And a little distance away from Central Park is this, the Apple flagship store near 5th Avenue. I had attended a workshop there this time around, something to do with iWeb. The way the place was packed, you would have thought that they are giving away apple computers for free!

And of course the main landmark for NYC is Times Square! The place is pretty near the hotel, so I have passed by it many times, and all times, it has been packed! One thing about NYC, like many other large cities of the world, is the myriad of people that you will find on the street. The languages you will hear is just as varied, chinese, indian, arabic etc!

While the stay was short and sweet, I was pretty eager to get back home! The flight back took close to 13 hours and half way through we found out that Dubai was fogging up. Its pretty normal weather phenomenon for the transition between summer and winter and vice versa. The good news is that means the weather will come down further, but the bad news for us would be trying to get the flight back to Dubai!

This was a shot I took about 20 miles away from the airport. Look closely and the Burj tower can be see sticking out of the murky fog.

The same shot, but much closer in, around 5 miles from the airport. The towers around Syeikh Zahid Road can now be seen a lot clearer. But of course the Burj towers above it all.

31*C at 9 in the morning. A sure sign of winter to come!

The sorry state of the garden was a concern, as the weather condition becomes more welcoming, we do foresee ourselves spending more time outside. We had dropped by the plant souk the previous day to get some flowers and fruit trees, and used the relatively pleasant conditions to do some serious gardening. The kids, who were up since 6:30 am, were eager to help, and thus the family project for friday began.

Linda's behind the car while Icad tries to convince her that he should be doing the spraying, without any luck fortunately! Linda got pretty upset that the car was dusty all over again after I got back from friday prayers, but heck, we live in the desert, what do you expect?

Dina helped me trim the shrubs, and very soon started to sweat! It was hard work for her, but she was very industrious today.

Paul and Kate dropped by, while we were gardening, and the little one decided that he needed to inspect the newly planted flower bed. By his looks, I think we forgot to file in some approval papers or something.

Thats the mango and lemon tree, waiting for the gardener to plant them. The nursery guy said that while the mango tree will take perhaps 2 years to fruit, the tree would grow large enough to give lots of shade. We were also interested in a banana tree, but when the guy said it will take 5 years to fruit, we decided no thanks! Heck, we would probably not be here 5 years from now!

After the gardening morning, the kids and the mum decided that for lunch they wanted to have some maandi rice. Somehow, of all the food that we have had here in Dubai, the maandi rice seems to have a strong attraction, with the kids eating more than their normal meal share. So after I got back from prayers with Irsyad, we got ready to leave.

Just as we were about to enter the car, we saw some strange looking birds in the garden. For a moment there, I thought that it was baby turkeys, but then realized that they were even odder looking than that. Kate was outside as well, and she confirmed that they were Guinea chicken belonging to our front neighbors. Apparently these chicken will eat all the worms, insects and spiders from our garden, with the downside that they will also poo a lot! The kids were really excited. They asked if the chickens will taste good and if they can have more than one drumstick since they were really small.

I was actually surprised to see the amount of insects, spiders and other creepy crawlies in the garden. When we moved in, the place was very much a desolate desert. Now, its teeming with life, even guinea chickens!

The friday traffic was relatively light heading to center of town. We got to the maandi restaurant called At Tawasol easily enough, with the only problem of finding a car park. The food is all pre-cooked, thus waiting time was next to nothing. Which was a real blessing, as even after having a light sandwich to tide them over, the kids were already clamoring us with ” I want to eat, feed me, I am hungry!” statements!

Though the kids were eager to eat, Linda is also a big fan of maandi rice. Her fingers were already darting to the plate even before I could finish taking the photo. We had the lamb and grilled chicken, all eaten in one plate. Some arabic salad and the other condiments completed the meal. Delicious!

After having our fill, and getting some take out for dinner we headed home. En route we passed by the Dubai wet market near the Shindaga tunnel, a place which we have always wanted to go, but could either a) not find the entrance to the place when we went out looking for it b) never had the time to go in when we drove by the entrance by chance. This time, the stars aligned and we decided that we should pop in and see how the largest wet market Dubai looks (and smells) like.

I must say, we were not disappointed. While it was not very large, it certainly had a lot of colors and was vibrant with activity, even at 6 in the evening. There was a fruit and vegetable sections, with a very large area marked specially for sea food. There was a loading/docking area outside with trucks unloading fresh and frozen fish to be brought in and sold at the individual stands.

Veggies section. Linda claims that the prices are not that much better than what we can get at the hypermarkets. I guess with the purchasing power of the large corporations, they can commandeer a price advantage that these small business owners just cannot match.

We saw these sharks being brought out from an ice truck. Icad had a close look as this was the first time he was seeing them so close. There were some reef and hammerhead sharks as well.

The picture is off poor quality as I was using the mobile in a low light condition, but them theres a row of dead sharks by the roadside. Something you don't see everyday, no sir!

It ended being a long day for the twins, and they were out like lightning after their dinner and bedtime story. In fact they were asleep within minutes! We promised them a more relaxed day tomorrow, perhaps a movie or two…that brought smiles to their faces.

A lot of people comment that coming from Malaysia, we should be able to trudge through the humidity, and to a certain extent the heat. But I somehow don’t find truth in that statement. No matter how humid or hot things get back home, Dubai still tops them all.

But the humidity is also a good sign, one of the approaching winter months. And after the oppressive heat of the last few months, this coming edition is very much anticipated!

The kids are getting their bikes out, with Irsyad struggling hard to follow my instructions to minimize the use of his training wheels. Dina, unfortunately still finds the bigger bikes too big, while at the same time, finding the smaller ones too small! In between sizes is my little one I guess. But the objective is for them to catch up with the rest of the neighborhood kids and discard their training wheels as soon as possible.

The bikes parked for the night. The pictures not clear, but I had raised Icad's training wheels as high as possible so that he can get used to riding without their support. Has not worked as planned yet.

The end of summer, or the impending end would also mean time to tend to the garden. It has not been a good summer in that aspect. Sometime during the 7 weeks that I was away with the family back in KL, the water pump pressure regulator died. That basically meant that while there was water for the sprinklers to run, the pressure was insufficient to water the whole garden sufficiently. We know have spotches of dark areas where the grass has died due to lack of water. Shafieq, our gardener’s advice was a simple but expensive, “plant new grass sir”. When I told him I would not consider his suggestion due to not wanting to throw more money down that route, he helpfully suggested “never mind sir, I plant grass now, you pay me later!”

I gently turned down his offer to play a bankers role and decided to stick it out and see how things transform in the next few weeks. I am hoping that the patches of green would grow much better with the cooling temperature and negate the need to do anything financially drastic!

The Jasmine trees at the edge of the garden had a growth spurt with the extra sunlight during summer, but alas, the lack of water, thanks to a defective pump regulator meant there was insufficient pressure for the sprinklers to water the grass.

Linda finally managed, after 18 months of moving to the house, to get her daun padan and daun kari from Guy/Casey! We got the gardener to plant it this evening, right next to her brinjal, chili and mint plants. Lets hope that we will be as lucky as we were with the tomatos this time as well!

Yap, thats serai on the right!

Icad then took over the chant and we had the shower stall reverberating with Ms Padme’s official title. I inquired, in between the shampoos(Baby Johnson for Icad and Pantene Pro V for Dina), why are we doing this?

Dina answered “Amidala is Princess Leia’s mother Abah!”, as if that will explain everything.

I am stumped, not just the fact that the original Star Wars was out in 1977, but the first installment of the series where the good queen made her entrance was in 1999, waaay before she was a tinkling in either Linda or my eyes!

So what is a father to do? What else but to head towards the internet and download the whole series of Star Wars to enjoy with his fast growing kids.

Caught me blindsided actually. I figured Barbie the Snow (Mermaid, Fairy, Dance etc) princess had a few more good years to it. Sigh…

Big watches, yes, I love big watches. But considering the size of my not too manly wrists, it does not take much to make a watch big for me. I had started this obsession from school days and the first one to sate my desire was the Casio Data Bank 100. I managed to buy it only after I started working and I think it cost something like RM200. I had the capability of storing my rosters, calculator function and world time function as well.

There is no pictures of the watch on the web, the model is too old I guess, but it was pretty similar to this.

This is the metal strap, but I had the one with the black resin strap which was replaced a couple of times.

Of course, as a brand new Second Officer, all the other guys were looking at Tag Heuer’s and such, a lust item which was introduced to me while we were doing our training in Scotland. The model I wanted was RM 2400 or so, and that equated to about a month of our salary at that point.So the first month I got my salary, with the 2G plus in hand, I went over to the watch shop, looked at the watch model in hand…and turned back out. I was thinking of the work that I put in to earn that money, and decided that I did not want to spend it on something that I wear on my wrist.

Big mistake! Tag’s are like so expensive these days!

So, fast forward all these years, and while we out and about yesterday, saw another Casio that caught my fancy…

Probably paid a bit too much for it, but definitely not anywhere close to my lust item below…

The Rolex Explorer II, understated elegance.

Other stuff which is in my radar at the moment…

Yes, its a bag. But its an expensive little product that is guaranteed to last a lifetime.

What makes this bag stand out, is the 'open wallet' design that allows it to pass through airport security without having to take out the laptop. This will save some seconds, and avoid the hassle associated with this process. Perhaps only 30 seconds, but enough to accord it the aptly named 'Checkpoint Flyer'.

While I have always been a PC user, the lure of switching across to the Apple has been there for a long long time. Now that Apple OS is around 10% of the world OS, perhaps its no longer in the fringes any more, thus safe for me to make the jump. A new line of MacBook Pros have been released last month, and boy, the unibody aluminium design sure looks good even after all these years.

Not much external change since the last update, not on the outside, but internally, its got some new innards.

For me, a phone is more than just a phone. Its a game machine, its a scheduler, its a note taker, a reminder, calculator etc etc. Thus, I have always been a user of smartphones. The Nokia E series has been my object of choice, but one of the best phones I have ever had is the Nokia 6210 and the Nokia 6230. Great battery life, slim and small, and remarkable reception. The ability to tether to my laptop also was a major plus. I was an early adopter of using mobile technology for internet surfing while travelling to and from work in the airport express train.

The model I had was all silver. Worked great all the way, and was my reserve model until it was lost.

My first color phone, and it was one of the front runner of the Symbian S40 mobile operating system.

Forward to today, and my trusty little Nokia E71 (a birthday gift from the DW) is still working to perfectly for me to want something more. But, that does not mean I can’t lust after this sexy little number below.

Just look at it...Android OS, 8 Mb camera, large screen...pictures courtesy of engadget.

Yes, the stuff I fancy are mainly electronics, but what to do, thats the way I am wired. But yes, cars do interest me, just not the Super Car types. I guess I am more practical when it comes to these sort of things. I much rather have the pleasure of driving something thats comfortable, responsive, large and yet with the power to accelerate out of trouble if required.

The current 7 model is just right to my eyes, real comfort, understated elegance (that word again!) and lots of power under the bonnet.

If I wait a couple more years, this should be in the driveway...of course not a brand new one, but this older model la.

Its not just BMW cars that strike my fancy. They are also my choice when it comes to 2 wheelers.

And the last lust item for this blog edition goes to an item that I have been searching for at the streets of Manhattan the last month. Its been all sold out, and looks like demand will continue to outstrip supply for awhile yet. There are units for sale in eBay and other unauthorised retailers, they tagged a premium that makes no sense. So, rather than get ripped off, I will wait.

The silver lining is, perhaps by the time I get to get it, they will have tacked on the new OS by then.

The object of my desire...

The advent of private schooling back in Malaysia was already there even before we left. In fact, it was there even when I was in school around 30 years back. The rich kids, and the ones whose parents had visions of early overseas education, had sent their kids to private schools. The difference was, the public schools were considered relatively good and the cost of private education did not co-relate to the benefits gained. Those of us who had studied in government schools could still compete with the former when we were brought together at the tertiary level.

But, as usual, things change, and as the socio-economic factors improve, more families are looking at providing better learning experience for their children. Also, as the role of teachers takes on more importance, the need to attract the best and the brightest to that hollowed profession became a real challenge for the policy makers. Opting out for private education became a more reasonable choice for those looking for what they perceived as a need for quality.

Perhaps, now that the world is flatter, there is more reason to ensure that the child is exposed to the best education that they can, oft translates to, the best that they can afford!

We count oursleves lucky in that the company pays a large portion of the school fees here for the kids. Considering the prices that the schools charge, it would have been prohibitively expensive otherwise. The range of fees of schools in Dubai definitely varies, from a low of free education, to a high of approximately 80,000dhs a year for a primary school. Even so, the excess above the company education assistance, plus the extras (ballet, football, swimming lessons) plus the transport charges, means we need to set aside approximately 2000dhs for the twins per month.

But, even if we were still in Malaysia, I do believe that we would have looked at the private school there for the twins, possibly paying the same amount out of pocket as what we are doing at the moment here. Speaking to a friend who was here a few weeks back, the facilities with regards to sports fields, swimming pools and curriculum appears to be similar.

We have opted for an IB curriculum, as we feel that gives us the most flexibility with the choices of education that we can continue with, taking into account our expatriate life. Thus, if we leave Dubai for greener pastures in the future, they will be able to assimilate easily to whatever new place that we land up in.

The International Baccalaureate system has a holistic view on education, with a lot of parental involvement. Thus my neighbour with her 9 year daughter has to get involved with the planning and creation of a water, heat and crash proof structure for their design class, whilst we have to dress up the kids in costumes for whatever project that the faculty has devised for the day.

Getting ready for school, with a pink fairy dress and army fatigues.

For today, the kids have been asked to come to school dressed up as fairies or princess for the girls, while the boys are to dress as soldiers. They have also been asked to bring appropriate toys with their costumes. I wonder what the lesson will be like…

Waiting for the school bus.

Their bags were heavy, with a toy and book relating to the topic of the day, as well as their swimming stuff in the blue bag...and its just KG1.

But, i suppose that the adage that time flies when you’re having fun is true. The last months have been a good time with lots of visitors dropping by to our little hole in the desert. So much so that time required to update the blog became a scarce commodity.

We had Linda’s youngest sis over for a nice long 3 weeks break between jobs. After looking at our faces day in and day out, the twins enjoyed the company of their aunt very much.

We made the best use of the time I was around to visit as many of the places that we could. The weather was cooling down and a trip to the zoo was something that the kids and Ellie wanted. I must say, the White Lions were impressive.

Ariefah and Haniz also spent a week in Dubai. While they were here, we took the longest trip outside of Dubai, into the neighbouring country of Oman to the north. If you look at the Middle East in the map, a close scrutiny will show that the Sultanate of Oman is made of 2 parts, with the UAE knifing it apart. It was to the North part of the country that we went across, specifically up to the town of Musandam. It is also known as the Norway of the middle east due to fjords that clefts the countryside, resulting in a wonderful coastal drive up.

We rented a boat for a few hours, and since all the small ones were already out on the week day, we ended up with a huge double decker boat with 3 deckhands to accompany our 7 family members up the bays and inlets of northern Oman in search of the dolphins!

Shot some pretty amazing movies of the Dolphins swimming after the boat, but unfortunately the process of downloading the files will take forever! Suffice to say, the trip was well worth the dolphin sighting and its something that we look forward to doing again.

Juggling an increased flying roster (will try and cover this point in a future post), whilst making the best of the wonderful winter weather was in itself a feat! But, looking back, ya…we had fun, and looking forward to more of the same the coming winter. But, that is still months away, and in between, we have now to face the summer months of Dubai! While the day time temperature hovers around the mid-30′s (which some of might say is bearable), the bright sunlight makes it glaringly obvious that a summer in the desert is a challenge!

The boat setting was very 'Arabesque'. It had the majlis sort of setting with the cushions all around, a small clean toilet that allows u to see the 'poo' pop into the ocean below, and wash basins to clean the hands after meals. We brought along some food from home, Linda's nasi lemak to eat while we enjoyed the sea breeze as we set out from the small little docking port.

Instead of hotel rooms, we rented a villa with separate rooms with a nice garden in the middle. Lots of space for the kids to run around and play with their cousins.

After the grass that we have at our place in Dubai, the greenary at the villa resort was a breath of fresh air. Also, the days that we were there, it rained quite a bit and it was nice to see water falling out of the sky after a long while of dryness

The lobby, aka the living room.

About the only other place that we went to instead of the shopping areas was the volcanic mountain nearby. It was still smoking and reeked of sulphuric acid. Unfortunately, it rained really heavily a few minutes after we got there and we had to wait it out at the reception center.

The kids had another shot at their pony riding activity.

We dropped by lunch at this really cool place near the mountains. It was built all around a hill trail, with small huts where patrons can have their meals and a waterfall going through it. The scenary was amazing, the food really good and definately a place worth a second visit in the future.

As much as I would like to show more pictures, it is unfortunately more of the same as this...shopping trips all over Bandung! While the ladies were busy shopping, the kids were having a great time running around.