School Holiday is here!

Its the time of the year again where the kidz will be bored to death. It's the year end school holidays again. I have no plans in mind. Annual leave pun dah negative one. 30 hari cuti satu tahun pun tak cukup kena hutang cuti tahun depan....ish...ish...ish....

This reminds me of a story.....My dad works a lot and he would drag the whole family wherever he goes if it coincides with our school breaks. Kill two birds with one stone....but I enjoyed whatever the quality time we could steal Abah away from his work. Being the Head of Special Branch for Kedah at the time, he had to visit several towns between Malaysia-Thai boarder and Southern Thai. And it happened at the right time when both my sister and I were on school break. End of that year, I was off to the States to continue with my studies.

We traveled in a small entourage of 4 Pajeros and our first stopped was Padang Besar. I knew we did not have any passport with us but after clearing out several official paper work we passed the customs and immigration. All cars were thoroughly checked, inside, outside and beneath. I think we did a little bit of shopping while dad had to attend a briefing by some police officers. After lunch we continued our journey to Songhkla. It was long drive. Upon arrival we were greeted by Uncle Aziz, who is the Malaysian police envoy in Songkla. We stayed at his official residence. Uncle Aziz also happens to be my dad's relative. He has been stationed in Songhkla for several years and married to a Thai lady. They have a very hard working domestic staffs who is always there at your service.  If you wanna have you clothes washed, just leave them outside of your room and by evening, it will be all pressed and folded on your bed. I still remember a maid called Pern whom used to take me ride on her motorbike. 

Songkla is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Since it was my first time there, I was very surprised that they have a beach. Samila Beach is well known for its white sandy beach, shady pine groves, and the statue of a mermaid that is Songkhla’s symbol.

Somehow when this picture was taken, I felt like I was in Copenhagen...hmmmm....berangan. There is no specific history of the mermaid on Samila Beach. It is just a famous landmark.

Samila Beach. During the day it is a bit quiet. Please correct me if I am wrong, there is a golf course which is walking distance from the beach. Whats a working trip for Abah without a round or two of golf with his buddies. But one instances really surprised me....everyday at 6 pm the town will play the Thai National Anthem and does not matter wherever you are, you will stand to pay respect.

During this trip dad gave me a new wrist watch, a Charles Jourdan. I still have it until today.

From Songkla we travelled to Hadyai, Yala, Baling, Golok and then to Kota Bahru. Again dad had a round of 18 holes of golf and after one week trip we were back in Kedah.