Star Cruise - Our 1st Family Holiday

It has been a long wait... a 2 year hiatus before holiday or vacation showed up in our calendar. We were naturally thrilled and equally filled with anxiety on our 1st family vacation. To ensure that we won't stress ourselves too much, my mum and helper came along with us for this 3D2N cruise to Port Klang.

6 November 2013  - Day 1

The 6 of us got into 2 cabs and headed to Harbourfront Cruise Centre. We were actually quite shocked  as there were many many many Indian tourists. It was really confusing and chaotic as to where we should head to after checking in our luggages. Thankfully, the helpful staff at the Cruise Centre ushered us right to the getaway after we got our cabin passenger card. But that was after another round of confusion on our helper's clearance at the immigration.

waiting for daddy to
 return with our cabin cards

wait ah wait...

All was forgotten when we spotted the cruise liner we were going to spend our next 3 days on.

Star Virgo

The boys had plenty to awe at the cruise liner. The grand lobby, the glass elevators... excitement filled the air.

heading to our cabin

long passage way

In our excitement, we mis-read our cabin number and went to the wrong door. It was quite embarrassing for us. Finally we got to our balcony cabin and the first thing was to let the boys had their milk.

boys still need their milk

When they were done, we were ready to explore the cruise liner.

at the deck

As it was quite near to dinner time, we only managed to have our welcome drink at the lobby and then we walked out to the deck and found ourselves at the open deck at the far end of the ship.

kid's pool

There we found the kid's pool which we planned to let the boys had a dip in the pool the next morning. We then made our way to have our dinner.

Dinner was at the Pavillion, a chinese restaurant. At restaurants covered in the package, menu for the day was fixed. We just needed to get a table and food would be served.

my little "bear"  boy

Matt attracted quite a fair bit of attraction from the crew with his hair-raising style. That gave us a little leeway in having extra bowls or a pot of hot water or a special steamed fish for Matt to go with his porridge.

Matt started to fuss after 8pm as that was the usual time we prepared him for bedtime. So we returned to our room, had the boys bathed and changed into their pyjamas. Matt had his last milk feed and fell asleep before 9pm. Darren stayed back to look after Matt while I brought Jon out to explore.

taking a stroll

enjoying the night breeze at the pool side

Jon was full of energy and he walked and walked until almost 10pm before he was willing to return to cabin and sleep.


7 November 2013 - Day 2


We got up as usual around 7.30am not because we wanted to, but Matt was up and he was raring to go.  We had breakfast again at the chinese restaurant and then went to the pool for a quick dip. It was really a quick dip that lasted less than 15 minutes as there was a sudden gush of ashes falling into pool which the life guard stopped all activities at the pool.

For Matt, his timing worked the same during holiday as well. He needed his morning nap and while he napped, we prepared for the land tour later at Kuala Lumpur. We chose shopping galore at Sungei Wang and paid SGD 38 for each adult fare.


From Port Klang to KL needed an hour coach ride and we got quite a nice guide, Billy who gave us some helpful hints on where to eat and where to shop.

Billy doing his show

It was around 12pm when we were in transit to KL and Jon had his little nap during the ride.

napping on the way

Since Matt had napped, he was all fresh and full of energy. Babbling non stop in the coach.

fresh and awake

We had a quick lunch at Famosa, a restaurant specialize in Taiwan Food in Sungei Wang itself. Sungei Wang is rather a big mall and we were actually quite lost trying to find food. Once we had our food, we crossed over to Lot 10 which we spent a leisure 2 hours, shopping and resting at Coffee Bean.


Then it was Matt's turn to nap while Jon was running all over the place. I guess he didn't had enough sleep and it made him cranky towards the end. He threw such a big tantrum, screaming and refusing to be carried when we had to make our way back to the coach. It took quite some time for him to get distracted and calm down.

chinatown - passing by

We were caught in a jam on our way back and it made the 2 boys extremely bored. I was quite worried that other tourists would be annoyed by the 2 boys' constant babbling, frequent squeaks of delight and excitement, the occasional crying or whining.

at Port Klang

It was at Glenn Cruise Centre that we bought some souvenirs for the helper so that she could show her family where she had been when she returns home. Once we got back to the ship, we headed to our cabin and freshened up.

Dinner was at the Mediterranean Terrace for buffet which was extremely disappointing. Remember the large groups of Indian tourists. It was actually a special promotion for them to celebrate Deepavali. Hence, we found buffet line catered for them mostly. Plus the boys had an extremely tired day, both were cranky and we found ourselves exiting dinner place pretty quickly.

That night, I fell asleep with the 2 boys which the next day, I found out that Darren took the opportunity to explore the cruise himself. My mum with the helper, went to the casino and made a small fortune and helped themselves to supper.

8 November  2013 - Day 3

rainbow

The last day of our cruise holiday and a rainbow greeted us when we woke up. Breakfast was at Bella Vista which served westernised breakfast. I didn't know what happened to Jon, he kept monkeying around the dining area and in the end, we had a quick breakfast. Matt had his morning nap while my mum brought Jon over to her room so we could pack in peace. Luggages were checked in and lunch was at Japanese restaurant, Samurai. We used our dining voucher and we had another round of confusion trying to know-how to get disembark. But all was good in the end. We were ushered out and got our clearance really fast at immigration.


Post note :  3D2N is really too short... we should have booked ourselves a longer trip. On hindsight, we should have packed a few of the boys' toys so that they would be entertained during meal times. With this experience, we are now more prepared for longer trip. I must remember to take more photos too. After downloading the photos, I realised that we didn't had a lot of family shoot and also the activities we were doing onboard. It was a pity. There's still the staycation at the end of the year. Hope to capture more wonderful memories then.