golfing in desaru

*be warned - long entry*

last weekend was the first of three long weekends (meaning three public holidays - 14 apr, 01 may and 12 may - within a month!) in the months of april and may. have you ever lamented about all our public holidays being almost always 'cramped' together (yes, i know it has to do with all the chinese, muslim and western calendars that the holidays follow)?? this year's new year (o1 jan), hari raya haji (10 jan) and chinese new year (29 - 30 jan) all fall in the same month and now, these three long weekends. gosh! the next public holiday falls in august! Wouldn't it be nice if the public holidays are all spread out? yes, for those take leaving to go travelling, 'cramped-together' public holidays are good but not for those like me, stuck in this little island. anyway, i prefer the long weekends to include mondays instead of fridays coz some people have to work on sat and effectively, its not really a long weekend anymore.

since i can't afford to travel too far, the next best thing is a driving holiday so driving holiday it was... destination - desaru. i've never been there, ever. not even when i was a kid (ok, maybe i did but not that i can recall). i heard that the beach there is pretty cool. i love nice beaches... and perhaps, i might just like desaru.

we set out on sat, after work and made our way to jb. luckily, traffic was pretty smooth and there was no jam to speak off. we took lunch at our usual haunt 'taman sentosa' - and as usual, had the claypot rice and bah kut teh. food there is really delicious and cheap. after the satisfying lunch, we continued the drive to desaru - the really stupid thing about driving to desaru is that we have to drive all the way up to kota tinggi, then driving back downwards. the drive is supposed to take us two hours and the half hours whereas a ferry ride would have only taken 30 - 40 mins. there is supposedly a new highway under construction that would cut travelling time by half but no one i know, knows if the highway has been completed. we didn't want to take the risk to find out if the new bridge over the river was completed so we took the longer route. amazingly... even though we made a couple of wrong turns and got stuck behind slowwwwww drivers a couple of times, we managed to reach the resort in under two hours. :) this is where we stayed...

its quite a nice resort, I must say... much better than the one in port dickson... :)

i'm not a big fan of hotel food so we drove towards sungei ringgit to find dinner where there was supposed to be a famous seafood place... and after a twenty minutes drive, we found it! jade garden seafood corner - see the new banner? this place is recommended by some foodie programme! we ordered sambal bamboo clam, spring onion ostrich meat, freshly steamed pomfret - hk style and stir fry baby kailan... the food was ok but quite expensive by malaysia standard. the bill came to RM81.30. i'm not impressed...

after dinner, we enjoyed a slow drive back to the hotel to enjoy the sunset view of the marina and await our after dinner programme - watching fireflies... :) sorry that i don't have any pictures of fireflies - my camera isn't sophisticated enough to handle night shots but here's a nice photo of the marina at sunset.

that.... is the kinda life i am looking forward to... owning a yacht and being able to go diving as and when i like. by 35 or so, i will be a proud yacht owner and i will name the boat ... actually, i've not thought of her name yet but i still have a couple more years to ponder on that. :)