A relaxing day in Ipoh

After getting up early the previous day to steal vegetables from Hong's farmer friend, we were actually able to sleep in a little on Saturday and then have an enjoyable relaxing day. We met up with some of the family for a dim sum brunch at a nice little restaurant that is a standard routine in the Goh family - Alex has Saturday dim sum here with his mother every week - so it was nice to be included in on their traditions.

After brunch, we went off with Alex who found a way to sneak us into an exclusive hot springs resort by explaining to the guard that the two foreigners he was with needed to see that place and check out the restaurant before they would actually book a stay. At least I think that is what he told them, it being all communicated in the local language we don't really know what was said. Doesn't matter, it was a nice looking place to stroll about and to stop and have a glass of beer - I'm not sure that I would stay there, every room has a private pool which is nice, but hot springs when you're in a jungle with weather that is both hot and muggy just doesn't seem like a great way to relax.

From the resort we drove back through town and stopped at the country club that Alex is a member of, and then back to the house so that we could rest and get ready for that nights dinner. We took advantage of the little downtime to get caught up with some of the blog posts that we still needed to write about Hong Kong and Malacca - it's amazing how quickly you seem to get behind when you're always out sightseeing on your travels.

That night's dinner the whole family was coming out, and Alex had promised to us that we would be able to purchase the meal as our way of thanking everyone for their continued hospitality in letting us stay with them and generally just to thank them for putting up with us for a week.

My arm not being quite long enough to get a full family shot at the table, Dr. Lim pulled out a selfie stick and we managed to get this much better photo -

But, alas, that fun never lasts and as dinner wound down the happiness and joviality disappeared. It should have been expected, actually Tina did expect that it would happen, but I, always full of hope and trust in my fellow man, was blindsided when we found out that Alex had taken it upon himself to go back on his word and pre-paid the dinner so that we couldn't. Perfect night ruined...

Well, not totally ruined, we retired back to that big house where we opened a bottle of wine that we had bought. We reminisced and sat looking at old photos of when we were in China with a much younger Ben and Daniel - Daniel being only 5 when they left China has no memories of those early days so it was fun to go back through our Flickr pictures.

And, being that the kids have grown so much in the years since we first met, we failed horribly in trying to recreate one of those old photos.