Macau trip

The reception area in The Grand Lisboa Hotel

The night view in Senado Square. The lanterns are replicas of fruits

Wynn Hotel Rotunda 'Prosperous tree'- an indoor performance round the clock

The ruins of St. Paul Church. Slinging is way more convenient than stroller

This is the open viewing deck of Macau Tower. My sons esp younger one didn't seem to notice the height from the plexi-glass base. I couldn't even go near and look down for a second.

Inside A-ma temple

Night scene of Lisboa Hotel and behind it is Grand Lisboa


My DS in front of Performance fountain in Wynn Hotel

In front of 猪扒包 stall in Taipa. We had this as late lunch right after we landed.

This is the pork fillet burger - a signature snack of Macau

Di di is having his 'in-flight lunch'...

My proud 哥哥 and 爸爸 enjoying their bird's view scenery of Macau

Before I could finished this post, my partner discovered something unpleasant regarding our cloth diaper. It is found that a foreign brand 'Hatio' cloth diaper that is manufactured by the same manufacturer has the washing label bearing our Moms & Tots website address. This is solely due to the negligence of the manufacturer. Therefore, I would like to clarify that Hatio is not part of Moms & Tots Store and our product is different from Hatio in terms of design, quality and material used.

As promised to update you all on cloth diapering my baby while travelling, well, here you are. My destination this time was Macau a.k.a. Las Vegas of the east. Macau indeed lives up to its' name - it's night scene is full of colours from the flashes of neon lights on all the casinos and hotels. Every casino especially the new ones has its' distinctive, entertaining and thematic interior and exterior designs. For example Wynn, the hotel that we were staying has a millions of dollars performance musical fountain outside and 'Rotunda - Prosperous Tree' (checkout Youtube to know further). We also visited Grand Lisboa Hotel Lobby and it's an eye opening experience with huge stone sculptures, Stanley Ho's bronze portrait sculpture, a national treasure bronze sculpture of a horse head and lots of others priceless oriental art pieces. What really attracts me is it's building's structure. Even my younger son was in awe to see the glittery and colorful night scenes.

We didnt go lots of places but managed to visit the famous "妈 祖" A Ma temple that faces Zhu Hai 珠 海- China, the ruins of St. Pauls, Macau Tower, The Venetian Hotel and its' shopping mall (there's not much to shop although supposedly to be the largest shopping mall in Macau). We tasted the infamous chinese restaurant 黄枝纪 in Senado Square that serves local chinese food. The food was yummy but service did not tally with the delicious food. In the square itself, there is a coffee shop that serves authentic steamed milk (炖奶), chinese version of milkshakes with lots of choices of mixture e.g. coconut milk, chinese almonds杏仁, papaya etc minus the ice-cream. It's surely healthier and lighter in taste. We ate Portugese egg tart (you can buy it everywhere) almost everyday but there is a shop near Macau Police Academy School that sells extra yummy egg tart and other pastries. We 'ta pau' the egg tarts back to Malaysia as they can last for several days in the fridge. All you need is a toaster to crisp up the crust....still have the drooling effect thinking of it. Besides that pork fillet burger, egg rolls，bbq dried meat 肉干, almond cookies, 'luk luk' standup steamboat are some of the street foods you must try.

The highlight of this trip was my hubby and my elder son went for skywalking around the Macau Tower. My hubby couldnt sum up his courage for bungy jump and so he opted for the skywalk. I didnt expect my son agreed to join his father and I am proud of his courage for his age. I guess children his age have less height phobia than adults (I am one of them). As for my mission to cloth diaper my baby son throughout the trip, sad to say I failed. Overall, I would say Macau is a less suitable holiday destination for baby because most of the eateries (including shopping mall's food court) don't provide baby chair, the shopping mall we went known as the biggest shopping mall in Macau doesn't even have baby changing room. Overall, we had a pleasant trip that feasted both our eyesight and palate.

I hope to blog about my top passion - baking very soon since there is no holiday plan in near future. So, look out for my collection of best kept recipes in town....

Soft launching for Moms and Tots Store

At last, our website http://www.momsntots.com.my/ is uploaded and officially open for business. You are cordially invited to visit our homepage. We appreciate your comments and support. I need to give credit to my SIL aka my business partner, Alice for doing a wonderful job in creating our website from scratch without any trained knowledge in this field. We chose to launch our website on Mid-Autumn Festival Day as it signifies abundance harvest.

A simple feast - mostly children's favourites. My aunt served fried sweet potatoes instead of potatoes and it's yummy.

My family celebrated Mooncake Festival Day at my DH's aunt house together with my parents in law, SIL and family. We had simple feast - Hainanese Chicken Rice, fried foods, mooncakes, pomelos, boiled baby yams etc. It was a rainy day but fortunately it stopped around 9pm. We lit some lanterns after dinner and the kids went for a short walk carrying their lanterns. Along the way, we saw houses lighting lanterns and some having a family reunion party. It is very heart warming to see our Chinese tradition still being carry on after so many generations. I still remember vividly how I spent my childhood Mid-Autumn Festival. Early in the morning, my maternal granny would offered prayers to the God. I loved helping my granny to prepare the joss sticks and joss papers, foods and rice wine as offerings for the above. Later at night, my extended maternal family (my mom has 9 siblings) would gather to feast at the car porch (the dinning room could not accomodate the crowd). After dinner, we would snacked on pomelos, baby yams, mooncakes and 'buffulo horns' (water caltrope, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns). How time flies....

Nowadays, more and more youngsters and young families either celebrating diffirently or totally forgotten major Chinese festivities apart from Chinese New Year. Some prefer to go out for a feast in a restaurant, catch a movie, or concerts and public celebration. Personally, I find this modern way of celebrations a bit disturbing and compelling as it could spell disaster to our customs and culture. How are our next generation or generations ahead going to keep our traditions alive if their parents are taking it for granted? I guess this is the side effect of industrialisation and globalisation that more youths educated abroad find western culture more awesome and interesting. They remember and celebrate Christmas yet they are not Christians but couldn't stay home for family gathering on Mooncake Festival Day because their idol is having a concert!

Call me a conservative freak but I think my kind of celebration is ideal in promoting kinship and parent-child bonding in a special way. I want my children to grow up with fond memories of how they spent time with his parents especially during festive celebrations, just like how I remember my granny. In times, they will be able to share their childhood memorable moments with their kids and grandkids. To me, parents play a key role in preserving our traditions and culture through story telling, exhibitions visits and customary celebrations. You can always invite friends and their family over for dinner to make Mooncake Festival merrier and more meaningful to the children. Lastly, Happy Belated Mid-Autumn Festival!