Dad, when you were a kid, what was your favourite holiday, and how did your family celebrate it

When I was a kid, going for family holiday hardly happens. It could be it was not the norm those days to have family holidays and also that we were not rich enough to afford expensive holidays. I do remember some excursions to the waterfalls in Kota Tinggi, where the family had a chance to enjoy the beautiful waterfalls scenery and also some delicious Chinese food ate at the Chinese restaurants or coffee shops. I remember too that Dad brought me to some hunting trips where I observed the hunters shooting flying foxes in the now developed town of Pandan. In one of the hunting expeditions I remembering encountering my first leach experience when we were in a lookout point in the jungles of Kota Tinggi. There is where I learnt a match stick or a lighter came in handy to get the leach off my leg.

The other more frequent holidays is when dad took us back to Senai where we visit our small holding. We have  a small processing plant in the rubber smallholding  and I observed the hardy tappers collect the latex early in the morning and then transfer it to the small plant for the latex to coagulate into rubber slabs. It was an interesting learning experience for us siblings. As we grew older we learnt to fish using hooks and worms as bait to catch some fishes, of which the tiger barb was my favourite. Occasionally we will get into the small stream and use a a pongki to catch the small fishes to be brought home as out pets.

I also remember Grandpa taking me in the earlier days to the smallholding, where I follwed him using the bus and had to walked long distances via some small established paths to visit the rubber small holdings. Perhaps this started my love for walking and taking the public buses which I carry on doing even today when I am close to reaching 60 years.

Other trips that I remember going with Mum and dad was to visit Port Klang, probably in the late 60s and also visited Mantin graves where my first grandmother Anna Thong rest in peace. We usually travel with my late God father Lawrence Wong in his Opel having the number plate JA 1 then.