Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Kidzania Singapore

We went to Kidzania Singapore on the eve of Singapore's National Day. Hubby took half day leave so once he was home, we drove to Sentosa. We parked at the Beach Station Carpark and there was a bridge to link us to Kidzania.


Tickets cost $58 for kids and $35 for adullts. Tickets for toddlers between 2 - 3 years old cost $25. If you are a Maybank card holder, you are entitled to 10% discount on ticket price. If your child is a student of Learning Lab, your child need only pay $51 instead of $58. For online booking of tickets, you can click here.

We did not know what to expect as we have read some good and not so good reviews about Kidzania. One of the negative comments mentioned that the waiting time was too long. 

When we reached the counter, there were only a few other families. We arrived at 1pm. That day, Kidzania was closing at 8pm as it was the eve of public holiday. The kids were given 20 kidzos each and an ATM card. All of us had to wear a wristband to identify the child to the parent.

Once we entered Kidzania, we noticed that there were not as many children as we had expected (we expected A LOT more). I guess it helped that we were there on the eve of National Day. I would expect a bigger crowd on public holidays. 


Recording in session
The girls have been bugging hubby and me to take them to Kidzania, so when we were there, they were wow-ed by the place. It is really a Kids City. We were on our way to activate the ATM card when we saw that the Discovery Film Studio had no queue. We remembered reading some reviews somewhere that the bank queue might be long so Ulfa and Auni decided to go ahead and queue outside the Discovery Film Studio to be a host/film editor. 


Film Editing
What you will see outside each station
Outside each establishment, you will see a sign stating the capacity of kids that can play that role at one time, time taken for activity, age limit of participant etc. For the Film Studio, the age limit was 7+. Ulfa was not 7 yet but she really wanted to try out as a Host/Film Editor. The person who was in-charge was nice enough to ask if Ulfa could read, to which Ulfa answered "yes'. She then asked if she could test Ulfa's reading to see if she was suitable to participate in the activity. So after the quick test, Ulfa was allowed to join.


The Bank



While Ulfa and Auni were waiting for their turn, I took Nuha, who is 4 years old, to activate her card at the bank. Outside the bank, I had to write Nuha's name and her birthdate on the paper with the card. Nuha had to queue up at the bank on her own as parents were not allowed inside. I worried a little then as I wondered 'What if she does not know what to say at the counter', 'What if she is scared' etc. But my worries were unfounded. Nuha went in, albeit a litle bit unsure at first. She then followed the others who were queueing and went up to the counter herself. At this point, I went "Bravo!" in my head.


Delivering Newspapers
After we left the bank, Auni and Ulfa were not done yet so Nuha went on to the Kidzania Post to try out as a Newspaper Delivery crew. She was alone as the one other girl who was in the queue wanted to try out as a Journalist. So I accompanied Nuha around her trip. I didn't help her carry the papers. I didnt help her knock on the doors or tell her what to say. She did it all by herself. She was a bit shy at first and could not remember everything that she needed to say (it was on the board she was carrying but she couldn't read all of the words yet). Subsequently she got the hang of it. It helped that the Kidzania staff were all so friendly. 

By the time Nuha was done, Auni and Ulfa were queuing at the bank having completed the Host/Film Editor job. We found out that the film could be downloaded online with the password given to us!

Thereafter the girls tried out a few other jobs like the Water Quality Assurance Specialist, Tourist Guide, Baby Expert, Runway Model, Climber, Chef and Cabin Crew.

Inside the cockpit
Qatar Airways
For the cabin crew or first officer jobs, look out for the distribution time for the jobs and queue up outside the Kindergarten for it. The staff will then give you a time for you to come back later. 

Stadium
Driving School
Runway Model
For most jobs, parents can only watch from outside the window. However, there are some jobs like cabin crew and Runway model where you can participate. For example, when your child works as a cabin crew, they will serve you on the plane. When they become Runway Models, you get to be an audience at a fashion show.

You do not really need to accompany your children around Kidzania if they are older. They can do everything on their own and it allows them to become more independent. Auni is 8 and I pretty much let her go about choosing the jobs on her own. I noticed that the kids make fast friends as they work together with other kids. 

Working at KFC
Most jobs allow them to earn Kidzos while there are some jobs where they have to pay. For example, the girls had to pay 10Kidzos when they worked at KFC (they were given 1Kidzo off as they reused their hair net). However, the fun part was they get to eat what they prepared. The girls loved this. When they ate the burgers they prepared, they commented that it tasted really good.

Some reviews I read mentioned that the staff at Kidzania does not appear too enthusiastic. I guess it really depends on the staff themselves. I must say that most of the staff we met were very friendly to the kids. I particularly liked the staff - Ivy and Raihana - who were managing KFC when we were there. They were so fun and friendly with the kids, you could see the kids really enjoying their company. The kids were laughing and giving hi-fives to them. At the end of the session, the kids went up to them to give them hugs. It was really wonderful to see that. 

Kidzania Department Store is packed at closing time
We ended the day at 8pm. The kids went into Kidzania Department Store to spend their Kidzos. They had to do this on their own as parents were not allowed inside. It is good to check the balance in their cards or withdraw the money so that kids know how much they can spend. If you worry that your child might not know what they can spend on with the amount of money they have, look through the windows with your kids and tell them what are the things within their range. Alternatively, the staff inside will assist them.

As parents, we worry a lot, but they'll survive Kidzania.

Before going to Kidzania, I personally wondered how I'll survive the long hours there when it is only my kids who are having fun. However, time passes by really quickly and before you know it, it is closing time. When the girls were doing the activities, hubby and I managed to get alone time where we spent chilling out at the in-house Killiney Kopitiam and KFC (there are other food establishments there).
Other food establishment
Theatre
Tour Guide and Tourists
Climbing School
Hospital
Quality Assurance Specialists
Acting Academy
Our girls (and us) thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They could not stop thanking us after the visit. We will definitely visit Kidzania Singapore again.

Some tips on visiting Kidzania Singapore:
1) Avoid peak periods unless you don't mind the waiting time.
2) Get a lanyard for the kids to put their cards or Kidzos. You can purchase one there but they cost around $10 - $15 (Maybank card holders get 10% off). I saw some parents holding the Kidzos and cards for the kids. You can do that too but it'll be good to teach the kids to handle their own cards and Kidzos.
3) Before you go to Kidzania, tell your kids that there are a lot of different jobs they can try. Some jobs are those they've never heard of. They need not be doctors and firefighters ALL THE TIME.
4) Let your kids choose whatever they want to be. It is their city and their day, not yours.
5) Take note that you are not allowed to queue for the kids. They need to queue if they want to play.
6) Your child can activate the ATM card later if the queue at the bank is too long. They can just do the activities first.

Things to do with kids in Seoul

1) Visit the palaces
Seoul is home to a few palaces. It would be nice to get your child to experience the palace environment and the ceremonies that are being held there.

One of the palaces that I took my 3 girls to was the Gyeongbukgong Palace. The palace was beautiful. It has a large compound for your children to roam around. We also get to witness the guard-changing ceremony.


2) Visit the Hanok villages
Visiting the hanok villages is another experience that you should let your child experience. My children loved it as the building structures are something that they have not seen before. They also get to enter some of the houses that has been converted to house art pieces.


3) Ski Resort
Almost all children would love this. I mean, who does not love snow. The only downside is that you can only do so during the winter season. My children are 2, 4 and 7 years of age and I took them to the ski resort. I think my 2-year-old was the youngest one to ever don the ski outfit that we rented from the ski shop as the owner took a photo of her (actually of the whole family). Plus, the outfits were brand new! 

Since my girls are still very small, especially Ulfa and Nuha, we decided to go snow sledding instead of skiing. I mean, honestly, how are we going to ski with a 2-year-old. The resort that we went to was the Elysian Gangchon Ski Resort. It has both a sledding area and a ski area.





4) Lotte World
Lotte World is an indoor theme park. It will be comfortable to go here even during winter.

Picture taken from english.visitkorea.or.kr

5) Everland
Everland is a theme park that is mostly featured in movies. Some of the rides may be closed during winter. However, there will be an area for snow sledding that is opened during winter.

Picture taken from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/
6) Nami Island
Nami Island became popular thanks to the movie Winter Sonata. It is a beautiful island. Even my children loved it there. They especially loved the ever-friendly resident squirrels.




Monsters of the Sea & Human Body Experience

I brought the 3 girls to the Singapore Science Centre sans Mr Hubby.

The plan was to go for the Monsters of the Sea Exhibition. In the end, we went for both the Monsters of the Sea and the Human Body Experience Exhibitions. Both are temporary exhibitions. Monsters of the Sea Exhibition ended on 28 February 2016 while I have no idea when the Human Body Experience Exhibition will end. It has, however, started since 31 May 2014.


The girls really enjoyed learning about all these prehistoric underwater monsters. The animatronics bring about life to these monsters. Nuha was scared, of course, seeing these creatures move but my 2 elder girls were very excited. They were practically running from one exhibit to another to learn more about these monsters. They were especially awed by the size of the megalodon and whale shark.

The exhibition is not particularly huge but took up about 1 to 1.5 hours.






Thereafter we explored Science Centre. That was when the girls spotted the Human Body Experience Exhibition and forced begged me to buy the tickets for it. So we had to go out and purchase the tickets from the ticketing counter again before coming entering the Science Centre again and locate the Human Body Experience Exhibition.


The exhibition  is basically a walk-through the human body. Alright well, it is not really a "walk-through". You can to climb, slide, crawl your way through and learn about the different systems in the body. First up, to enter the exhibition, you have to climb up the tongue and slide down the throat. If you ask me, I think almost all kids will love this exhibition. Even my three-year-old was thrilled.

First up was the respiratory system. You get to touch the vocal cords and hear them make sounds. You get to go through the lungs. You will also learn about the nervous system and immune system and go through the brains. After that is the digestive systems. You have to crawl through the gullet in order to reach the stomach. In the stomach, you see the stomach churning and you get sprayed by the digestive juices. Then the two intestines and finally you reach the end of teh exhibition where you come out from the ... anus. You come with a fart. That was the part my girls enjoyed the most :) Best thing is you get to go through the exhibition twice with your ticket. So we went for it twice. The second time was faster as we did not really listen to the explanations given by the voiceover. My girls definitely enjoyed this exhibition.

You can find out more about this exhibition from http://www.science.edu.sg/exhibitions/Pages/hbx.aspx

If you want to know the charges and the admission rates, you can check out Singapore Science Centre Homepage .

Singapore Science Centre is definitely worth a visit especially this long school holiday.


Lexis Hibiscus Port Dickson

We drove up to Lexis Hibiscus Port Dickson in December 2015 to have a short getaway since we didn't go anywhere far that year.

Our drive took us about 3hours - 3.5hours. We used our GPS and also google map to find our way there.

We arrived there at about 3 p.m. Our room was not ready so we went to eat at Roselle first. At 4p.m. , one of the rooms was ready while the other was not. So we all went to the room that was ready and only received the room for the other key at 5.35p.m. On a side note, if you arrive at the hotel before 2p.m. , you can check in if your room is ready.

Although we booked for the premium room, we were given the Panorama Pool Villa (Sea View). I guess it was to make up for our room not being ready. Do take note that not all rooms on this side of the resort is ready. Nonetheless, we were thrilled and the room was beautiful. The view was just majestic.

Each villa comes with a dip pool about 1.2m deep. Ulfa and Nuha had to use floats. We brought along the buoys for them as we had done our research earlier.

Our villa also comes with two king-sized beds and a huge bathroom. We had separate toilet and bath area. Since we were at the Panorama Pool Villa, we also had a huge bathtub with shower!

The kids were excited to plunge into the pool. So we lounged in the pool for a long while. We wanted to have dinner at Roselle but they were serving dinner buffet from 6.30 p.m. till 10.30p.m. Since we did not want to have the buffet dinner, we opted for in-room dining. Food was served to us within 30 minutes.

We enjoyed the night view for a while. The night was beautiful; dark but beautiful.


Next morning, we went for breakfast at around 7.20a.m. We asked the buggy drivers what the peak hours for breakfast was like and they told us between 8a.m. to 9a.m. so we made sure to avoid that time. Breakfast was alright - enough mix of local and western cuisines.

After breakfast, we returned to our rooms to get ready and then we drove up to KL (just because i wanted to do some shopping). We went to Kenanga Wholesale City. Took us about 1h 15min to get there and another 1h 15min to get back to Port Dickson.

We returned to the resort at around 4.30 p.m. Relaxed a bit more then went for our BBQ dinner buffet at 6.30pm. The bbq dinner buffet costs about RM98 for adults and RM49 for kids above 7 years old.

There was quite a selection of bbq dishes. I especially loved the roasted lamb with the acar-like sauce. It was a good mix of seafood and meat dishes. Do make a reservation for the bbq dinner as you might not get a seat during peak periods. Also, do prepare to call for buggy earlier as you might not get a buggy as quickly during peak periods like breakfast, dinner or check-in and check-out time. Our longest wait had to be 20mins while the shortest wait for buggy is about 5mins.

After dinner, there was a tribal dance show in front of Roselle at around 8p.m. Guests were also invited to join.

The next day, we prepared for check out. We had breakfast prior to that. This was where it didnt leave us with a very good impression of Lexis Hibiscus Port Dickson. That day, there happened to be lots of guests at breakfast. I guess they checked in the day before. Since we didnt come by that early, we were told to go to another restaurant serving the same breakfast. However, we were appalled when we were there. Food was already finishing but not topped up. I asked for butter coz there was nothing much to eat so I decided to go with the old bread with butter. They told me butter was in the bowl. It was butter though, but a slab of margarine placed in a bowl. Not even in packets, just a slab.



Well, all in all, would I visit Lexis Hibiscus Port Dickson again? Yes, I would. The buggy drivers are very nice and would answer all your questions with a smile. The indoor pool is a definite plus point. Waking up to the sea is really beautiful. Even my kids enjoy their stay there. I think it is a lovely place. I would just make sure that I come down at around 7 for breakfast. 

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Seoul Day 6 - 8

For Day 6, we wanted to let the kids experience snow. Well, the only snow play Auni experienced was when we went to Dubai and she got to play with the artificial snow. At the same time, I really wanted to visit the famous Nami Island made famous by the drama series Winter Sonata (which aired pretty long ago).

So we decided to book with a tour company as we did not really want to travel on our own with 3 kids as the distance is quite far. Plus, we were not really sure of the way. So we called up one of the tour groups (from the brochures we got at the airport) the day before we went. We managed to secure a deal with the tour group for a trip to Nami Island and Gangchon Elysian Ski Resort. Adults had to pay KRW 125000 each while children are charged at KRW 95000 each. Nuha was considered as infant as she was only 2 years old then. As such she gets to enjoy everything for free :)

The van came early the next morning to pick us up from our hotel. They was only one other Singaporean family while the others were mostly young adults travelling with friends or their partners.  We made payment using credit card. They had a wireless credit card machine with them.

The van took us to the ferry terminal where we boarded a ferry to Nami Island. It was a very short ferry ride, about 5 - 10 minutes. We noticed that many of the elderly (of different nationalities) were fascinated with my girls. Maybe because they seldom see 3 very young kids travelling in the winter cold.

Nami Island was cold. Colder than Seoul. We had to make several stops at the fire pits to warm ourselves up. The island is beautiful but I was pretty sure it would look even spectacular if it snowed. Sadly we did not experience snow in Nami Island while we were there. We rented the family bicycle so that it would be faster for us to travel around the island with the kids. The island is not huge but we had limited time as we were with a tour group. I would definitely love to visit Nami Island again and enjoy it at my own time.



Thereafter, we took the ferry back to mainland and had Dakgalbi for lunch. The restaurant was very near the ferry terminal. It is a halal restaurant. If you want to know the location of the restaurant and tantalise your tastebuds, you can refer to this website: http://www.havehalalwilltravel.com/blog/top-3-halal-korean-food-in-korea/ .We actually requested for halal meal when we booked with the tour company. Sorry, we did not take any photos here as we were busy eating :) But really, you should try the Dakgalbi, it is amazing!

Thereafter we proceeded to the ski resort. It is not far from Nami Island Ferry Terminal. Maybe about  30 - 40 minutes of travel time. We stopped by the ski shop to rent the ski suit which costs about KRW 15000 per person. Nuha had to pay too as we rented a suit for her. Thankfully they had one that fit her just right and she looked like a cute little teddy bear :) The girls all had waterproof shoes so we did not rent any boots for them. However, hubby and I had to rent heavy ski boots as we had no waterproof boots.

Now, we were travelling with 3 small kids, therefore there was no way we could ski. So we opted for the snow slide. Snow sledge and ski gloves were included in the package so we need not pay extra for those. As we were the only family that wanted to do the snow sliding, they sent us to the slopes first. The ski resort for the snow sliding was not yet opened to public as they had not completed setting the other slope (there were two slopes for snow sliding). So we basically had the area to ourselves! Well except for a few professional skiers who were testing out the slopes.

We went snow sliding, built miniature snowmen, rolled around the snow... The girls (and the parents) had so much fun.


Thereafter we returned to Seoul. We went back to our hotel to rest for a short while then we went down to Myeondong area in search of dinner. We went to Myeongdong Eomoni Jib. It is a seafood restaurant that is recommended by KTO for muslims. It is not halal-certified just that it serves seafood only. It is good to let them know that you cannot take alcohol. It is located in a small alleyway. For its exact location, you can refer to this website: http://www.muslimbackpackerseoul.com/2012/06/myeongdong-eomoni-jib.html .


Thereafter we returned to the hotel.

Day 7 was spent mostly in Myeongdong to finish up our shopping and buy goodies back for home and we took a flight back to Singapore early on Day 8.


Seoul Day 4 and Day 5

On Day 4, we decided to visit the famous Namdaemun Market. Mind you, we were bracing the winter cold with 3 kids and no stroller at all.

Myeongdong is very near Namdaemun. However we did not want to walk so we took the train from Myeongdong to Hoehyon, which is only one stop away.



We went there in the morning so there were plenty of ahjummas doing their morning marketing. At first I was not very impressed as they sold pretty much the usual souvenirs for tourists. So we shopped for souvenirs to bring back for our family and friends.

Then... I saw all the cute kids' stuff - from the boots to the cool skirts! That definitely unleashed the ahjumma in me. We bought cute boots for the kids. They cost about S$18 - S$20. Not extremely cheap but totally worth it for me! They are Made in Korea afterall (as the shopowners would tell you when you quote an extremely obscene price to them).

Where I bought some of the clothes for the kids.
Walking with kids in an open area in the winter cold without stroller is not easy. We had to cross over to the other side to rest at the cafe and have some hot chocolate. Well, partly because my younger 2 kids fell asleep. So hubby had to carry one while I had to hold the other. So we took our time. Had hot chocolate and doughnut. This became our daily snack every single day. (This is something the kids and I miss about Korea - having doughnut and hot chocolate in winter.) We took quite some time at the cafe. After that we continued to shop at Namdaemun.

The thing about Namdaemun is that when the sun sets, the area is converted into mini eateries. You see tables and stools being set as the people get ready to enjoy their night snack and soju. So we headed back to Myeongdong, bought some snacks and went back to the hotel.

Pretty uneventful day, but well, we did love Namdaemun.

So for the next day, we decided to return to Namdaemun again to finish our shopping. We bought plenty of kids clothes. They really have beautiful clothes for kids. Sadly, as it is winter, most are winter wear and  not appropriate for Singapore's weather. Nonetheless, we still managed to get what we need and plenty of nice shoes for the kids.

Thereafter we proceeded to Itaewon for our dinner. This time round we went to Kervan, a Turkish Restaurant. Expensive but worth it.