Cherating

Back from Cherating after a few days of beach and sun. It was just so nice for all of us to be able to relax together with no pressure on us to do anything or go anywhere. Time out of time.

We stayed at The Legend. Although I had very mixed feelings about the hotel, the location was wonderful - a broad sweep of beach with soft golden sand, lined with casuarina trees and gentle sea. The kids loved it, and when they weren't out there flying kites and catching little sand crabs, they were in the huge swimming pool (surely the best along this stretch of coast). We were also very happy to be near the turtle sanctuary so that the kids had the magical experience of releasing baby green turtles into the sea at night - an experience they will never forget.

But permit me a second for a sound-off (bloggers privilege!) : what gives Club Med the right to put on huge loud firework displays in an environmentally sensitive area? The turtles heading for shore to lay their eggs (fewer in number every year) could easily become frightened and disorientated and turn back to sea, the wildlife warden told us.

Thanks, Boo-licious, for the tip-off about Kemaman stuffed crabs! De-licious!

Had a good read, of course: finished Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer, Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, and have re-started Andrea Levy's Small Island which I was distracted from some time back - more about these later.

Will do some catch-up blogging before we all disappear again later in the week, this time to Taman Negara. But first, gotta take the troops for dim-sum!