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Say "I" for
Itinerary
It comes as no
surprise that we have made absolutely no plans for the school
vacation, except to say we'd be better off staying in town than
trying to wear ourselves out competing with the holiday crowd. 
But by the time Saturday rolls around, we'd
chit-chatted and joked ourselves into going to Penang. So there I am
- Saturday night - surfing the net and making phone calls, half
expecting to be told that everything would be fully booked. To our
surprise, not only do I manage to secure excellent five-star
accommodation, we even succeed in drawing up an itinerary for the
trip!
An itinerary? Ouch, surely you're not going to put our
holiday on an agenda! Isn't a vacation supposed to be time spent
together at leisure? And let's face it, how can a vacation be a
vacation if you have to keep tabs on your watch?
It's true
we've never been on one of those organized tours, which means we've
never let anyone else dictate where we should be at a specific time,
or what we should be eating at our next meal.
Whenever we go
overseas, it has always been the spontaneous style - backpacks,
maps, rental cars - even when the kids were as young as three.
But our previous trip to Penang had been somewhat of a
letdown. We had gone there with our own expectations of what we each
wanted to do. As it turned out, every time we got into the car, we
were asking each other "where shall we go next?" "what shall we eat
next?" 20 times a day.
And because no one had any answers we
could all agree upon, we'd inadvertently ended up in places where
none of us even wanted to be at. So this time, we decide on an
itinerary, an approach we never thought to take before simply
because it goes against the very essence of a vacation.
But
I am thinking - okay, why not just try it this once? In the worst
case, we'll just fling the itinerary out the window, stop the car,
and go back to arguing about where to go, what to eat.
Putting the itinerary together is half the fun in itself. We
ponder the finer details of our trip as a family (say cheese, it's a
Kodak moment, no less!).
The good thing about this is that
we get to argue out our preferences in the comfort of our own home
(not by the roadside), and we can make decisions on the difficult
ones way ahead of time. In our case, we come to a compromise that we
would have meals both at the hawkers' (which the kids hate due to
the heat, and dirty environment) as well as at restaurants. We also
agree that there would be activities for everyone.
To top it
off, I suggest throwing in a fun new activity we've never done
before - going to the hotel's lobby lounge to listen to the live
band - and this is the one that really gets everyone excited.
As it turns out, our dim sum brunch in Ipoh en route to
Penang is a lip-smacking favorite with everyone. In Penang, the
selection of continental, local and hawker-style food at the hotel's
buffet breakfast has everyone going back for thirds and fourths. The
lunch of chicken rice in air-conditioned comfort works out to be a
winning combination too. Only the hawker meals draw isolated
complaints about the deplorable conditions, but these are quickly
forgotten when someone reminds us that the next item on the
itinerary is ... (drum rolls please!) the lobby lounge!
Our
itinerary takes us sightseeing and shopping. It has us on long walks
by the sea. It has us drinking tea and stuffing ourselves silly with
junk food. In the afternoons, we seek refuge in our hotel rooms -
the kids outdoing themselves at their computer game, and the adults
curling up over a good movie.
An interesting discovery -
even with your itinerary in full swing, you can still kick back, and
take things slow and easy with some extra time for dilly-dallying
provided you build in some contingency plans. The only item we have
to drop off the agenda is the swimming - the heat's unbearable, and
with the persistent coughs that have been going round in our
household, we figure it's best.
We hear the kids complaining
in the next room, but then once we put Plan B (yes, that would be
their beloved computer games) into action, a team of six horses
couldn't get them anywhere near the water.
So how does it
all turn out? It's probably one of the more organized trips we've
had in a long time. We've all planned it together, we've thrown in a
bit of everything for everyone, and so when we finally hit the
highway, our batteries are charged, and we all know what to expect.
So yeah, an itinerary really does seem to work, hard though
it is for me to admit that having to keep one eye on my watch can
actually improve the quality of a vacation!
Oh, and about
our little escapade to the lobby lounge - the getting there is
exciting, but two songs are about all our lungs can take of the
secondary smoke, and we have to make a hasty retreat in search of
oxygen.
by Kit Lum
11th December 2002
About the contributor
Kit Lum
is a work-at-home mother who writes freelance, and teaches English
to kids and adults in PJ to boost their language foundation. Visit
her website at: http://englishone.netfirms.com/.
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