Travelog 2010 - Preamble

I have always wanted to travel the country at my leisure, with my whole family. It was actually a tough assignment meeting the 3 basic requirements:

1. Travel the whole country
2. At leisure
3. With my whole family

After a rather tough year a work, I decided to force myself into doing this in 2010 and started to plan things in my mind as early as Hari Raya this year though I did not tell anybody yet.

I started with telling my boss that I will away from the office from mid December until early 2011. I then told my family about my plans and asked them to prepare an itinerary that will take us throughout Peninsular Malaysia for about two weeks. It was supposed to be a "free and easy" trip. So, no advance booking of accommodation and the like which will forced us to reach a certain place at a certain time.

To make the trip more meaningful, I told them that we will try to stop, pray and take photos at as many mosques as possible, visit a few orphanages, old folks homes and religious schools besides visiting the normal tourist attractions.

We are almost set when my eldest daughter, Nurlina, told us that she only managed to get a week's leave instead of the two she applied for. So, the first change of plans. Then we realised that we have received so many wedding invitations on every weekend in December. Some are from our close neighbours which we cannot afford to skip. So, we decided to break our travels into two phases, divided by the weekend where we can attend some weddings and also pick up Nurlina for the second phase.

We are now all set.

We left our house for the first phase on Sunday, 19th December, after attending a wedding reception and headed for Ipoh. Actually, I myself was not sure where we will be putting up the night when we left the house. There was no fixed plans, just a list giving phone numbers of hotels and addresses of orphanages in the states of Perak, Kedah, Perlis, Penang and Selangor.

This posting is the preamble to a series of postings (InsyaAllah) about our trip which took place in the last 12 days of 2010.