Saturday, May 01, 2004

It is the first of May, a public holiday in this country and with Monday and Tuesday are holiday as well, city folks are heading toward other cities and holiday resorts for a weekends getaway with their family..... The highways to the north and south of Kuala Lumpur are clog with traffics heading toward their destinations out of Kuala Lumpur.... It is always like this when there are long holidays..... With prosperity come a new life styles and so are these new culture of holiday for these generation.... Unheard of before...... There was no such thing as going for a holiday when I was growing up in the forties and the fifties...... School holiday are when we would just go out camping with our friends in the scout movement on weekends.....We would go on a weekend expedition to near by countryside in search of adventure, we would band together, with our haversack on our back and in the scout uniform we would hike to those areas around our home town, usually just around a radius of about twenty kilometer away...... We would camp the night at the beach or beside rivers and enjoy the night life under the clear blue sky and the twinkle of millions of stars..... We would build campfire and sat around singing scout songs, drank hot coffee and ate stale biscuits.... At time when we are lucky to catch some fish or other seafood, we would grilled it on the hot amber at the site of the camp fire....It was nice to eat all those fresh seafood..... We would sit and sang all night and get to sleep in the tents and woke up with the morning sun........To see the sun is already up and the sky blue with patches of white clouds..... We normally would have breakfast of simple bread and jam or just some fried rice which is made of the left over rice that we had for dinner, coffee or tea and then out we go in search of adventure in the woods nearby....Hiking...Climbing hills or when we have a canoe....Would paddled up stream to catch crab..... We would built crab trap's made of bamboo and with baits of soil fish, would lay the trap on our way up stream and then on the way back would pick those traps with live black crabs in it...... which we would feast at lunch or dinner.... Sometime we would meet fisherman returning with their catch in the early hours of the morning.... and the left over are for our taking, free.... We would take want we want and then grilled it over open fire and enjoy those free meals of sea foods..... And then late on Sunday evening we would pack our things and head home, well satisfied with our weekend holiday........ That was then.... Now children would go on holiday with their parents..... just like what happen on this long weekend's holiday....... The roads are jam with traffics heading to... No where!!.... Or some where!!... Looking for adventure.... Just like we did before in those bygone era of our childhood.......

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