Visiting the Mainland: Bukit Merah Laketown Resort

April Fool's Day recently passed, which you may or may not have noticed, given the content of that day's blog post. It was also my Dad's birthday, and he decided that the family ought to have some sort of adventure.

We live on an island, and I sometimes go months at a time without actually leaving the island. There's not a whole lot to do within daytrip distance of our hometown, and most of it we've seen and done many times over the years, but for his birthday, Dad decided that it was worth heading back to Bukit Merah Laketown Resort, one location that we hadn't been to since 2005.

We visited just the EcoPark, not the waterpark, since there are much more awesome waterparks in the region if we're looking for a waterpark adventure (Sunway Lagoon or Lost World, for example).

The EcoPark is kind of a zoo...but more like a very small, rundown zoo, or a larger than usual petting zoo. Most of the animals are along the lines of goats, guinea pigs, rabbits, geese, chicken, fish, and peacocks. The littlest kids really enjoyed feeding carrots, green beans, lettuce, bread, and fish food to various appropriate animals, and I think watching them bravely feeding the goats and getting really excited over feeding the fish was the highlight for the adults.

You could go inside the large monkey enclosure so that there was no barrier between you and the monkeys, but all of us except Angel refused to do so since we have a little too much monkey experience on our hands.

Honestly, as a zoo, I wouldn't recommend this place, but we had plenty of fun with the non-zoo activities. We bought 'combo' tickets which were only 4RM (about $1USD) more than the Ecopark tickets, and included a boat ride and a trip on the "SkyCycle."

We had no idea what the "SkyCycle" would be, but it turned out to be this sort of hand-pedaled monorail through the jungle. I felt like I was in Jurassic park as we pedaled our way around the course, taking frequent breaks because those hand pedals required a lot of strength (and mine was the only ride vehicle without a guy to do all the pedaling for me, so it was up to me and Rebekah). I thought this was super fun, and Mom thought it was super dangerous, particularly because the vehicle doors opened easily and jumping out and falling 15-20 feet to the ground would have been a piece of cake, if you were so inclined.

So, I thought the SkyCycle was super-awesome, probably my favorite part of the day, just because I've never seen a 'ride' like that anywhere else. And if your arms get too tired to keep pedaling....you'll just be stuck on a monorail in the jungle, no big deal. Rebekah picked a lemon from a lemon tree on our ride and then ate it, so at least we know there would be provisions in case you did get stuck up there...

Speaking of things Rebekah does, she also found this dead beetle on the side of the walkway (in Malaysia, you don't even have to go to zoos to see scary creatures). She then convinced Shiloh to let her put it really close to her wide-open mouth...and later put it on MaryGrace's back, resulting in a scream that would have woken the entire resort, if it weren't already midday.

Some people think it's sad that the kids in our family never got much of the "brother" experience, having just the one brother, and he's been living in the USA since 2012. Rebekah and her mischief and teasing more than make up for our comparative lack of brothers, we'd all say.

We walked back along a very sunny path to the central part of the resort to find out what kind of boat activity was included in our tickets.

 They said we could choose between canoeing, kayaking, and paddleboating. Given the proportion of small children in our group, and the brutal midday tropical sun, we chose paddleboating, since they are less-tippable and had sunshades. The boat activity was supposed to be 15 minutes, but the resort was nearly deserted, and no one ever came back to tell us our time was up, so we probably stayed in the boats, wandering the lake and steering our ships clumsily, until we'd had enough and returned after about 40 minutes.

Little Joshua wasn't very sure about the boats at first, but by the second half of the adventure, he started getting more excited.

We were on our way back to the car when we spotting a "Family Karaoke" center offering karaoke rooms for rent. Half an hour in a "VIP room" that could fit all 9 of us cost 12 RM ($3USD) and they've often talked about wanting to try a karaoke room, so we went for it.

Angel and I have been to one in China, and I went to one here in Malaysia back in high school, but none of the rest of the family had ever tried it. This was a very bare-bones set up, which makes the cheap price very understandable, but we had a lot of fun and found songs that everyone knew, from "Let it Go" for the littles, to "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers for Mom and Taylor Swift, Darius Rucker, and Owl City for the rest of us to goof off with and sing along to.

And then we returned to our island, loving it all the more because of our adventure to the mainland.

To see a paddleboat crash and other little recent adventures, check out our latest youtube video:



Had any little adventures recently? Tell me about them!