In the spirit and Mood of Aidil Fitri

The house that we braved the road to come home to! (pix by BIL)

It's been over 2 weeks since I last blogged :-(

It's not that I was too busy that I couldn't spare the time. I could list a few reasons before I start to write on a few events/occasion:

1. Initially, yes, I was busy with the Raya do. The travel really exhausted us.
2. Exhaustion - yes! Even though we came back from our home town on the 4th Syawal, it took us a couple of days to really regain the energy.
3. Work. Yes, though it's not really a full time job, it certainly keeps me occupied.
4. The lousy Internet connection, Yulks to Streamy-x! Many times I had to abandon my intention to blog, just because the connection was so unstable or just damn SLOW!!
   
5. No reason - just didn't feel like blogging. I know.. this is bad..

Anyway, I will try to blog what I remember:

The day before Raya
We left S Alam about midnight (early morning of Friday, and Raya was Saturday), heading towards Kota Bharu. On normal days, the journey (non-stop) would just take us in under 7 hours, but that night, so many people wanted to head to the same direction, hence we found ourselves stuck on the Karak Highway - 2 hours just from Gombak Toll to Karak Toll (for those who are clueless, it would normally take about 30 mins to drive between these two tolls.

We decided to head towards Kuantan (exiting at Jabor), which is a further route, but obviously it was a wise decision because the traffic was moving smoothly. Well... It was smooth, until we reached Bukit Diman in Terengganu where we got stuck for about 40 minutes, because there was a Pasar Tani ALONG THE MAIN ROAD!! Well, we were passing their little town, and the local people were busy doing their "the days before Raya" shopping!! All in all, with several pitstops (for sahur, subuh prayers, a nap, or just to go to the loo), it took us 11 hours to reach home!!!
(What I couldn't undertand i that they have so many open space lands in the area, why must the morning market be ON the road???)

Bukit Diman Crowd (pix by Nuni)

Day 1 of Aidil Fitri
We suddenly realised that we had not been back for Aidil Fitri for 3 yrs already! Let's look back:
2006 - we celebrated it in our home in S Alam, and we ended up taking care of my bro-in-law's newborn baby.
2005 - We were in Dublin to celeberate Raya with Nuni, who was about to come home the following year.
2004 - We celeberated in S Alam because that was during Ayi's SPM time.

So, on this 2007 Raya Day 1, we decided to visit my brother in Tanah Merah (after the Raya prayers). After that we went to visit my adopted father (oo.... long story, I will blog later!) in Pasir Putih. His wife died a couple of years ago, and he had since remarried. After asking his daughter for the direction to his new home, we went searching for it - it's somewhere in Wakaf Raja, very close to Terengganu border!

Day 2 Raya
I decided to follow Pa-in-law(PIL), DH, bro-in-law (yes, the one who had the baby last Raya) to the cemetery. I am normally not a cemetery goer, so this was my first visit to the cemetery ON A RAYA DAY! We had a brief round of history class from PIL - some of the stories were really entertaining. He pointed to the exact durian tree he used to climb with his brothers when they were boys. He said nobody else wa brave enough to do so!! He also told us about the man he saw hanging from the tree, and seconds later it just disappeared!
There's a river (Ketereh River) nearby, and it was quite scenic!

PIL(hidden) showing me the tombs of his parents and uncles. A part of the durian tree can be seen on the extreme right's top corner.(Pix by BIL)

PIL, while sitting under the shade of the durian tree, pointed to the brunch where saw the "hanging man"!

Silly us only took along 2 copies of the Yassin booklets, so we had to take turn :-(

This one belongs to PIL's elder bro, who was quite famous ;-)

After that we went to visit PIL's siblings' homes nearby...
Overall verdict- very satisfying outing :-)