WHAT HOLIDAYS CAN DO TO YOU!

I apologise for not blogging for about 2 weeks as I was away for holidays.

I thank God for the opportunity to go Scotland and all Ireland for a 12-day holiday. I would also want to thank Air Asia partly for its low-fare flight to Stansted, London and then Ryanair (Europe's internal low-fare airline) that enabled me and my wife to travel so far. We are able to save quite a sum as compared to joining a travel agency here in Malaysia.

What holidays can do to you???

1. First of all, obviously would be the OOHs and AAHs of the spectacular scenery of both countries (Scotland in particular).

2. It was a good break from hectic schedules back home to just completely put to rest "work" albiet for a short two weeks (notice the word "work" with quotations as completely forget about work is a lie).

3. Holidaying in other countries helps us learn cultures which sometimes makes us more human rather than criticising what others did from far away without realising the actual reasons (Especially Northern Ireland's tulmultous history).

4. Experience more street smart skills by staying from city to city, town to town(sometimes it can be rather scary especially when you couldn't find your apartment you booked or one day, we found the apartment but couldn't get in because we do not have the codes).

5. We have interesting discoveries -

a. The ship, "Titanic" was build in Dublin's harbour which is the second deepest in the world (the deepest is Sydney's) - Dublin is in Republic of Ireland.

b. St. Patrick was called to Ireland when he had a dream of Irish's children crying for his help and literally brought Christianity to Ireland. His brithday is still being celebrated today.

c. Three band members of Westlife was born in Sligo, which is one of the cities in Ireland.

d. C. S Lewis, the author of Narnia Series was born in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.

e. The lead singer of Cranberies, (Yeah, yeah, yeaaah) had a house somewhere in Ireland where we drove past (it was a huge house, got a picture too).

f. Bono of U2 is the most famous Irish rocker! He was born in Dublin.

g. Northern Ireland (capital Belfast) is still part of the United Kingdom where you have to use pounds (Ringgit 5.4) and Republic of Ireland (capital Dublin) is an independent country and it uses Euro (Ringgit 4.8).

h. Few years ago, there was a peace treaty signed between the IRA who fights for Irish independence for Northern Ireland with the British after decades of fighting and bombing. Thousands were killed during those days. The peace treaty was signed on Good Friday!

i. There are two communities, Catholics and Prostestant who were fighting each other since the feud started about 800 years ago are now slowly healing.

All in all, the trip was full of learning experience as well as enjoying the beautiful nature of God's creation.