Hyatt Regency Kuantan

This blog is dedicated to Jan Smith who returned to Texas after living in
Kuantan (and at The Hyatt) for a few years! Enjoy the memories!















Pat and I have a membership to the Club Olympus at the Hyatt which entitles us to unlimited use of their small gym (two treadmills, three bikes, one stair-master, one rowing machine, five weight machines and lots of free weights) as well as the two pools beside the beautiful South China Sea. There are also tennis and squash courts available. When not travelling, you can find me there three mornings per week working out, often alone, but occasionally with other ex-pats or hotel guests. Sometimes in the afternoons and often on weekends, we head for pool #2 and sit facing the sea, enjoying the breeze and dozing over a book! Life is pretty cool here in the tropics!















Front entrance to the hotel: the sea is directly behind this building, three blocks of guest rooms are to the right, parking lot to the left. The flags are (left to right) State of Pahang, Malaysia and the Hyatt flag.















Open air lobby with check-in to the right, restaurants ahead and downstairs, as are the pools and gym facilities. There is a popular nightclub, Coco Loco, with a live band beginning about 10:30 p.m. each night, also located on this level and to the left.
















Pool #1 with a kiddie pool, swim-up bar and lounge chairs under bright blue umbrellas.















The Sampan Bar, a renovated boat, landed on the beach in 1980 with Vietnamese, hoping for a better life somewhere else. The boat was converted into a bar around the time the hotel was built (about 26 years ago).
















Pool #2 is the larger of the two. On weekends now, you can do a water aerobics class at 5 p.m. with a local instructor!
















You will find us somewhere here, overlooking the beach and the sea with the pool directly behind us. It's a rough life, to be sure!















View of the beach and some typical seating areas as well as two new catamarans which can be rented by guests by the hour for a sail.















When you leave the Hyatt to go home for supper around 5 p.m., you will see the monkeys out looking for food, or just entertaining the locals! This jungle area is located directly opposite the front entrance to The Hyatt and is land owned by the Sultan of Pahang, who just lives down the street in the palace.















It's hard to take pictures of busy monkeys...they are always moving! Note the one sliding down the guy wire! They come in all sizes and often you will see little tiny babies with huge eyes hanging on to their mother's chest!
















They can be fairly aggressive and will approach you if you carry food, hissing and baring their teeth if you don't hand it over! I have seen them in the parking lot of the Hyatt (across the street from these pictures) carefully going through the garbage cans, dropping papers, etc. all over the ground or on top of someone's car! Once I saw them chasing each other along the tarpaulin top of a delivery truck, parked by the side of the road! Like squirrels, they can easily walk along electirc wires and jump from the top of the fence into the trees nearby. If you watch the jungle closely at dusk, you will see lots of activity there!

Until next time, jumpa lagi...

Party time...Malaysian style!

OK, enough about travel for the time being...but there will be lots more of that to come over the next few months, I guarantee! This blog will focus on two very different parties held in Kuantan on July 15th, 2006...one was a wedding buffet reception poolside at the Hyatt Resort on the beach (which we did not attend but witnessed much of the set-up during the afternoon) and the other was a baby's first birthday party in our neighbourhood, which we did attend! Check it out...


Wedding buffet
preparations
beside the South
China Sea.
Coals Restaurant
at The Hyatt
(good BBQ)
is located
just beyond.





















Flower arrangements on the corner of the head table... we heard that RM 20,000 ~$6,250CAD) was the flower budget! (See more below!)






Tables all set
poolside















The bride
and groom's
initials in
flowers,
floating
in the kiddie pool











Pat beside
an elaborate
tabletop
decoration.













We understand the couple are originally from Kuantan but are currently living in London, and decided to come home to be married. The ceremony took place overlooking the sea in the morning and the dinner reception was held at 7:30 p.m. Luckily there was no rain but a stiff breeze blowing off the sea!




















That same evening, we attended Baby Hua Jzim's first birthday party with about 150 other guests under a huge tent set-up, just outside his family home! This is one end of the dining area...

















and here is the other! The Ng family home is to the right. To keep us cool and the air moving,
there were big fans set up under the awning.

I neglected to bring along my camera so do not have pictures of the actual party itself. The guest of honour was sleeping when we arrived but appeared later on to pose for some family pictures (there are three boys in the family) and enjoy some cake! A clown was hired from Kuala Lumpur to provide entertainment for all the children present...he was kept busy making balloon animals for them! There were two buffet stations with food galore: chicken satay with peanut sauce, various rice dishes, fried noodles, curries, fish, (stuff I didn't recognize!), fresh fruit and later "ais kacang", which is a popular shaved ice dessert. It is touted as "a delicious blend of sweet beans and jelly cubes under an avalanche of shaved ice, washed in lashings of milk and ripples of rose syrup". It is colourful and is definitely an acquired taste! Kidney beans aren't something I normally enjoy in my dessert! There was free flow red wine and beer all evening at a bar station just inside the auto-gates. The caterers were from a local restaurant downtown and were kept hopping all evening! It was quite an event for a one-year-old! The Malays know how to party in fine style!

Jumpa lagi...