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The Annual Friend Retreat

All living different lives with our own career and businesses, but every now and then, one of us would try our best to initiate a meetup or getaway just to catchup. The time spent with these peeps is always worthwhile. I've known some of them for more than 5-10 years, one of them being my closest friend who I often mention in some of my previous blogs about how she was always there for me no matter what.

This year, Lex shot a text in facebook asking if we would like to head up to the highlands once again like how we did two years ago. Surprisingly, everyone was in on it and I thought it was a good time to actually meet them again. The road trip was always never a dull moment with this bunch as we've grown to know each other's sense of humour, it was always laughter all the way. Arina aka Hive account@notimetospace, introduced us to our lunch place. A 'hidden restaurant' deep in the highland jungle. It was pretty exciting because the roads were narrow and suddenly, you come up to this huge restaurant amidst the jungle.

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This restaurant served seafood and many other chinese cuisine. My favourite was the herbal soup. Every dish has its own flavour and was really deep in flavour too. It drizzled a little so it was a very nice weather for hot soup and since we were near the highlands, it was a little colder than the usual Malaysian weather.

We had our lunch here and sat for about an hour an a half before we head up to the cable car about 15 km away to start our ascend to the resort up in the highlands, Genting.

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The Ascend

A friend of mine was afraid of heights so she kinda covered her whole face along the way up. It was a blissful 15 minutes ride up. The mist was wonderful and I started to feel the chills. Thank God I wore a long wooly sleeve shirt for this trip.

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Friend who's afraid to look down

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We reached the shopping mall up above as our first stop and did a little shopping. The shop above always had good sales all year round. From 30-70%. I myself got a branded underarmour gym pants for only RM45 (10usd) which was really cheap considering this sort of brand. The pants was actually also priced at RM147 so it was on a 70% discount. We walked around a little before heading up one more mountain to the highland resort.

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When we got there, it was freaking cold! We could barely see 50m away but we were enjoying the moist mist and the wind. We don't get this kind of weather down below in Malaysia as it's all year hot and rainy. We don't have the 4 seasons here so this felt like autumn to us.

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Descending

Time flies when you're having fun. Just a few hours later, we needed to head down before it was dark. We had plans to go to this really nice steamboat restaurant right down at the foot of the mountain. Riding the cable car down had me feeling appreciative once again marveled at the work of the creator. Appreciating the moments with good friends, feeling blessed to be able to have time off to have personal plans, living a good life, is all such a blessing to me.

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We got to the restaurant called 'DZH Fish Restaurant' and we sat in a boatlike table to have our steamboat. The place served sichuan malat food and there were a lot of tourist around. I wouldn't say the food was extremely good but it was satisfying to end the trip this way.

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I'm thankful that this year is coming to a close with just one more month left to the new year. Have been really feeling it now especially since Christmas, my all-time favourite festival is just around the corner. Can't wait to hear the sleighbell ringing, more gathering with beloved friends, and blessed life ahead!

Have a great week ahead people!