And what better way to spend it than spending some time with some hyperactive kids at the beach once in a while?

It’s quite amazing that to these kids, going to the beach is almost as routine as eating dinner in the evenings. If the sea is calm enough for a swim, they will jump right into it, but if the waves are rough, they know that they are not supposed to go into the water and they would be happy to just walk along the beach, pick up useless stuff that are stranded on the beach such as broken toothbrush, broken slippers, broken plastic bottles :)

Last week as we were walking to the beach with the kids, I had a very funny conversation with 9-year-old Aman.

“Kak Chen, Kak Chen sembahyang tak?”

“Ya, saya sembahyang, tapi saya tak sembahyang lima kali sehari. Saya tak pergi masjid. Saya…” Before I could finish my sentence, he went, “HA?! Tak sembahyang lima kali?! Tak pergi masjid?!” in a very surprised way. You should have seen his face!

“Sebab Kak Chen pergi sembahyang di tokong. Orang Melayu sembahyang di masjid, orang Cina sembahyang di tokong dan orang India sembahyang di kuil, betul tak?” I asked him. But he just giggled at the explanation.

And I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be if we were all as colour-blind as Aman :)

The kids in Kampung Mangkok, Setiu, loves to play in the sea. Every evening at about 5:30pm or 6pm, they would be cycling outside TCC House, calling “Auntie!” or “Kak Chen!” to “mandi pantai” with them. These kids have grown so attached to us that the day will not go by without anyone of them calling us from outside our locked gate. And if we did not answer them, they would attempt to attract our attention by clanking our padlock, or chatting loudly among themselves.

So one day, I decided to tag along.

We took a short walk about 150m towards the beach, some of the younger kids cycled there but some others strolled along. As soon as we were about 20m from the sea, the boys started removing their T-shirts and were getting ready to jump into the water. And not long after, the girls followed suit :D

Kimi, the 7-year-old boy on the foreground in the picture above, is a very adorable kid. He knew he couldn’t swim very well (or maybe his parents/grandparents asked him not to go to the deeper waters) so he was seen playing only by the beach. His routine would be to run as fast as he could from the beach and jump into the water as the waves hit the beach. He would then get up, run back to the beach and repeat his “waves-breaking” act :D

The older kids would skin-dive a bit, and swim a bit but for the most part, they would just be playing in the water. Occassionally they would get onto the beach, roll on the sand, make some funny faces and then they would return to the sea.

While you think that they would enjoy themselves so much and forget about the time, these kids would surprise you by knowing when to get out of the water and go home in time for the maghrib prayers :D

Alright.

Terengganu has been officially declared the Waterfront Heritage City this morning but all that I could “visualize” was these:

What does Terengganu remind you of? :D