Alan suggested driving up to Frasers Hill for the Easter weekend, with our respective families, and mum and dad.

Fraser's Hill?? Gosh, I haven't thought of going there since we last were, in 1980. I have pictures of me riding a pony, and memories of staying in a house with a ping pong table, which we used a lot because there wasn't anything else to do!

But it was also charming. There was a fireplace and the caretakers cooked delicious meals for us, serving us toast in a silver toast rack. Funny the things you remember...

The most recent thing I'd read about this hill station, which the British used as a retreat since the 1920s, was that the British high commissioner to Malaya, Henry Gurney, had been ambushed and shot there in 1951 by the communists. According to Chin Peng's memoirs, what everyone had thought had been a great coup by the communists (killing Britain's highest officer in Malaya) had actually been unpremeditated. It was a lucky accident. Gurney had thrown himself across his wife to save her, which was very heroic, I thought.

Anyway, there is a plaque to commemorate the spot where he had been gunned down but I never saw it on the drive up. The drive is still sickening. The dramamine I'd taken barely put a dent in my nausea and dad was of course just as sick as me.

We'd actually driven from KL on Friday around lunchtime, having left for KL the night before and stayed overnight in a hotel. The drive up was uneventful but then Alan's new Saab gave up the ghost the moment we parked it in the grounds of Singapore House. Amazingly it had gone all the way until then! Hours of phonecalls later he and Jonathan figured it was the fuel pump which was dodgy but there was no fixing it. Arrangements had to be made for the car to be towed down the hill on Sunday morning and repaired in KL on Monday.

So that was a real dampener for my poor brother. As for the rest of us we were slowly being won over by the quiet charms of the place. All right, so the restaurants and shops had seen better days but the weather was just lovely and it was beautifully tranquil. I told Jonathan that as a child I had a book of stories about Borneo (hard cover, musty, eaten alive by silverfish, with black and white illustrations of slow lorises and mousedeer -- magic!) and this was how I had envisaged the Borneo rainforest to look and feel and smell.

The bungalow we stayed in had a beautiful outlook but though clean, was rather drab and old. I thought we had paid too much for it at S$210 a day, not including meals. In fact, lying in the tiny bed at night with a child sleeping next to me, it felt a little spooky too, and dogs barking didn't help...

Anyway, the first day went well until we dragged the kids on a nature trail with us and Isabel, already complaining nonstop, picked up a leech on her ankle. The child screamed like she was being murdered. I was convinced that a cop would come out of nowhere and arrest us for abusing her. She really was terrified and she would hardly stop sobbing and screaming while Jonathan ran to the nearest house for salt.

That of course was the end of all nature walks for the children. The next day, J and I did one on our own. They are very pleasant, really, and not difficult.

The most spectacular thing was the mists, which rolled in swiftly at dusk, enveloping the house on the hill we stayed in. On the second night Jonathan, dad and I were out when it happened and I watched the mists crawl in and swirl around an abandoned stone mansion. It was deliciously ghostly.

If the drive weren't so puke-inducing I'd suggest going to FH more often. There's a lovely forgotten feel about the place. On Sunday we had lunch at the Smokehouse, which was absolutely charming, and out of the colonial days. Or even a farmhouse in France, or something. At night we sat around and watched a movie or played Cadoo. It was relaxing and the cold weather was just great!