I love my raya in perantauan. Seriously! I don't ever feel sad celebrating Aidilfitri away from everyone. I enjoy Eid ul-Fitr with strangers more than relatives haha.
I love that our raya is celebrated at our own pace; our own everything. Raya at your own house means many things. These include waking up in your own bed, not needing to queue up in order to use the toilet and you know definitely how clean your bathroom / toilet is ;)
I started cooking my raya feast (like everyone else) the day before 1st Syawal. For the first day of Eid we had rendang daging and lontong accompanied with sambal sotong. We ordered some kelupis (the local ketupat) to be eaten with the rendang of course. Cooking for hari raya on my own is something I know most of my close friends don't experience. Believe me it's really tiring (even with Mr. A constantly helping with everything else) but rewarding =)
1st Syawal was spent mostly at home. This year we received visitors before we had the chance to step out of the house. Furthermore, the kids took their naps in the late afternoon and they chose to sleep more than three hours! They managed to sleep really well even though they were some visitors coming in and going out during those hours.
We went visiting friends on the 2nd and 3rd Syawal. And on 4th Syawal I decided to cook mee kari because I know some of our friends were planning to visit us and I seriously didn't want them to feast only on air sirap and kuih raya. We went out visiting friends the next day and the next and the next... We even got to stuff ourselves with plenty of delicious durians when we visited some locals who own durian orchards here hehe.
