Aryani Resort by Raja Bahrin

http://trengganuholiday.blogspot.com/2010/08/aryani-resort-by-raja-bahrin.html
http://trengganuholiday.blogspot.com/2010/08/aryani-resort-total-cultural-experience.html

In Merang, Trengganu, we happened to visit a resort called Aryani, (actually, we were looking for a restaurant for dinner!) and last night, after googling Aryani, I found that it was the resort built by Raja Bahrin,a Trengganu prince and an architect and conservationalist who built resorts and buildings from old artefacts.

File pictures of Raja Bahrin and his daughter during their younger days

Raja Bahrin was in the news 15 years ago when I read that he spirited away his two children he had with Jacqueline Guilespie, put them on a boat and brought them back to Trengganu because he wanted custody of them and wanted to bring them up as Muslims.  The boy and girl are now grown, they are my 2 big children's age and the girl just got married last year.  They located their mum and reunited with her (they have not met her for more than 10 years.)  So touching!! I nearly shed a tear or two! (when newspaper showed their meeting).

Raja Bahrin invites ex-wife to daughter's wedding
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/2/12/nation/3245994&sec=nation

Pascarl-Gillespie who has been invited to Raja Shahirah’s wedding.

Utusan Malaysia reported that Raja Shahirah Aishah, 23, will wed Syarul Reza, the frontman of local indie band Love Me Butch, on March 7 at Aryani Resort, Merang, in Terengganu

In case you don't know, here is the story....
She was a young ballet dancer in 1980 when she met a Malaysian prince Raja Datuk Kamarul Bahrin Shah who was in Melbourne studying architecture. They married in 1981, when she was 17, and moved to Terengganu the following year, where Raja Bahrin was a junior member of the that Sultanate. They had a daughter, Shahirah (Shah), and a son, Mohammed Baharuddin (Iddin). Raja Bahrin later took a second wife under Islamic marital law. By this time, Jacqueline claims the marriage had turned violent. She returned to Australia in 1985 with their children to visit her sick grandmother, and never returned.

The couple divorced in 1986. Bahrin signed over custody of their two children, an arrangement which was later ratified by the Family Court of Australia. In 1990, she married TV journalist Iain Gillespie. They legally separated in the mid 1990s and formally divorced in 2000. Pascarl married former school friend Bill Crocaris in 2002.
Paternal abduction

In 1992, Raja Bahrin came to Melbourne for a pre-arranged custody visit, after which he failed to return the children. After some days of uncertainty of his and the children's whereabouts, Raja Bahrin surfaced with them back in Malaysia. He appeared in an interview on television, but refused to say how he had managed to smuggle them out of the Australia, saying only it was the "will of Allah".
It was later revealed that with the help of an accomplice, Bryan Wickham, he had taken them by car to Weipa in Australia's far north, and by boat from the Cape York Peninsula to Merauke, in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. From there he took them to Malaysia via Sulawesi, where the authorities retrospectively awarded him custody, and the children were then settled with their father in Terengganu. Wickham spent one year planning the abduction, arranging vehicles and a boat, studying the escape route.[ Wickham later served nine months in an Australian jail for his part   Malaysia is not a party to the Hague Convention, which recognizes custody by the habitual residence of minor children, and so the Convention could not be used to return the children to Australia.

 
Raja Shahirah Raja Bahrin Won Global Battle of The Band!
Who doesn’t know about RAJA SHAHIRAH RAJA BAHRIN. The girl who was involved in one the greatest custody battle in history of Malaysia and Australia. Recently, Raja Shahirah’s band, Lab Rat had been declared as the winner of the Global Battle of the Bands (GBOB) Challenge Malaysia 2008. The event was held at at Titanium Bar & Dance Club in Petaling Jaya. Raja Shahirah is Lab Rat’s keyboardist and vocalist. Congrats to her. I often see her dad does his Jumaat prayers at Masjid As-Syakirin, KLCC.

                                                   RAJA BAHRIN AND HIS KIDS, IDDIN AND RAJA SHAHIRAH




12 Feb 2009 ... RAJA Datuk Kamarul Bahrin Ahmad Shah, who brought his two children home by boat from Aust
thestar.com.my › News › Nation - Cached -


Jacqueline Pascarl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They married in 1981, when she was 17, and moved to Terengganu the following year, where Raja Bahrin was a junior member of the that Sultanate. ...
Biography - Career - Paternal abduction - Reunited
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Pascarl - Cached - Similar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Pascarl


Amazon.com: The Raja Bahrin story: A father's dramatic rescue ...

Amazon.com: The Raja Bahrin story: A father's dramatic rescue mission (9789812047311): Raja Bahrin Shah, Bryan Wickham: Books.
www.amazon.com/Raja-Bahrin-story-fathers.../dp/981204731X - Cached