Austine’s mom and a couple of her friends came to Singapore for a vacation, so their host Tyne organized a day tour to Johor Bahru (JB), Malaysia on August 8. She found an agency that rented out a van for a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 10 people at 55 sgd per person. The payment was inclusive of a roundtrip drive from Singapore to JB, 6 hours tour whose itinerary depends on the passengers, and a seafood lunch.
We left Singapore at around 8am and got to JB at noontime. Our first stop was at Senibong Seafood Village for a sumptuous lunch of cereal prawns, chili crab, sweet and sour fish, seafood soup, beans and okra in shrimp fry, roasted chicken with crispy skin, and a platter of fresh watermelon, honeydew melon and papaya slices. The lunch alone made our payment worth it.
There was one funny instance, though. When the server took out the nearly empty plate of beans from our table to make room for the fruits, she scraped the remains onto the plates of two people as if imposing them to finish it. Hahaha.
yummy yummy lunch
Tummies full, we drove around to Sultan Abubakar’s Mosque, Grand Palace, Clock tower, fruit market and the Zon mall. The sweltering heat made us lazy to get out and about. I even dreaded posing for pictures. Imagine that. Me, the photoholic!
My two favorite points in the trip were the grand palace and the fruit market.
The palace’s well manicured lawns reminded Cate of Alice in Wonderland. We only paid 5 ringgit for the ticket to see the palace’s museums.Unfortunately, the places that housed the most beautiful displays had a “no photography allowed” prominently displayed at every turn.
Cleopatras infront of a mosque instead of a pyramid
Grand Palace grounds
Alice in wonderland
sad striped cats
hiding behind the hedges
At the fruit market, I got so excited when I saw my favorite lansones and mangosteen and bought a kilo each. The others got excited about the durian and bought an entire one. I tried it, but as usual I hated it. Ick. So 5 of them finished the entire thing by themselves. Hahaha.
heaven!
never been a fan of durian
yet another clock tower (there seems to be one in every country)
lovely hotel architecture
I also loved the Zon Mall facade. Looks like something out of Europe.
European-looking place
On the way home through Malaysian Immigrations, the guy actually asked for Cate’s number. The immigrations guy processing my papers saw what happened and raised his eyebrows at him. Hahaha. Well at least this was quick unlike on our way to Malaysia when we got stuck in a very slow moving line. We got home at past 9pm, drained but happy, the feeling that comes after all travels.