3 posts tagged “johore bahru”

I took over a hundred of pictures when I was out of my backyard recently, but I won't write it in a regular 'out-of-town weekend in review' method because I don't go by that format anymore.

Somewhere in the southern part of the Malay peninsula...

This special putu piring is yellow in colour, thanks to the turmeric powder added into the flour mix. Only good to eat when it's steaming hot.

These people are serving themselves a lunch of a typical Malay wedding cuisine, which happens a lot during school holidays. You can't see the dishes, because it's supposed to be mysterious.

I had a massive lump of special ais kacang at a food court nearby the Diamond Jubilee Hall, that also serves really tasty roasted char kueh [?] and apparently the best sotong kangkung [according to two SMSs found at the foodie section on the last Sunday Star]. Really tasty Kacang Pool / Foul beans can be found at the same food court, but only for breakfast.

A stall at the Sunday night market near the Larkin Stadium sells Laksa Pening. The stall operator knows it's a typo... and currently waiting for someone to redesign the label.

About a half hour away from the capital is the old capital city of Kota Tinggi [back in the day, I think], which is quite a lifeless place, unless you're into outdoorsy stuff like mining for bauxite in Teluk Ramunia or climbing Gunung Panti [good for collecting mineral water]. The government buildings are apologetically stuck in the 1980s...

There was a kenduri doa selamat at my grandmother's last Saturday [my dengue fever adventure has something to do with it]. I followed my mother's brother's family back to Johore Bahru on Friday afternoon. The four-hour journey had an interval at Pagoh R&R, where the five of us had tasty Mee Bandung. The weather that day was... like how forecasts would describe as 'overcast'. By sundown, we reached the familiar Larkin Garden.

Several hours into the night and the kitchen was getting choppy and slicey. What's going on? Laksa Johor's what's going on.

Another interesting sight was a heap of rambutans in the garage, plucked off the tree at the back of the house. They were very delicious, but not for me, because I don't like the lengkang / wood thing that sticks to the flesh.

Bedtime only came at around 3 in the morning. I thought it was impossible for me to be up by 7 a.m. for the famed Pasar Tani at the stadium, but I thought wrong! I was happily skipping away to the market by 7.30 a.m. I am typically a pasar malam person because I can never wake up so early on a weekend so on that morning, I was fascinated by the crowd with their basket trolleys, buying live seafood, breakfast and second-hand quilts. Have a look:

I recommend the nasi lemak stall on the highest tier of the parking lot, next to the roti naik stall; the spices used in the sambal in quite different from the rest.

Also, when in Johore Bahru, remember to stop by the Kacang Pool / Fool / Foul stall by the fire station. This stall even has its own website!

Now that I've done the market and breakfast, time to get ready for the kenduri. I was initially freaked out by the amount of ladies who were there to recite some prayers... and then came the lead 'imam', Datin Leha [Tun Musa Hitam's sister]. I stayed outdoors while observing my relatives pack goodie bags for the guests. I was quite sleepy so I took a half-hour nap at the porch. After the prayers were done, everyone swarmed the buffet table of Mee Siam, Roti Naik, Nasi Ambeng and of course, Laksa Johor. For some unknown reason, I underindulge by eating just one chap of laksa and a piece of layer cake. After everyone has left, I headed in to have a proper nap. Sleeping on the floor was never this comfortable.

Two hours later, I had an idea of visiting the city. With my cousin, we went to the area known as City Square. I was a little self-conscious, knowing that it's a Saturday and there will be numerous little crowds of teenagers who will stare at my hair, so we moved away from the mall and walked into the area of old-school shophouses. Many shops were closed and the ones that are open are lottery agents, kopitiams, sundry shops and Tamil music shops [which inspired me to want to buy a Sivaji The Boss DVD]. If you have read one of my recent entries for I Got Shot, you should be familiar with Bee, who runs a shop on 9, Jalan Dhoby. It's called 'the girl next door', and apparently it's the only shop of its kind in JB. So, if you're stuck in JB without a passport and miss the shops at the Jalan Telawi area in Bangsar, this should do the trick.

This little boutique neighbours a bar, equally intriguing with its vintage furnishings. Bee was telling me about an olympic-themed party happening on that night with Twilight Actiongirl on the decks, where she will be dressed as a boxer. Hmm, it should be a little interesting to check out how Johorean hipsters get it on...

Here are some sights of abandoned shophouses that are up for rent. Will someone turn this into a Haji Lane or something?!

The next day, before returning to KL, I walked around the neighbourhood to look at the windows and gates of the small bungalows.

It's time to head back to KL.

Hurrah. I am back from a trip to see my grandmother, relatives, Singapore and my relatives who live in it, and the city of Johore Bahru.

I took the 2211 train to JB from KL Sentral on the 14.12.07, but it was delayed for almost two hours. While waiting, some of us in the waiting 'hall' watched Anugerah Skrin on some LG screens.

Just before midnight, the gates were open, and naturally, all of us rushed down to find our coaches. Mine's quite near to the front, where the engines are. Everyone's settled down, and by 0000, we were already leaving KL Sentral.

Some torturous 1.5 hours I had to go through to fall asleep. It was frustrating to be awake by the kling klang and wobble the train is making, when I've been sleepy while waiting for the train earlier. I look around me; some were 100% wrapped in blankets, some are already snoring, and behind me were 2 Belgian-accented men who passed out by the time the train reached Kajang.

After getting bored of adjusting myself here and there, I finally fell asleep and the next thing I know, I have reached Kempas Baru, which was just a stop away from Johore Bahru. I couldn't remember dreaming of any dream, probably because the train shook the brain cells out of me. Might as well freeze them, too, as it was insanely cold in the train.

Oho yes, those are my new Viktor & Rolf glasses. When I first got them, I thought of writing an entire post about them but... maybe not.

The time was 7 a.m. I received an SMS from Fiqa, one of my cousins who will escort me from the station, that they will be doing their shopping at the Pasar Tani first before fetching me. Waaahhhh!! The Saturday Pasar Tani near the stadium in Larkin Garden is JB's most important attraction on Saturday morning [other than the causeway checkpoint, of course]. If the train wasn't delayed, I could have been happily shopping for veggies, meat and breakfast!

But anyway, after getting scooped by my cousins, I was brought to the Pasar Tani because they have one more thing to buy - tetel. Tetel is the cow's mostly fatty meat part, when the butcher separates the muscle from the fat. My grandmother is going to cook Mee Rebus, I heard. I could show you a picture of how tetel looks like, but, I don't want my vegan readers to run away.

Here are some scenes from the Pasar Tani, though.

We had these fried mushrooms for breakfast.

I also bought a Johorean delicacy, which is Roti Naik [buttery circular bread loaf] from this stall that also sells carrot bread [though, the correct Malay word for carrot is 'lobak'].

Returning to a little house just meters away from the Pasar Tani, all of us had a nice meal of lontong and nasi lemak. Outside the house were people repairing the termite-infested, 50-year-old roof.

Well, the termites are long gone but the wood had gone rotten. One old thing about this house, too, are the switches that have been there ever since my grandparents bought the house.

And for lunch, we had some steamed tapioca, dried fish and a very spicy sambal ikan bilis.

At around one in the afternoon, after I refreshed myself, I went to the Larkin Bus Terminal [just next to the market] to catch a bus to Singapore. The fare was RM 1.3, and it will take me to Queen Street [Rochor Road]. I got on and soon, I was at the Woodlands checkpoint, queueing up at the immigration for probably an hour [the queue I was in was problematic]. Luckily, the mak cik I met at the bus terminal was there to guide me through the process.

After that, I got down to board the bus. But I was separated from the mak cik so I was a little freaked out if the bus I am on was the right one or not. It stopped at the Kranji MRT station. I thought, "OK, maybe I should check out how the suburbans commute in this country" so I got off the bus and took a looooooong train ride to Harbour Front. To be precise, 16 stops away.

The weather was gloomy, and almost immediately, it started to rain heavily. The whole island is showering. I thought about what to expect at Harbour Front. There was a young boy seated next to his mother, going "Kranji is like the biscuit when you eat it, it is like kranji kranji". Funny boy who thought that 'crunchy' is spelled that way! When 'kranji' is actually a... well, sort of fruit. You know how the pantun goes... 'Sorong papan tarik papan, buah keranji dalam perahu'.

Anyway, after that tiring train ride, I finally reached Harbour Front. Destination : St. James Power Station. Why, that's where the FashBash event is held!

But with all the rain, how am I going to shoot people? And there was something funny about the place; it's covered all the way from Vivocity, but it has a 10-meter open gap from the entrance. I had to rush through the rain to get in. Then, there was another open space which I had to run through and up the stairs to get into the place where the stalls are. I was a little drenched, but I went on to browse the stalls.

As you can see, it was a very dark place to do your shopping. It turns into a club at night. I find it difficult to  look through the vintage dresses, designers clearance, DIY accessories and the crowd. What a let-down.

After an hour of hovering about, I returned to Vivocity to get a snack in a form of Mee Siam. Other than that, I was delighted to find Apple displays and keyboard being used as the mall's directory.

I took the train to Orchard Road to check out the Christmas decorations but sadly, I had to stay mostly indoors because it was still raining. I finally made up my mind to head back to JB. I dropped by graniph at Bugis Junction to buy some tees, then headed to the bus terminal in Rochor Road, paid some S$ 3 and was brought back to the Larkin Bus Terminal. From there I took a cab back to the house.

My cousins then returned from AEON Tebrau with dinner, along with Mak Uda from Kulai. We ate Mee Kari, Nasi Ayam, Mee Rebus [Fiqa's favourite] and others. Just before midnight, I passed out.

The next day, Sunday the sixteenth, we were visited by Ija and her family, Mak Kintan, Uncle Romi etc. to have a 'convoy' to a wedding somewhere in Yishun, Singapore. This is lovely. After breakfast, we headed off in our own Unser and Kompressor to the Causeway and did a little queue to leave Johore for Singapore.

OK, just for comparison purposes, I shot a block of flats on the way to the Causeway. So that you can look at it, then look at how the flats are in Singapore, and laugh sneakily.

After about an hour of queueing, we finally made it to the... um, PIE? BKE? One of the expressways, nonetheless. Our lovely driver decided to miss the Yishun exit and announced that "we are having a leisure round in Singapore". To tell you the truth, we were a little lost. But after a U-Turn, we got back on the right road and came across a little township.

Heheh, you can start comparing.

After a few rounds of block-searching, we finally arrived at the correct block and were greeted by our relatives. Soon after that, we were shown the buffet.

I normally dislike the idea of putting up pictures of my relatives or family, because I fear that they might run after me, but, well, hmm, there's nothing wrong with it, right?

So this is what we had. Nasi Beryani and some chicken and mutton dishes, and pale fried meehoon, which is how they do it here in Singapore.

After some eating, the groom, all dressed in... er, a traditional Malay suit [probably heading to the bride's house], is escorted by a couple of Kuda Kepang dancers and kompang players.

The featured wedding singers were singing Hindi songs non-stop, which made some wonder if it's really a Malay wedding.

My relatives and I were invited to the groom's family's flat. We checked out the hantaran, or gifts, that the bride's family has sent. A basket of Marks & Spencer products, some meringues and cupcakes that have been eaten and others...

My cousins and I got bored, so we ventured out to see what a typical Singaporean HDB is like.

That fell down from up there.

I bought a S$ 0.8 can of soda from a sundry shop. Hm, it is no wonder that many Singaporeans like to do their grocery-shopping in JB.

We returned to the block we were at, when a group of bikers came rushing in, like Mat Rempits at Dataran Merdeka on a Saturday night. But in Singapore, they don't do kap chais, but donut-looking-tyred high-performance motorcycles.

Haha, turns out that the groom is a Mat Motor! So he brought his gang over to celebrate the arrival of the bride, complete with an exhaust orchestra [seriously, these Mat Motors were prrreeennngggg-ing in harmony].

After the pair had settled upon the... erm, 'pelamin', his Mat Motor friends took turns to display a dramatic silat performance.

And the crowd looks on...

The newlyweds gave a short speech, and posed for photographs with their parents after that.

A little while after all of that, my relatives and I got back into the car and began our city roam. We left Yishun at about four p.m. and took the highway to the city centre and admired nice buildings along the way. Some of the things we talked about during the journey were people who are going crazy after they learned that there's gold in the rocky beaches in Mersing, the HINDRAF rallies and how they have 'connections' with powerful force from the Western world, how cheap it was to buy tins of lychees in Woodlands back in the day [some would even cross the causeway on foot, carry a dozen tins], me teaching how to pronounce 'Takashimaya' the right way and how those tattoo-laden, bleached-haired Mat Motors were able to perform the silat.

Yeah, it was a cloudy day, but it didn't rain, unlike the day before.

Soon we were back in Woodlands. We decided to drop by Woodlands Centre to spend the remaining currency we had.

I only bought a hairband, then decided to chance back my S$ to RM. About 45 minutes of roaming around, we got back to the car and headed to the checkpoint.

When we reached the house, I immediately passed out on the couch for an hour. Then I took a shower and slept after watching Asian Idol.

On Monday, my cousins and I sent Mak Uda to a bus stand on Jalan Skudai. After that, the rest of us headed to Plaza Angsana and roamed about. I might go depressed if I were to work in a shop at this mall. Nothing here excites me.

Luckily there is one bookstore that sells old-school books, translated by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka [DBP].

I particularly enjoyed the pictorial encyclopedias that looks like it's from the 1980s.

Too bad that we had to leave right away because our lovely cousin / driver has been waiting for us in the car. We drove around the small roads near Lido Beach, the ones that lead to posh low-rise apartments, hotels, old-school schools and some graveyards. I managed to photograph this tombstone mason [I hope I used the correct term] at work.

It hss been raining since morning, so we couldn't get out of the car to enjoy the outdoors. It's also difficult to photograph when the raindrop-covered windows are up. But there are some pictures that are nice enough to put up on here.

We wanted to go to The Zon, a duty-free complex, but the parking lot was not covered, so it discouraged us to go there because we weren't into walking in the rain. But I am the crazy one, so I asked one of my cousins to shoot me going ballistic in the rain, with the Straits of Tebrau and the Senoko power plant as my background.

We had enough of brooding in the car, so we headed to Holiday Plaza, once known as the longest mall in Asia [back in the 1980s]. They have a lot of funny things, like, fake designer stuff, cheap fashions, handphone shops and not much else. We were all hungry, and the only appealing place to eat there was Pizza Hut. This outlet is probably the last outlet in the country to keep their old-school logo.

Anyway, after makan-makan and borak-borak, we headed to Kampung Melayu Majidee to buy pisang goreng with my favourite chilli soy sauce, but it was too late. Instead, we checked out the pasar malam. Still raining.

One thing that's rare in KL, but common in JB is Nasi Ambeng. It's white rice with little portions of meat, veggies and fried noodles.

We bought some dishes to eat with the rice and noodles we had back at the house. After the dinner, I had my last sleep in JB.

The next morning on the 18th, I was sent to the JB train station to board my 0934 [naturally delayed by a few minutes] train to KL.

First time travelling on a train during the day enabled me to enjoy the scenery. Scenery like...

The train stopped for a while at Kluang station. To be precise, a minute. So I didn't get to enjoy its old-schoolness and just shot several pictures of the station and its nation-famous coffee shop. Note that I have wrote about this several months back, during Ramadan.

Back in the train, there's nothing to do but to sit still, read Mastika, watch a documentary on ginkgo trees and look out the window.

Here are some of the stuff I have recorded in my little notebook during the trip.

- So far I have seen a lot of projek terbengkalai [unfinished projects] buildings and houses. Now I am in Kulai. There is a KFC drive-thru and a food court. I've beeing seeing loads of shops called LionMas. The Giant supermarket is known as Kulai Utama.

- An old man from Scotland is going to Gemas. He used to work in Gemas railway station. He's going there to see how things have changed.

- Many stations like Batu Anam and Chamek are abandoned. They are now just graffiti-ed old huts. Some areas are flooded.

- It's odd to see the Visit Malaysia Year 2007 poster at the JB station saying 'celebrating 50 years of nationhood' when Singapore is younger and they are way more advanced [you really can't run away from comparing things when you're in Singapore].

- People I saw along the tracks were flying kites, herding buffalos, laidback-living people.

I reached KL at about five p.m. and immediately took a cab back home, where my puffy pillow waits for my embrace.

Thank you very much to Mak Tok for allowing me to stay at her house, Kak Ayu for taking us around JB, and my cousins who have been so nice to me.