JB Trip (April 2023) - Day 1 of 3

Year 1 Trimester 2 ended, which means it's time for a holiday again!!! This time, I'm going overseas with my university friends. It is a 4D3N trip to Johor Bahru, except that I have to return one day earlier because I have work on the last day. Still, it is nothing short of crazy. Here's how crazy the trip was:

Day 1 started with me waking up at 7:30am, originally intending to walk to KSL from Woodlands Checkpoint. But, upon closer inspection of our AirBnb location, I decided to take bus instead. We booked the apartment at Mount Austin, a whopping triple the distance to KSL. No thanks man. I took public transport to Woodlands Checkpoint.

Customs was rather empty on a Monday morning, so I cleared both sides within half an hour. I reached JB Sentral at 9am. Fuiyoh!!! Sadly, City Square Mall doesn't open until 10am so I had to sit at the Train Station and chill until 10am. Upon opening, I walked into the mall to hunt for food. Settled on JCO Donuts and had 6 of them, followed by Gong Cha's caramel milk tea. Shiok eh!!!

Wallace, Sean, Samuel, Jeffrey and Joshua, 5 of them decided to come in via Woodlands instead of Tuas after seeing that I cleared customs in a flash. They all met up with me at 11am. Whole lot of us then walked to an obscure roadside stall to buy "toddy", also known as coconut wine. I tried one sip and was like "nope, never ever".

After they got 1.5 litres of that drink, we all hopped onto a Grab car and headed towards KSL. Our first stop is the famous Bak Kut Teh stall. We ordered one big pot of bak kut teh and various smaller dishes. After my 6 donuts, I was about half-full, so I didn't finish my rice. Still gotta admit that this stall opposite KSL is one of the best Bak Kut Teh in JB!!!

After all of us had our stomachs filled, Wallace and me went to buy our Lanavape before we all Grabbed to Ikea Tebrau. Walked around and explored the mall a little before finally spending a huge chunk of time in Decathlon, playing table tennis. LMAO. There was this table tennis fully set up and we all just played our hearts out there. As 3pm neared, we all left and again Grabbed our way to the AirBnb place.

After some confused fumbling and a lot of cursing and swearing, we made it into the apartment. It was nice and spacious, damn shiok. We all chose our rooms and I'm bunking with Sean. After chilling and resting for a bit, we all planned the rest of our night. We planned to visit a night market and settle our stomach again. And we all agreed to walk back to Aeon Tebrau, which was right beside Ikea.

It was the worst decision of our day. JB really isn't for walkers. We all had a hard time crossing the roads without traffic lights and the walkways are not even proper walkways. We got splashed left right center by all the cars passing us. We almost decided to cut through a hospital to use as a shortcut. It was a miracle all of us even made it to Aeon in one piece. 

We walked around at Aeon and I bought myself the Shihlin fried chicken. Holy moly was the chicken big and juicy, and it cost way lesser than Singapore's. Unbelievable. We almost wanted to watch a movie at the cinema but as usual, movie preference is something a large group will never agree with. Ultimately, with chicken in one hand and pumped up moods, we headed for the arcade. We decided to play some of the arcade games to kill time because it was still too early for the night market.

We raced each other on the driving game until we don't even wanna drive. I think after all of us drove the real car in real life, these games do not appeal to us anymore. The first two drives are really fun until it became super boring. It actually became a chore to finish up the credits. Damn. But yay, we made it to night market time!

We walked across the bridge to outside the Ikea building and saw a small night market there. We proceeded to settle dinner there. Me and Joshua walked around to look at the food while the 4 others went to buy fireworks. Yeah, fireworks. LMAO. Two foods caught our attention, mango smoothie and satay. I gotta say, the mango smoothie tastes exactly like Bangkok quality, no kidding. It is that good.

Then it was the satay stall. Wah, we from far far already can smell the aroma. Joshua followed the aroma with his nose and focused onto this satay stall. Their mutton satay is so damn good I bought 20 sticks back. It is the best satay I have ever eaten in my life. Sadly this night market is temporarily set up for Ramadan only.

We all then headed back to Aeon Tebrau to buy our alcohol before the 9pm limit. Jeffrey, Joshua and me got Soju bottles while Sean got some beer. Wallace the alcoholic got both Soju and beer. Samuel only bought one teeny can of Budweiser. Good boy Samuel, be like Samuel. Then we all headed back to our AirBnb with all our foods and drinks.

It was talk cock sing song for the rest of the night. We all drank some of those drinks (excluding that bottle of toddy, eeyeer!!) and had a great time. It is only our first night so we didn't go down hard on the drinking. It was a peaceful knockout for me after seeing Joshua knock himself out on his bed at midnight. Day 1, out!

Click here for Day 2!!!