Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Day Trip to Melaka

During my friends' visit recently, we drove north to Melaka city for a day trip. Melaka (a.k.a Malacca in English) is third smallest state in Malaysia. Melaka city is very rich in history and its city centre is a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site.

The drive was super straightforward (from East Ledang to Melaka) and took about 2.5 hours to and 3+ hours from Melaka. I pretty much followed the highway heading to KL direction, and followed the signs on the highway all the way to Melaka (same vice versa on the return). The charges for toll were ~25RM each way.

Since we only had ~3 hours to spare, we went directly to the city centre, Jalan Hang Jebat. The street was packed with tourists (both locals and foreigners). I loved walking down the streets and checking out the local shophouses , most of which were built in Peranakan design.

We had our late lunch at the famous Famosa Chicken Rice Ball restaurant. We ordered the famous chicken rice ball, half Hainanese chicken, salted vegetable, assam fish, stir fried green vegie and of course nyonya chendol. I love love love the hainanese chicken which taste quite different from Singapore's (they use kampung chicken) and loveeee the nyonya chendol. The gula melaka on the chendol is so fragrant, it was super yummy. I would definitely recommend eating at this restaurant when you're ever in Melaka.




After lunch, we walked along Melaka river to Melaka Maritime Museum. This museum is a replica of the Flor de la Mar, a Portuguese ship said to have been carrying loot plundered from Malacca when it sank off the coast of Malacca on its way back to Portugal. The museum presents various history of Melaka from Sultan, Portugese, Dutch, British administration era.


After a relaxing afternoon, we decided to head back to Singapore at around 5 pm. When we returned to the car, we realised that we've been fined for illegal parking (paid a guy who collected 5RM as parking fee but disappeared when we returned to the car). We also ran into more dramas on the drive home (i.e. caught up in frustration with a tailgater, huge traffic on highway and being stalked by a truck driver!). So my lessons learnt from this trip are 1). don't trust a stranger, 2) avoid Sunday late afternoon travel back 3). still try to educate tailgaters :)

Besides all the dramas, I really enjoyed the day trip to Melaka and would definitely be going back to show my family around the city in their next visit to MY.

Have a great week!

Ledang Heights Bungalow Back in Market

This Ledang Heights bungalow is back in market for sale (with 2 years rental).

Beautiful villa and family home with 6 large bedrooms plus a maid room, 2 modern kitchens, open living & dinning, 8 bathrooms and a large outdoor entertainment area with swimming pool, bar, bbq etc.
• 2 storey bungalow
• Lot size: 10,000 sqf
• Built up: 4,900 sqf
• Fully furnished to a high specification
• 7 bedrooms
• 8 Bathrooms
• Gated community with 24h security
• Club house (membership required)
• Neighbourhood Shopping Centre
• Park (with central lake)





For for those interested, please feel free to contact us via the contact form.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

For Catholic Readers: Church in JB - Cathedral of Sacred Heart of Jesus

Finally found and went to a church in Johor :) For Catholics out there, you can go to Cathedral of Sacred Heart of Jesus which is located near Taman Seri Tebrau. I believe that this church was established in 1982. Sunday English masses are held at 7.45 am and 6 pm.

The church is located at:
1729, Jalan Keris, Taman Sri Tebrau,
80050 Johor Bahru, Johor. MALAYSIA
Tel: 07-332 6831 / 332 2831



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Taman Seri Tebrau Hawker Centre, Popular Seafood Eating spot for Singaporean tourists

Dubbed as the best Malaysian hawker centre in Johor, Taman Seri Tebrau hawker centre is extremely popular with Singapore day tourists and the hawker centre has about four dozen stalls selling local delights from Penang fried kuay teow, yong tau foo, prawn mee, dumpling noodles, laksa, chicken rice to various BBQ seafood and more. Food is extremely cheap. Since we were not very hungry, we ordered small amount of food, fried kuetiao, satays, dumpling soup and stir fried green vegie. My fried kuetiao cost only RM4 and was yummy. I liked the dumpling soup and stir fried vegie, but satays were just OK for me (I much prefer Indonesian satays).





This hawker centre is 5 minutes walk from KSL City Mall. There are many other shop restaurants nearby so it's definitely worth checking out.


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Johor tourist arrivals to increase after Legoland opens & Checkpoint traffic update

I hope both Singapore and Malaysia Immigration checkpoints have started planning on expanding and improving the immigration process and capacity, especially at Tuas 2nd Link. Daily morning queues at Singapore Tuas checkpoint has been very bad and miserable these 2 weeks. I've tried being at the SG checkpoint at 6.40 am, 7.30 am, 7.40 am, 8.30 am and almost all were equally as bad with cars lined up to 3/4 of bridge at one point. I do seriously hope that SG checkpoint will start doing something to ease the queue.

Johor tourist arrivals to increase after Legoland opens

Italiano @ Rosmarino

Hi Everyone, I hope you are having a great weekend. Apologies for being M.I.A for quite a while, my work has been super hectic and I've finally found some time to post new articles.

Couple of articles to share on food, yummy food :) Couple of weeks ago, we went to an Italian restaurant, Rosmarino, which has been called as best Italian food in Johor by some Tripadvisor members. Though I have not tried all Italian restaurants in Johor, I find that Rosmarino is the best that we've had (even compared to Gianni's).

For 4 of us, we ordered home made pasta with crab meat (cooked similar to aglio olio style), chicken (forgotten the name :), cod fish, caprese, salad, tiramisu, chocolate mousse and panna cotta desserts as well as drinks. Everything was very nice, except for cod fish which my friend found was a bit fishy. My favourite is the home made pasta, it was delicious. The dinner cost ~RM300 which is quite reasonable given the amount of stuff we ordered. Food was very good, ambience was nice; and with nice company of friends, it was a very enjoyable relaxing evening.

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Overall, I like this restaurant and I love the pasta dish. I recommend giving this place a shot, just skip the fish and stick to pastas and pizzas which are the specialties of the restaurant.

Rosmarino is located at 123 Jalan Damai | Taman Sri Setia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Legoland Johor is 75% complete & set to open on 15th Sept

Legoland Johor is on track to open its doors on 15th September 2012. The development is 75% complete and is expected to receive 10,000 to 15,000 visitors per day. More than 35,000 annual passes have also been sold across the region since last December. Another article also reported on agreement signed between Merlin Entertainments Group and LL Themed Hotel Sdn Bhd to develop and build Legoland Hotel in Nusajaya.

I can't wait for Legoland to open and I seriously hope that Johor immigration office will increase their capacity @ Tuas checkpoint!

Read more: Legoland ready for the crowds - Johor - New Straits Times

Happy Labour Day!