Lightning strike

It's been raining a lot in this part of the world. There's heavy thunderstorm every 3 days. We even experienced lightning which struck near our current house. The strike caused a very very loud noise, the house smelt of burnt circuit and our poor Chihuahua almost had a heart attack due to the shock. The lightning strike damaged a couple of electronic items. Lessons learnt: make sure your house content is covered by insurance and always use surge protectors for important electronic items.

Food - Chapter I

I promised to write about some of the eating places that we've tried in the surrounding area. I'm still yet to explore a lot more places, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here are a few that I took note of

Old Town White Coffee

This place was my first outing for lunch with our neighbours and the chain is one of the largest kopitiams chain shops in Malaysia. They're very famous for their white coffees. I don't drink coffee so I'm not sure how good the coffee is but I've been told that the coffee drinks they serve are pretty good.

I ate a couple of times at the Nusa Bestari branch which is located at No 2 Jalan Bestari 7/5, No 1 Jln Bestari 6/5, Taman Nusa Bestari.

The menu is quite diverse, but I've only tried:
- Oldtown Ipoh Chicken Hor Fun
- Oldtown Nasi Lemak Special

Both are quite good. I can't remember the prices but the meals are very reasonable (cheap by Singapore standard).

Overall experience & feedback: Not a fancy place, but easy place for quick meals, cheap pricing. 3 spoons out of 5 from me.


Pictures courtesy from www.oldtown.com.my:


Hawker Centre (next to Old Town White Coffee @ Nusa Bestari)

There are more than 10 stalls clustered in this hawker eating place. At night, the place is quite crowded with locals who come to drink beer and eat cheap local food.

It's pretty much the same as hawker centre in Singapore, you can find quite a variety of food ranging from local laksa to carrot cake.

I've tried the fried kue tiao a couple of times and I quite like it. It cost RM4 per plate. The serving is quite generous and will surely fill you up. The "chef" puts his heart in frying each plate of kue tiaow. If you watch him fry the kue tiao, he seems to be conducting a symphony of orchestra :)





Overall experience & feedback: Good for cheap local meal, the fried kue tiao is good and cheap. 3 spoons from me.


Chef Wah

This Chinese restaurant is tucked away near Jalan Persiaran Perling 2. Unfortunately I do not have the exact address of the restaurant and Google Maps is showing a very outdated map of the area (the road doesn't exist in Google Maps). From memory, you'll be driving from Bukit Indah area, past Tesco (Jalan Indah, Bandar Nusajay) on your left, go straight and turn right to go into the smaller lane along Jalan Persisiran Perling 2. You'll see Ali Cafe (with it's white circles decor on the building) and a Muslim curry eatery, continue til the end of that lane and you'll see Chef Wah at the corner. The restaurant is quite packed with local Chinese. To me, it looks like the local version of Crystal Jade. Looking at the pictures in the menu, the chef seems to be quite reputable (picture below).

We ordered 3 dishes: String beans, E Fu mien (I can't remember how this is spelled - crispy noodle with gravy and seafood) and soup (fish bone brew).




Total cost of the meal was around RM50.

Overall experience & feedback: In Johor standard, the meal was slightly more expensive but I enjoyed the meal very much and would definitely go back again. I especially like the soup and the noodle. Afterall, the meal it's still cheaper than Singapore's :)


Ayukama Japanese Buffet Restaurant

Located in Sutera, this is one of the few Japanese restaurants in the area. This buffet restaurant offers sashimi, sushi, teppanyaki, ramen, udon, basically pretty much everything that you'd normally order in a Japanese restaurant.



The buffet costs around RM50 per person. You can eat as much as you like, but for me the food was just OK.

Overall experience & feedback: Quite expensive in Johor terms, the sashimi was just OK, overall it didn't blow me away.


Nyonya Joy Restaurant

Small peranakan restaurant located at 2, 4G, Jalan Bestari 5/2, Johor Bahru, 81300, Taman Nusa Bestari.



We ordered Fried chicken wings, ikan assam pedas, cincalok Eggs and Steamed lady fingers with sambal paste. The cincalok eggs is rather standard, but I quite like the ikan assam pedas and steamed lady fingers with sambal paste. Both taste quite salty sour and a little bit spicy (would have preferred it to be a lot spicier). I didn't like the chicken wings though, it was too dry and oily for me.



The meal cost 59.40RM.

Overall experience & feedback: I think I'll go back again to try other dishes. The restaurant staff were all very friendly.


Hai Wan Restaurant

Seafood restaurant located at No 2, Jalan Indah 16/7, Taman Bukit Indah, Nusajaya Johor.

There are quite a no of seafood restaurants in the area. We just randomly picked this restaurant. We had broccoli with scallops, cereal prawns and butter fried chicken. The chicken was the tastiest out of the 3 meals, the other 2 are quite nice too. The meal cost 50RM.



Overall experience & feedback: We will go back again and try other dishes and/or order the butter fried chicken again.

Puteri Harbour

I meant to write about this place a while back, but was distracted by other things :)

Puteri Harbour is the waterfront development in the Nusajaya Iskandar area. As of now, this area offers a nice relaxing waterfront which is the docking place for yacht and a restaurant. We've been to the place a few times and it's about 10 minutes drive from East Ledang. You can see Singapore across the water, so we're actually not very far away from Singapore.

There are quite a lot of constructions going on in the area. We were told that the developer is constructing quite a large retail and resort project. Based on the Nusajaya official site, here's the development plan for Puteri Harbour:

Puteri Harbour’s development components comprise waterfront residential (prime waterfront properties), commercial development (offices and retail shops), FAME ( Food & beverage outlets, Arts, Music and Entertainment), transportation hub (water transport terminal for water taxis and ferry, bus terminal, tram and LRT station), a marina (berthing, chandlery and accommodation facilities for boaters, yachters, boat/yacht charter owners/operators and water sports owners/operators) and a Cultural Park initiated and owned by the Johor State Government.

http://www.nusajayacity.com/nusajaya_map_puteri.php

We certainly hope that this will be completed soon as we'll then have more facilities in the area.

When we were there, we saw quite a number of western expats who live in their yacht. My husband is already thinking about building a yacht as his next project (after our house).


What do you think about this one?




In our last visit, we met a Malay couple who have just finished taking their pre-wedding photos. The bride to be is quite pretty. They look very nice so I asked them for a picture and they graciously agreed :) Best wishes for the wedding!

I always order Nasi Goreng at the restaurant because it's easy and quite good. A meal for two would usually cost around 50 Ringgit.


Last but not least, we also saw this in our last visit:


So for anyone who's interested in working in the university, it's time to get in touch with them. They're certainly hiring for opening the campus next year.