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Published: November 12th 2014
It’s almost two weeks since we arrived in Puteri Harbour Marina in Johor, Malaysia. We have been thrown back into civilisation. Our immigration process couldn’t have been much easier - filled out a form and then later that day taken over to the nearby ferry terminal by golf buggy, sat in the deserted waiting room briefly before having a couple of electronic fingerprints taken and we were done.
Curiously, this huge modern international ferry terminal is a new addition to the area, planned for transporting people across to Singapore. However it has spent most of its time empty as it only gets one boat per week from Indonesia as the Singapore port authorities have snootily told them the Malaysian boats are not up to standard.
This marina is a new development and the state’s government buildings (Kota Iskander) are being relocated just next door, so building work is going on everywhere. Its also a tourist destination as the adjoining mall houses Hello Kitty World and Legoland is not far away. As it happens, when we arrived, the place was busy in celebration of Hello Kitty’s 40 anniversary so there was lots of live music and markets.
A limited number of marina guests are allowed to use the hotel rooftop pools & gym - very nice on the hot muggy days we have here - especially the air-conditioned showers with complimentary soaps & shampoos. On a walk with Alex, his floating ring dropped out of his backpack, and when we found it a car had ran over it and torn it, so now Alex was forced to progress to arm bands and is loving the pool time with them.
We took advantage of the marina’s free trip to a market on tuesday evening (lots of nice food to try) and to the mall on thursday for a few provisions.
On friday we took off (sharing a taxi with 5 others) to Singapore for a few days. We booked into the Soluxe Inn in Little India which was an OK room but they were pretty stingy- when we wanted an extra pillow and some sheets to make up a bed for Alex they were not helpful - but it was very near the underground station. To summarise, Day 1 - we took a riverboat cruise around the amazing buildings downtown, walked and ate in
Chinatown (ended by torrential rain). Day 2 - Alex & Na visited the zoo while went to the Asian Civilisation Museum and the free iPod art tour at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel (amazing to have all these pictures/sculptures worth $5 million just hanging on the walls (including a couple by Andy Warhol’s tucked away in the corner of a concourse room)). Day 3 the beautiful and varied Botanic Gardens, taxi back over the border to Luna Ray.
Monday was the start of the Sail Malaysia Rally which we have signed up to. That afternoon we had the official start drinks followed by a technical briefing given by a tall thin american that’s been around here for a while. Yesterday morning we missed out on the zumba class but did make an appearance for the traditional sports - one game involved moving marbles around and the other that I took part in was like hacky-sack but with a small wicker-work ball. My team-mate Kevin & I came joint 4th (out of 5!) but somehow we were still awarded a prize of 30 ringit shopping voucher (about $10) during a very filling breakfast.
We spent some time in the
stoney trees
Botanic gardenspool and I made some more attempts to straighten out pull pit, and that evening was the rally meal which was the usual buffet (but nicer food (or do I mean more westernised) than Indonesia) and traditional dancing. Some participants got dragged onto the stage to join in on the dancing and they had a good band that some locals got up to sing with.
Today was the Tour of Johor so we set off at 8am to the state capital Johor Bahru to take a look at the state Mosque and the sultan’s residence (both from the outside only) and then a museum which had lots of photos of the sultan serving his community and riding his motorbike, and the collections were gifts he had received. Then we headed an hour south to a grand reception at a village, competed with the flies to eat lunch, with more dancing and saw displays of cooking and games (the marble game again and spinning top battles). All in all a good day out, but ended with Alex falling off the marina pontoons and Naomi running back, desperately throwing herself onto her bum to pull him from beneath the
water…. a close call!!!!
We will leave tomorrow afternoon or friday morning to tackle to Melaka Straits up to Admiral Marina, Port Dickson.
Luke
PS I have just posted another video on YouTube - a trip down memory lane as we travelled up the east coast of Australia, ending at the southern end of the Whitsundays. This blog now seems to show the video on this page so it should be directly below:
