Off On Our Next Adventure

Johor Bahru

Johor Bahru was where we completed the border crossing from Singapore. We caught a local bus from our hotel to the Causeway Link bus station and bought our S$5 tickets to get the bus across to Johor. It all went pretty seamlessly, having been given excellent directions from the hotel reception staff. We had an issue with not having small enough change for the local bus, but a kind local woman who had gotten on at our stop pressed a S$2 into Shaun’s hand to help out. This is one of the things I love about travel…experiencing the kindness of strangers. Getting into Malaysia involved having to show our passports  and proof of onward travel…thankfully our first accommodation booking in Bali sufficed, as we hadn’t had time to book  our flight to Bali yet. We figured out how to use Grab (exactly like Uber) and called a car to collect us from the bus station and take us to where we were staying. A tiny hatchback pulled up to collect us with our 4 backpacks and 4 day packs…it was quite a squeeze, but we made it work with my pack laid across our knees and the day packs at our feet.

Our first Airbnb of the trip

We booked this Airbnb a month or so before we left, and when we arrived, it was exactly as promised in the description…for NZ$70 per night, we had a super clean and comfortable two bedroom apartment on the 15th floor in a condominium block with a swimming pool and gym. It also had excellent wifi, a dining and living room area, and most importantly, a washing machine! The kids shared the Mickey Mouse room (they had selected this apartment from the shortlist due to this feature), and we had the other room.

It was awesome being able to catch up with washing and self-cater for a few days. We’ve discovered that in Malaysia, it’s definitely possible to get cheap food, but because we were based near Legoland Malaysia, the only food places near us were geared towards tourists and had tourist prices. It was lovely being able to eat regular breakfasts of cereal, muesli and yoghurt, and baguettes for lunch at the apartment.

Legoland Malaysia

Legoland Malaysia includes the theme park, aquarium and water park as well as the Legoland resort hotel. It looked to have had its heyday about 10-15 years ago, and they’re currently remodeling parts of it. The theme park seemed a bit young for our kids, so we decided to just do the water park visit on our last full day in Johor. At 32 degrees, the afternoon spent in the water was so rejuvenating! We enjoyed some quality family time on the various rides, the wave pool and the lazy “build a lego raft” river.

LEGOLAND water park review by Leo

LEGOLAND waterpark was very fun and this is my review of the park. The best slides and attractions for children were the wave pool which was just a wave pool – there’s nothing really to say – the joker soaker, which had a massive bucket that would get dumped on you, and multiple slides, some big and some little. Some of the single slides were better than whole attractions sometimes! The build a boat was the best part for building Lego boats and seeing how far they would go; the build a raft river was relaxing but very slow and it also had Lego bricks floating in it (BTW the Lego bricks weren’t a bad thing, they were good because you could build with them).

The Twin Chaser, Tidal Tube and Wave Rider were really good for racing each other, and the Splash Out was an average generic waterslide, but it was not boring. The best rides for families were the Lego Slide Racers in which you could race each other on up to six different slides. Only Dad and me went on it because Anna and Mum didn’t want to go face first. The Red Rush was the second best ride in the whole park because you and 2 or more other people sat in a round, red raft and went down a big red slide that twisted and turned, and the Brick Blaster was an amazing raft slide when you and 1 or 2 other people went at a high speed down the slide and got splashed constantly and it also had multiple drops into a concrete mixer shaped tunnel that swirled you around. I didn’t go on the other rides because they were either too babyish or under maintenance and that is my review of the LEGOLAND waterpark.

Anna’s visual diary of Johor Bahru

You can see from Anna’s drawings that we had time to swim in the pool a lot here, visit the supermarket to get supplies and cook ourselves some family meals. Anna also loved the beautiful red flowers growing outside the condo here, and of course, the trip to the water park where her favourite ride was the Red Rush because it was a fun ride that the whole family could go on together.

Travel Admin

Aside from the fun at the waterpark, this stop in Johor provided us with much needed downtime after our crazy Singapore itinerary, as well as doing washing, catching up with travel admin like expenditure (shocking after living it up in Singapore for a few days!) and then planning and booking our next leg. We found our Tioman accommodation, The Station, through Facebook. It’s usually a solo traveller/couples kind of place but Hildi, our lovely host, made an exception for our family, so we were very much looking forward to our stay. We also had to book the ferry tickets online and instead of catching a super early bus, we decided it would be worth the convenience to pay for a Grab (like Uber) to make the 100km trip.

A White Knuckle Ride

When trying to book our Grab car ride to Mersing, we had issues with wifi/mobile data because we still hadn’t sorted a data card for SE Asia. Fortunately, the lovely doorman at the apartments helped out by allowing us to hotspot his wifi so we could call our car. All this delay meant that we were leaving half an hour later than planned, making it a very tight timeline to catch our ferry. When our cab pulled up, our driver was so amused by all our bags in his little car that he snapped a couple of selfies. I was starting to stress out about making it to the ferry on time, and when our driver pulled over to get petrol and offered us a rest stop (20 minutes into a 2 hour drive), Shaun explained that we were in a hurry and needed to get to the jetty by 11.30am.

Well! Our lovely, chilled driver got back into the cat and instantly transformed into a rally car driver who took us on a white knuckle ride through the state of Johor, with no semblance of following distances and dicey overtaking manoeuvres that had me closing my eyes and praying that we survived the journey, let alone make the ferry on time! Shaun was somewhat amused by my grim expression, and when I made the comment to the kids that it felt like we were on a rollercoaster due to the dips in the road, Anna exclaimed “Yes, but this is a lot safer”. Shaun and I just looked at each with raised eyebrows…funny how kids can have such different perceptions to adults.

More Kindness from Strangers

Having survived the journey to Mersing jetty, we had just enough time to collect our boarding passes and pay the Marine Park Conservation Fee, however this needed to be paid in cash and we had no Malaysian ringgit on us. We found an ATM in the Harbour Centre, but it only serviced Mastercard, not VISA. As I went to explain this to the officials, a young man who was also travelling to Tioman asked where we were from. I said NZ, and then he offered to pay our Marine Park Fee, saying we could then pay him back once we got cash out on Tioman or transfer money to him via our Wise account. We were able to do this once we were safely in the boarding queue for the ferry. Once again, we were blessed by the kindness of a fellow traveller. It’s quite humbling being in situations where you don’t always know what you’re supposed to be doing or where you’re going, and we’ve already had lots of moments like this in the short time that we’ve been on this journey. While it’s stressful at times, it is also so pleasing when we do manage to figure things out, or when other people help us.

“Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don’t know and trusting them with your life.”

Paul Theroux