JB & Danga Bay "adventure"

5th September (Saturday)

Went ahead with the Johor Bahru plan with colleagues, despite half of the team pulling out due to reasons like overslept, major hung over, work commitments & etc. Well... actually, there wasn't really a plan in place. We kinda just decided that we'll take a train over and linger around for a while and head for seafood - without knowing exactly where we are going to linger and which seafood place we were gonna patronize.

As it was my first time taking a train over to JB (usually i would take the bus or my other friends would drive me there), I kinda felt like a mountain tortoise and began snapping away...



The journey was rather short - about 45 mins, inclusive of custom clearance.

After we'd passed the JB customs, we decided to head over to the nearest shopping mall, City Square, to linger around before heading out for dinner. Well, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for me as the shops in that mall were exactly the same as the ones we have in Singapore. And the prices were comparable too. So it kinda spoiled my appetite to shop. I was kinda hoping to see more local brands there though.

When it was nearing 5pm, we flagged a cab and headed down to Danga Bay - recommended by one of our colleagues who had checked it out over the Internet. As it turned out, we were far too early for the place - the cafes were closed, amusement rides weren't opened and the whole place just seemed like a ghost town. So much for the internet review...

We walked from one end of the bay to another and back again. In the end, we decided to just sit around and waited for 2 hrs to pass by before any cafe was opened. We just kept hypnotizing ourselves with thoughts of delicious seafood (especially sambal stingray) & etc.



But when the time finally came for us to settle in on our sumptuous meal, we realized that the cafe didn't serve any stingray! So we simply ordered some side dishes (the boys had beer) to fuel up a little before we moved on to try out another place that my other colleague had recommended.

As we began to walk out out of Danga bay, the bright lights from the amusement rides did its magic to cheer us up a little. In short, i kinda thought that's the main and only highlight of the day (sadly speaking). Well, at least it took our minds off the stingray for a while.



Although the day had began with anticipation, followed by disappointment to frustration, it ended off on a good note when we had a wonderful dinner at a Chinese restaurant called "New Hong Kong". And nope, we still didn't get to eat our stingray but we did have very fresh steamed fish and nice crabs :)



Morale of the story?
Don't ever trust official sites. Check out reviews instead...