Back to Malaysia

When planning this #honeyquarter trip last summer, we googled for children-friendly sights in Southeast Asia and found out that there is Legoland in Johor Bahru (JB), in Southern Malaysia, just a bridge away from Singapore! And that´s not all: there is the only Hello Kitty World situated outside Japan!! OMG, we have to go there!
When this plan was said out loud, we found out that Satu's good friend Nina has been an exchange student in a city nearby Johor Bahru and is a friend with a local girl (err, aren't we over 40 called women?) Kamalia in turn has been an exchange student in Salo, Finland. Nina got us connected with Kamalia who helped us to book a hotel in the city centre which is run by her friend who has lived in Gothenburg for 15 years and therefore speaks Swedish. What a small world we live in!
All the planning went smoothly but the actual border crossing from Singapore to Johor Bahru took quite some time. We took a taxi from our hotel Marina Bay Sands to the Woodlands checkpoint. This is a taxi trip that spans the entire length of the whole country and it became abundantly clear how tiny a country Singapore is. Not 40 minutes later, we arrived at the checkpoint. For the first time in Singapore, we encountered a very run-down building. Seemed a bit like it was on purpose. This is the main artery for Malaysian people to come and work in Singapore and you get the feeling that Singapore does not want to encourage that too much. Their effort are to little avail though as the checkpoint and the causeway across the tiny body of water separating the two countries are constantly choked to the limit with traffic. One may cross the causeway on foot, by own vehicle, by bus or by train. We opted for the 5 (yes, five) minute train trip, but when we arrived all the departure except the last one at 11pm were fully booked. Instead of waiting for hours, we lugged our bags through the border control and got in line for the bus. The line was endless but as this was a well tested immigration machinery, we got on a bus eventually with the by comparison ridiculous amounts of luggage (most travelers where carrying a near-empty small backpack as they were only leaving for the day). 10 minutes later, we where at the much nicer looking Malaysian border control, getting our passports stamped for immigration. Welcome back to Malaysia!
Our hotel, The Grand Jade is situated very close to the causeway and every morning we could witness looooooooong vehicle queues to Singapore. We were told that more than 40,000 motor bikes cross the border daily and yes, the drivers has to go through the same border control as any tourist each and every day! One can understand this much better when comparing the prices and salaries between the two countries. Singaporean dollar is three times stronger than Malaysian ringgit meaning that price level in Malaysia is 2-3 times cheaper and for example a monthly salary for a garbage truck driver in Singapore is around SD 5000 (EUR 3,000) which corresponds to a Malaysian executive salary.

Kamalia has five children and they all are on 6 weeks' school holiday until January. We were not really sure if she was happy to have four more to look after but she had planned a great agenda for our week-long stay in her hoods. Our kids got very well along so I guess that the week was a bit easier for her since her three youngest ones and Max played, ran and laughed so much together.

New best friends leaving the zoo

"Titta där"!

The first day she picked us up from the hotel, showed us around in Johor Bahru and its surroundings, took us to her home for coffee, ice-cream and playing with all their toys. We finished the day with a visit to the zoo. It got very clear to us that our children have had a fair share of the animals lately since both of them were far more interested in the rather worn out playground than actual sights: tigers, hippopotamus or snakes. Another anecdote about price differences between Malaysia and Singapore: the entrance fee to the Singapore zoo was about EUR35 per adult and in JB the cost for the whole family was EUR4...

Max and The Usual

In the evening, after all the sightseeing and playing, we were too tired to plan anything special for the dinner so we just walked into the restaurant that is a wall-to-wall neighbor to the hotel. And like it often happens, this simple solution to our hunger situation turned out to be a very decent and good restaurant where we became regular customers who could just order "the usual" (chardonnay to äiti, Tiger beer for pappa, freshly squeezed apple juice to Max, fresh milk to Saga and pizzas/pastas for the whole gang :) )

Fast but not furious

The Angry Birds Park was situated in a big shopping mall just a few hundred meters away from our hotel in downtown JB. We felt like we have to go there since 75% of the family members have same nationality as these furious fowls. Since it was school holiday the place was pretty crowded but the more the merrier, and fun it was. Saga has showed lately very clearly that we don't have a baby anymore in our family; in the Angry Bird park she was so much with in all the activities she could, running around and screaming out happiness when trying a kick bike or a trampoline. Max was just as thrilled as his little sister and wanted to try ALL the activities ALL the time (but did not appreciate queuing at all!) Needless to say, everyone slept well that night :)

HK cookie decorating work shop in progress

And the good rest we needed because Hello Kitty World was on the agenda for the following day. It is an indoor attraction with various walk-through activities with Hello Kitty theme. Kamalia and four of her children picked us up with a minivan. Max was already in love with the whole family and the love grew deeper when he noticed that in the van they had a tv screen and a lot of cartoon films! Both Legoland and HK World are situated outside of the JB city centre but not far enough to watch a whole movie. Max wanted to stay in the car but changed his mind when his idol, Kamalia's eight years old son Puteh, took his hand and led him into the world of fluffy cats. It was a blessing that the boys had each other because it was quite clear for which gender the pink and cute world was created. Magnus felt quite malplacé too and happily retired to the cafeteria to write the travel blog. So in our family Saga and Satu competed who was excited the most. Their interests were far apart e.g Saga didn't appreciate that one couldn't touch anything in Hello Kitty's home but loved the dressing room. Satu found a lot of decoration ideas in HK home but were sad that the clothes were only in children sizes. But we all, even the boys, enjoyed greatly eating Hello Kitty cookies and the HK shows (once about each 2 hours and we saw three of them!). The day was even more packed with action and laughter than the previous with the Angry Birds so in the evening the choice of restaurant was again very easy.

Getting new home decoration ideas :)

Max with the workshop result

Star moment for daughter and mom

After two active days we all needed a day with less adrenaline and more relaxation. Kamalia stayed at home and we headed for another big mall to run errands, eat, look around and play. Christmas is coming and even though Malaysia is a muslim country they seem to decorate and play christmas carols in every single corner and the malls are crowded with everything with christmas on it. In the centre hall of the mall we went, a dozen of merchandises had erected stalls selling christmas presents, decorations, toys, clothes etc. Max went bananas when he saw the toy stall and realized that the meaning of it was that the kids could touch and play with the toys (so that it would be easier to sell them to the parents sweating to pull the kids away from the tables). We had no rush so Max (and Saga on and off) spent at least 2,5 hours standing and playing by the desk. During that time Satu had a job interview over the Skype in a nearby cafe and got her facial done. Magnus strolled around the mall with a tall latte in his hand as the "lattepappa" he is. He found a great gadget store that fuelled his inner nerd for quite some time too.  "Time well spent", thought everyone after the day in a mall. 

We had promised kids a day in Legoland while in southern Malaysia but from various sources we heard that the park is merely for older kids and only very few rides/attractions are for children under 120cm. The entry tickets are not as high as in the mother park in Denmark, but compared to Malaysian price level they were rather pricey. Therefore it was not difficult to say yes when Kamalia proposed a two-family-trip to beach resort in Desaru, a 1h-drive east of JB. A concept of a minivan ride with movies, kids who by now were very familiar with each other and a well filled picnic basket turned out to be unbeatable. After the lunch kids flew kites, played soccer and bathed in the Southern China Sea. We had swimming clothes for them but since it seems to be a custom in Asia to bathe in regular clothes, we allowed our kids to do that too. At the beginning wet clothes felt strange but soon it was business as usual, as it often is with (our) kids and new habits. At least 5kg black sand followed us to the hotel room that day :)

On the way back to JB we stopped in an old resort for a well earned ice cream and talked about the kilometers wide palm tree plantations we saw alongside the highway. They are for producing palm oil and Malaysia is nr 2 producer in the world after Indonesia. It was pretty clear to us that palm oil is a big business and that accusations by environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth may be true. They are claiming that the deforestation caused by oil palm plantations is more damaging for the climate than the benefits gained by it. On the other hand palm oil production provides employment opportunities, and has been shown to improve infrastructure, social services and reduce poverty. Interesting thoughts and discussion in the times of Paris Climate Agreement.

The very last evening in Malaysia Kamalia invited us for a dinner at her home. Since she has lived almost a year in Finland, speaks some Finnish and likes Nordic design we had to remember ourselves that we are not in the Nordics. Nowadays when IKEA furnishes homes on all (?) continents it is not very easy to differ Malaysian home to one in Stockholm. Kamalia had also baked Finnish christmas biscuits  that we ate after a nice and abundant Malaysian Nasi Lemak dinner so the mix of cultures was complete. As soon as Puteh were out of sight, Max started calling for him. According to Kamalia's husband Irwan, he sounded exactly as a local kid while calling "Puteh! Puuuuteeeeh!".We exchanged some gifts between kids to memorize this great time together. It was very nice to get to know Kamalia, Irwan and kids Abid, Damia, Puteh, Myra and Kira. Terima kasih and hope to see you soon again!

Our flight to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam left at 07:05AM. The taxi service in Malaysia is great (and cheap) and especially the taxi company who picked us up at 04:30AM did very well: the booking could only be made via an app, the taxi driver sent several sms via app to confirm the booking details and even to secure that we had woken up in the early morning. The only minus was the air con that they seem to be very keen on here in Asia. As a Norther I am not used to say to my 3-year-old "Soon honey, it will be better when we go outside the door" when he complains that he is cold. Both kids did very well despite the early bird flight time and long queues. Max was again very excited before and during the flight and did not sleep much but Saga still needs her daily naps and we adults enjoyed rather calm flight. Too bad it only lasted 1h 35min... ;)Our next and third last stopover during this trip is Ho Chi Minh City in south Vietnam. We will spend the Christmas there so WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Merry Christmas to all! God Jul allihopa! Hyvää joulua kaikille ystävillemme! Saga & co