Hua Mui - The Traditional Kopitiam with Colonial Touch, Johor Bahru

Hua Mui Kopitiam (N1°27.438' E103°45.857') is located between the junction of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby of Johor Bahru town.

Hua Mui Kopitiam of Johor Bahru town

This Kopitiam existed since 1948, it's 61 years ago...and I believe the boss today might be the second generation of the family.

I Love it because I called the Kopitiam of Malaysia. You will see all the Malaysian customers in the Kopitiam at anytime, no matter what races or religions you are from...all of them just like to have cup of coffee over here. The area will be crowded at most of the time.

The customers of the Kopitiam

Beside the coffee and tea, they are famous with the toasted bread. Till today they still using the charcoal oven! And I ordered their Signature dish - Hainanese Chicken Chop. Overall it was Delicious! It's crispy and tasty!
The cost of the foods & drinks here are reasonable price.

Hainanese Chicken Chop (Cost MYR9.80)

Honestly, I still haven't come across the second kopitiam like this in other corner of Malaysia. It's really show the True of Malaysia. That's mean the Kopitiam for Everyone!!

* Kopitiam - it's direct translate from Hokkien Dialect, meaning simple or traditional coffee shop.

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Traditional Watch Shop at Bukit Gambir, Johor

Traditional Watch Shop

Spotted this watch shop at the town of Bukit Gambir. Think of keeping this photo for the future....because I believe it's really difficult to find this kind of Watch shop nowadays in our daily life....
Do you see any shop like this in your area?

Apologies of the poor quality photo, it's snap from my mobile phone.

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Wat Sam Kong Temple

It seems to have been a long time since I blogged a temple. I have a vague plan to blog all the Temples in Phuket, though it could take for ever. A lot of temples in a small area! Some are important, some serve small local communities, some are easy to find, some are hidden away. A couple of weeks ago I visited Sam Kong Temple (Wat Sam Kong) which is only a few km from my house and we've driven past the entrance hundreds of times.

Sam Kong (meaning 3 hills) is in the North East of Phuket Town. The area is an older part of town, and like Kathu just down the road was an important part of the tin mining industry in times past. Like Kathu, many of the locals in this area are Chinese Thais who came to Phuket during the tin mining boom in the 19th century. There is a Chinese Shrine close by too. The Sam Kong temple entrance is about 200m along the bypass road from the Tesco Lotus junction (officially called the Sam Kong junction) towards the main airport road (location on Google Earth).



As usual for a small local temple, not much going on, just a few monks sweeping up leaves. The main building was locked up. A few dogs lazed around the grounds and then all dashed off at once to picked a fight with a visiting stray.





Not a big temple at all, but as always I felt that temple calm despite the 4 lane road a hundred meters away! Flowers had been placed around a tree. The monks had certainly kept the place leaf free. There was a nice lawn in front of the bell tower ("hor rakang" in Thai).





The day before I visited had been Asarnha Bucha Day, one of the most important Buddhist days remembering the first sermon of the Lord Buddha. A few people were still coming to receive blessings.



One of the older monks decided to stop sweeping and have a chat. I think he wanted to practice his English. I asked if he'd been a monk all his life. No! He had never even served as a monk when he was younger. Been too busy getting an education. As far as I could make out he'd worked in the local government in a town in the north of Thailand and now was retired. After working all his life he said he needed some peace and so had come to Wat Sam Kong for 3 months.



After a chat it was time to buy some new brooms from the broom man. Only 20 Baht each.. or maybe that was a temple discount? The temple at Sam Kong is near a busy road, a couple of hundred meters from a shopping mall, only a few miles down the road to Patong Beach. The quiet side of Phuket is never far away.

Jade Garden Seafood Corner at Sungai Rengit, Johor

Jade Garden Seafood Restaurant (N1°21.056' E104°13.435') located at Jalan Hee Seng at Sungai Rengit of Johor.

"Sungai Rengit is a town in southeastern Johor, Malaysia, located near Pengerang. It can be reached from Singapore by boat from the ferry terminal at Changi Village.

Sungai Rengit is essentially a collection of fishing villages and is very popular with seafood lovers. The town usually comes alive during its weekend flea markets. There are also regular Chinese opera performances which liven up the atmosphere for the local population. From Wikipedia."

This small fishing village has a nickname called the Lobster Village.

Initially we don't know which restaurant to choose, we simply drive around and passed by few like Good Luck, Sin Kong, Sg Rengit & Jade Garden. Among all of them, Jade Garden has more customers than others. So we decided to have our early dinner (about 5:30pm) here.

Jade Garden Seafood Restaurant

The fish tanks at the right side of the restaurant are full of Lobsters!

Lobsters Heaven!

While we walked in, their customers are almost fill up the tables! We quickly order our dishes immediately.

The Restaurant environment

1) Spicy Lala clam

2) Vegetables

3) Sweet Sour Crab

4) Steam Fish

5) Signature Lobsters

Spicy Lala Clam

Vegetables

Sweet Sour Crab

Steam Fish

The Lobsters (cost : MYR90.00)

The Damage : MYR205.00 (For 4 adults and 1 child) included drinks.

It's reasonable Cheap! No wonder everyone willing to drive all the way from Johor Bahru to Sungai Rengit (About 110KM) to enjoy the cheap seafood over here!

My comments on the foods : If you want to enjoy the seafood over here, you have to order the Lobsters beside other seafood. Because A)...this place is famous with the Lobsters, and B)...the way they serve others seafood are not as good as those seafood restaurants around Johor Bahru (even there are fresh). Therefore, the only reason for me to dine here is just because of the Cheap Lobsters! Not others seafood....

Foods rated : 3.5/5

The Lobsters : 5/5


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The Phuket Photo Walk

Saturday July 18th was the day of the "Phuket Photo Walk", part of the World Photo Walk, with groups of photographers getting together all on the same day to take photos of their town or city. According to the Worldwide Photo Walk website, there were 900 walks with over 30,000 participants. I had seen the walk advertised in the Phuket Gazette the week before, so logged in to the website to sign up for the Phuket walk. I am a total photo amateur, but I like taking photos and this blog is always quite image oriented as I am a firm believer that a picture is worth a thousand words. Although that might depend on who is writing. Maybe Wordsworth could compete with a photo, but my prose tends to be less poetic, so I rely on photos.



I had no idea what to expect on Saturday. All the photographers were to meet at Cafe 154, Royal Phuket City Hotel in Phuket Town at 9am. I was expecting a whole bunch of pros with huge lenses. I was worried I'd be feeling a bit inadequate, but was happy to see that most looked like normal folks who just like taking photos and I saw several familiar faces. Phuket is not so big, so if you've been here a few years you tend to know quite a few other residents. There were only a few really fancy cameras around. I have a Canon EOS 20D, which is now a few years out of date. I saw an assortment of Canons and Nikons and even a Hasselblad. I think most of us attending were hoping to learn a few things from this walk. This was the first time I tried using the RAW format for taking pictures rather than just recording jpg images. RAW images do not convert the data received by the sensor, so can be manipulated to create just the right photo. They also take up acres of memory!

 

The walk leader was Kim Khamzin, a proper pro photographer with a huge lens. He lives in Phuket and takes a lot of photos with models. You can check out his photos on Flickr: Phuket Photo Project. It took a while for everyone to gather and then we took the group photo, had a little chat and set off towards old Phuket Town which is always good for photography. It's a couple of blocks from the Royal Phuket City Hotel to the old town. Phuket town is not huge, easy to walk around, I never seem to get bored with camera in hand.



Once we reached the clock tower at the corner of Phuket Road and Phang Nga Road, we all went off our separate ways, although over the course of the next couple of hours we bumped into each other around the old town. It was a sunny morning, we were lucky with the weather as it had been rather wet during the week. Everyone took different routes around town. I think most headed directly to the old town, whereas I detoured a couple of blocks south to a street called Soi Taling Chan where you can find a Chinese Shrine, a Mosque and a Catholic Church within a couple of minutes walk.

 

If you have a camera and want to see something of the real Phuket, not the tourist beaches.. get to Phuket Town, take a walk. I had an enjoyable couple of hours wandering, crossing paths with other photographers, stopping for drinks in cafes (it was a hot morning), sampling temples, old Chinese shops and getting plenty of smiles...



 



A few of my favourite pictures from the walk... These doors are on Soi Romanee, a little street in the heart of old town.

 





(Update) The photo above has been reprinted in the Phuket Gazette hardcopy edition this week - see a photo on my Twitpic page.



Many more photos on my Flickr page. I signed up for Flickr a few years ago and had not uploaded anything for over 2 years until this week! Click on the second link for the group page on Flickr for the Phuket photo group, most of the recent photos are from Saturdays walk. There were about 40 people in all, some locals and some resident foreigners. There's a good mix of photos on the Flickr group - it's always interesting to see how different people view the same subject, the photos show what different photographers find interesting.

• My Phuket Photo Walk Photos on Flickr
• Phuket Photo Flickr Group
• Phuket Photo Walk Video on Youtube

After about 2 hours, a bit before midday, I was getting hot and headed back to Cafe 154. On a hot day in Phuket, I do like to see signs saying "Special: Draft Heineken 99 Baht". Yes, please!



As everyone drifted back to the cafe, there was a general passing around of cameras to compare photos and ideas, and it was decided to have another meet up on the 30th July at Cafe 154, Royal Phuket City Hotel starting at 7 - 7:30pm. If you are in Phuket and interested in photography or just want to chat with people who live here, do come along. Kim has asked people to bring CDs or USB sticks with their "best" photos to the meeting. It should be a good chance to learn something, or at the very least a good chance to drink draft Heineken :)

A few more pictures from Saturday...





 

And finally, I saw this little fortune sticker on a small shrine outside a house in the old town. I'll settle for happy.

The Pulai Desaru Beach Resort, Johor

The Pulai Desaru Beach Resort (N1°33.636' E104°15.202') is located approximately 49KM from Kota Tinggi town and about 90KM from C.I.Q. Johor Bahru.

The Main Entrance of the Hotel

The Guest Room

The Reception counter is located at the right after you enter the lobby area.

One of the decoration at the Lobby

The Reception

On the left side, there's a small cafe and convenience store behind the cafe.

The small cafe of the hotel

I found the place is well maintain and clean. It also provide the basic facilities like other 3 Star hotel. I like the swimming pool area, and there's a cafe at the back of the pool.

The Swimming Pool

The cafe located between the Swimming Pool and the Beach.

Children playground

After we walked through the pool, the beach appear and it's clean. Below are some photos of the beach....

Beach of Pulai Desaru Resort

Beach of Pulai Desaru Resort

There water sports equipment for rent

I believe it's ideal place for couple too! :)

I discovered some animals beside the pool later, there are many rabbits and chicken?! They called it the Mini Zoo....

If you are bored, rent a mountain bike and have some adventure around the resort! :)

I had a chat with staff at the reception, the weekend (Friday & Saturday) room rate is MYR285.00 per room - One King Size bed or two single bed. The hotel current promotion is MYR120.00 per room for weekday (Sunday to Thursday). That's very much different from the weekend rate!!

Miniature village house display

Actually, if time allow me to stay on weekday....I believe is a very good breakaway vacation from the City Johor Bahru. You can even have a your Seafood dinner at Sungai Rengit - The Lobsters Village. Shuttle service is available at a minimal charge. Please inquire at the Activities Desk.

The Pulai Desaru Beach Resort
PO Box 29, Bandar Penawar, 81900 Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia.
Tel: +60-7-822-2222 • Fax: +60-7-822-2223
Email: reservation@thepulai.com.my

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