Last weekend (Malaysia Day weekend) we headed off to Johor Bahru to attend my cousin's daughter's wedding. Since the wedding was on Saturday, we decided to get there a day earlier just to make a short holiday of it. My father decided to stay at the Puteri Pacific Hotel. All in all it was a decent hotel with friendly staff, adequately spacious rooms and a good breakfast buffet. The highlight for the kids was, of course, the pool.
This time I actually came prepared. I had bought them flotation devices (finally!) and they had a grand time swimming (almost). In fact by the second day Yousof could already swim laps in the big pool. Eleven times! Not bad for a 6 year old who can't technically swim. I am excited to try and find them proper lessons ASAP. My only grouse is that the kiddies pool was definitely too small, and as soon as more than 3 kids were in it, it was hard for them to move about at all.
JB has changed alot since I lived there, though to be honest, when I did live there, I never actually went anywhere except for the hospital. That night it took us almost 2 hours and 5 long-winded U-turns (3 of which was actually the same U-turn) to find Restoran Singgah Selalu. By the time we finally made it, the kids were exhausted and I was starving. Thank God, some smart person thought of building a playroom. Understandably the kids perked up immediately. The food, when it came, was quite okay. The otak2 was delicious. Since we had arrived late, the only fish left was siakap and we ordered it sweet & sour. Probably the waiter forgot to write the "sour" part because it ended up being mostly sweet. Though I really shouldn't complain because I at single-handedly polished off 3/4 of the fish. The butter prawn was average. Other side dishes were also fair. The rice was on the dry and hard side, which I didn't really care for. But everybody was just happy to be there and to eat.
The next day we headed off to Pasir Gudang to my cousin's house for the wedding and managed to get utterly and completely lost again. I even resorted to using Google Maps on my phone. In the end it just added to he confusion because since I have never used it before, it took me many wrong turns before realizing that the flickering blue dot was us! (Yes, I can be that technologically inept at times). We finally made it, just in time to eat (the akad nikah had taken place a few minutes before we arrived). The bride & groom looked ravishing, the family was all smiles and the food (especially the lamb) was awesome.
Congratulations Dr Ikhwani & Ismail. May your lives be full of happiness, joy and love.
