R & F Mall Johor Bahru

R & F Mall is pretty huge, it has 3 levels above the ground, not sure whether there is any basement levels.  There are two courtyards, one outdoor, and one indoor, both are big.

Outdoor Courtyard

Indoor Courtyard

On level 1, you can find Jaya Grocer, a supermarket where you can do your groceries.  There are quite a number of restaurants too, including fast food, Chinese food, and local brands such as Soon Huat.

Jaya Grocer

There is a Daiso on level 3, everything is at the price of RM5.90.  Based on the exchange rate of SGD1.00=RM3.00, the price is just a few cents cheaper here.

Daiso on Level 3

On level 2, there is an Emperor Cinema.  The exterior looks pretty luxurious.

Emperor Cinema

There are still many empty shop spaces available for rent on all levels.  I was there on Christmas Day itself, about 3pm.  The crowd at the mall was very thin, at some time I was a bit scared, as I was the only one in that particular area and I could see nobody else.

Oh, what is definitely worth mentioning is their toilets, super clean and well maintained.

The concept of the mall, the layout, the construction and the tenant mix are all quite good.  If R & F Princess Cove condominium is fully occupied, then for sure the residents population itself could support the mall.  However, the condominium's occupation rate is still quite low.    In addition, there are simply too many malls in JB.  Just a 15-minute walk away, you have JB City Square and JBCC.  A bit further away, there are Danga Bay, KSL,  Pelangi Mall and Mid-Valley South Key.  There are many other malls in Johor Bahru, while the total population is only about 500,000.  The locals simply can't support that many malls, and Singaporeans are quite turned off by the constant traffic jams at the Causeway and 2nd Link between Singapore and Malaysia. 

How to Get to R & F Mall Johor Bahru

R & F Mall is a new shopping mall in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, by the developer of R & F Princess Cove, which is a Guangzhou, China based real estate developer.  The mall was soft launched back in March 2019, and now it is already December, so I decided to check it out this Christmas.

Access to the mall is pretty convenient.  Once you come out from the Malaysian CIQ building, you will see JB Sentral.  Don't go there, turn left instead.  You will see a link bridge, and the entrance is where my blue arrow is pointing in the picture below.

At the start of the link bridge, you will see a small signboard indicating that it is the way to R & F Mall. 

You follow the link bridge and keep walking. 

After walking for about 15 minutes, you will find R & F Mall right in front of you.

It is very simple, isn't it?  In my next blog post, I will share with you more about R & F Mall.  

New Menu @ Wong Kok

Went over to JB again last Saturday and enjoyed a hearted meal at Wong Kok Restaurant, a Hongkong Tea House kind of restaurant.  For a while, I was already bored with the food they offered, as the menu was always the same, no new stuff, until recently.  They came up with some new dishes, which are more western oriented, such as lamb chop, chicken chop, etc.  It is a set menu, a lamb chop set meal offers you a lamb chop, obviously, plus a choice of drinks of tea, coffee, or fruit juice, a soup, a dessert and a piece of garlic bread, for a grand total price of RM 23.00.  It is quite a good price, comparing with Botak Jones' lamb chop of ~S$15.00, and your neighbourhood food court lamb chop of around S$7.90-8.50.

The taste of the food is not bad.  The lamb chop is tender and juicy.

I quite like their dessert.  It must have some plum as its ingredient, and really enhances your appetite.

I had already had this particular set meal twice, and I am still loving it. :)

Traffic Jam at the Causeway

It has been a week.  Last weekend, I planned to go over to Johor Bahru to catch a movie, but the traffic jam turned me back.  I stared at the picture on the internet showing the traffic conditions of the causeway, I was shocked in awe.  My gosh!  How could it start to have such long queue of cars early in the morning?  Then till noon, to the afternoon, to late in the night.  That was no sign of easying of traffic.

Ever since Malaysia implemented the finger printing measures for all foreign visitors, the traffic condition at the causeway always looks like this:

Massive traffic jam, from morning till night.  There is no chance that you can quickly sneak over to the other side without being caught in the jam.  It is really sad to see Malaysia side didn't make any attempt to improve the situation, and people who have to commute between the two sides of Straits of Johor will have to suffer in silence everyday.  For sure, it is not one way of promoting Johor or Malaysia as whole as a first world country.  

Food Hunt in JB - Soon Huat Bak Kut Teh

Last time when I went to Teck Seng Restaurant at Taman Sentosa, I mentioned a Bak Kut Teh restaurant nearby in this blog entry.  This time, we decided to give it a try.

Lemon Honey Drink (爱玉冰)

You Tiao (油条)

Bak Kut Teh

Bak Kut Teh

豆卜

Pig's Trotters

猪脚

I must say I am a bit disappointed with them.  The Bak Kut Teh is a bit too plain and too similar to what we have in Singapore, but far cry from that I had in Klang.  The only choice seems to be pork ribs, there are no other choices.

The Dou Po is just juicy, but not exceptionally good.  Pig's trotters is the best of all, yet it is still on the too oily side.

What I don't understand is that the restaurant is still full of customers.  We arrived there at 11.05am, it was already almost full, by the time we left, there were a lot of people waiting outside, and many cars waiting for parking.

KSL City in JB

There is a new shopping mall just opened last December in JB.  The mall is right behind Crown Prince hotel (Previously mentioned in this blog entry).

The mall has four levels, including a cinema, a not-yet-ready hypermart TESCO, four Hong Kong Tea House type of Char Chan Ting (茶餐厅), a number of DVD shops (you know what), a Tang Shifu too.  The mall is not really quite ready yet, lots of stalls are still available for leasing.

As the mall is very close to Pelangi Plaza, very close to Taman Sentosa, two places frequent by Singaporean weekenders, so I think in the future, it will be another place popular with Singaporeans, when the mall is more well known.

To entice the visitors more, there is a shuttle bus from City Square to KSL mall, passing by Danga City Mall, and Pelangi Plaza.  From City Square to KSL mall is RM1.60, not too bad a choice.

More details of the mall can be found here, including a map to the mall, the major tenants of the mall, etc.    

Danga City Mall in JB

Danga City Mall is the reincarnation of a previous closed-down mall in JB.  Its revival was with quite a bit of fanfare as KTM dedicated a train station at the door steps of the mall, and the train service is from Singapore's Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.  With such a 'special' arrangement, I would have expected the business at the mall to be very good, and lots of visitors from neighbouring Singapore.  However, the reality is just the contrary.

What has gone wrong?  The KTM train is really a pain in the neck and nobody would have taken the train at such insane timings.  Go and take a look yourself at the train schedule here.  What do you expect the shoppers to do if they take the 8.45am train from Singapore?  Do you think the shops in the mall will be open this early in the morning?  The train schedule basically kills at least 50% of the business of this mall.

Another issue with the mall is its location.  It is not near any public transport, there is no bus, the only way to get there from the custom is take a cab (around RM6.00).  Nearby the mall, there is nothing anymore.

Nowadays if you visit the mall, it is more or less like walking in a ghost town.  No customers.  The shops are mostly vacant.  I guess they want to model the mall after Singapore's Funan Center to be an IT themed mall, but then obviously it is not successful.

That aside, there is indeed some entertainment in the mall.  They have archery, paint ball, bowling and karaok on the higher floors.

Overall, I guess it is just a matter of time when this mall will close down again.  It is sad, but it is reality.  Moral of the story?  If you wanna invest in commercial property in Malaysia, better do your own due diligence.  Nobody will be responsible if things don't turn out right.

Sutera Mall @ JB

Went over to Sutera Mall in JB yesterday.  Sutera Mall is one of the suburban malls in the outskirts of Johor Bahru downtown.  The mall is not very big, there are only two stories.  The anchor tenant is CarrFour hypermart, so you can expect there is quite a bit of crowd here.  In its annex, there is a Peiking Restaurant with two or three wedding halls catering to traditional Chinese wedding banquet, so there is even more crowd.  However, there is a pity that there is no cinema in the mall.  Well, you should guess by now what is the most popular industry here :)

The shops in the mall are quite normal, and you can find similar restaurants in Bukit Indah mall too.  For example, you can find Tang Shifu here, you can find Stone Grill here too!

Highlight of this mall for me is actually JB Archery, a small little archery sanctuary tucked at one corner on the mall on level 2.  Here, you pay RM 10 for 18 arrows, or RM15 for 36 arrow, or if you are strong enough, you can pay RM20 for 60 arrows!  This is a lot cheaper than in Singapore.

The bowls they have are the cheaper normal bowls, not the carbon fibre type, which is quite understandable.  One carbon bowl costs like a couple of thousand dollars.  They also have assistants there to provide guidance and advice.

It is the first time in almost a decade for me to pick up a bowl.  All that I learnt in my archery course somehow has gone down to the drain and I could hardly remember anything :P  Anyway, after shooting for a while, I started to pick up a bit of the feel.  But, after shooting, my left hand pains like hell.

Anyway, it was quite fun doing shooting again.

How to get there?  From Singapore, you can take CW4s from Jurong East MRT station.  Under normal circumstances, it takes only 1 hour to get there.  However, if you go on Sunday, the CW4s service is partially combined with CW3, and you have to change bus after you arrive at Geylang Patan, change to bus 666.  Bus 666 takes a big big big detour and it takes another hour to reach Sutera Mall.

Tang Shifu@Bukit Indah Jusco

Last time at Tebrau Jusco (see my previous blog about Tang Shifu here), I didn't have the opportunity to try out Tang Shifu's set meals, so this time I grapped the opportunity to give it a try.

I ordered the Zhuang Yao Tang (壮腰汤) set meal.  It includes a Du-Zhong (杜仲) soup, a small bowl of brown rice and two small little side dishes of pork & black bean.

Black bean is good for blood, brown rice is good for your digestion system, the Du-Zhong soup is good for your kidney.  It is specially good for people who lead a sedentary life, with little or no exercises at all.

In terms of taste, it is not bad.  The soup is thick in taste and smell of Du-Zhong.  The pork tastes a bit like Bak Kut Teh, melts in your mouth.  Black bean, unfortunately is always hard, no matter how you cook it.

At RM 18.80, it is value for money.  You can't expect to have immediate effects on your body, making you a strong man/woman instantly, but it does help those busy people who have no time to cook some nutritious soup to nourish their body get a quick fix.

The service is just so-so, although they still charge you a 10% service charge.

My rating: 3/5

Kinsahiya Japanese Restaurant@Bukit Indah Jusco, JB

We had lunch at Kinsahya Japanese Restaurant at Bukit Indah Jusco.  The restaurant has some funny deco, can't really tell what kind of style it is.

I don't know why they want to use such big ropes as deco, to warn customers if they don't pay up, they will be tied up :P  Just joking.

I ordered the Yakitori, which is grilled chicken in a stick.  The chicken is way too dry and hard, not juicy at all. To compensate for the lack of juice, they put a lot of sauce on the chicken.  The sauce is not too bad, I must say.

Price: RM 7.90

Another dish I ordered is Shisamo, which is grilled fish.  I can't really tell what kind of fish it is, but the taste is not bad.  There is a lot of fish roe, and meat is good.  If they can serve the fish really too, right off the grill, I think it would be better.  Anyway, it is already not too bad.

RM 11.90

My main is Zaru soba, which is cold Japanese wheat noodle.  The main came after much delay.  According to the waiter, their first attempt was not successful, and they had to do it again.  Ok, never mind.

RM 13.00

When the soba came, I was a bit surprised.  The soba they use is smaller in size comparing with the normal Japanese wheat noodle I am used to.  The soy sauce they provide is more healthy (read 'less salty').

Oh, I forgot about the appetizer.  The appetizer is egga wasbi mayo.  It is a mixture of egg white and some vegies.

RM 5.00

Overall, I will give them a 3.5/5.  It is not too bad for that kind of price.  It is top class, but quite acceptable.  The environment is good too, especially for a few friends to gather together for some chit-chat.

Kinsahiya Japanese Restaurant
Lot F09, Aeon Bukit Indah
Email: kinsahi@tm.net.my
Tel: 07-234 8087

Jusco@Bukit Indah, JB

Went over to JB again today, but this time we took a different route.  Normally we would go by the causeway at  Woodlands, which is infamous for long long queues and traffic jams.  This time, we took bus CW3 from Jurong East bus interchange.  The bus goes to JB via 2nd link, which is at the western end of Singapore island.  2nd link, although it has been there for many years, the usage remains low due to its high costs.  For example, to go to Bukit Indah in JB via 2nd link costs S$4.00!  But the advantage is that you have almost no traffic jam (under normal situations), no queue at all the immigration, so everything goes like a breeze.

After the bus gets into Malaysia, it has a number of stops.  Bukit Indah is one of the major stops, and you will not miss it with its giant Jusco sign.

The Jusco building is actually a 3-story shopping mall, with Jusco as its anchor tenant.  There are many restaurants and various shops available in the mall too.  Nearby, you have Tesco and Giant hypermarts.  The bad thing is that there is no cinema in Jusco, too bad.  You can't have all your entertainment here under one roof.

The mall is not crowded at all.  You can wander around at your own pace.  When you are tired, you can sit down for a hearty meal, or just sip a cup of coffee while letting your tired feet have some rest.

The return bus fair from Bukit Indah to Jurong East is RM5.00, a 50% discount.  So overall transportation cost is not that bad.

However, be warned there isn't much around Bukit Indah Jusco, so if you find yourself can't really kill your time there, you can only choose to go to downtown JB, or take the CW3 bus home.

Anyway, it is good to know another place we can hang around :)

Food Hunt in Johor Bahru - Teck Sing Restaurant (德星茶餐室)

Had lunch at Teck Sing Char Chan Teng at Taman Sentosa this afternoon.  We ordered 3 dishes - Paper-wraped herbal chicken, drunk prawn in yellow rice wine and fried lettuce. 

Before our food came, a slice of watermelon was served as our appetizer. 

After a long time, our main dishes finally came. 

The first dish was the steaming hot drunk prawn.  The prawns were soaked deep in a soup which is thick with yellow rice wine, and together with seasonings such as garlic, ginger and spring onion.  The soup was excellent, delicious, thumbs up!  The prawns are not bad too.  However, there were two types of prawns they used.  One is of bigger size, whilst the other is smaller.  The bigger prawns were fresh and good, but the smaller ones were not really that fresh.  So do take note of this.  If not for the smaller unfresh prawns, I would have given this dish a 10/10!  But for the freshness issue, I will give it a 9/10.

Next came the signature dish - Paper-wrapped herbal chicken. 

Again the soup is thick and strong in taste.  I personally like the prawn more than the chicken, as the chicken is still not as good as the one I had in Nepal, somewhere high in the mountains.  Nonetheless, this dish is still a great dish.  My complaint is that the meat is a bit on the dry side, I would like it to be more tender and juicy.  I will give it a 8.5/10. 

On the back of their tissue paper package, there is an introduction to their paper-wrapped herbal chicken in both Chinese and English.  I can tell the owner of this restaurant has a very good idea in terms of marketing.

If you want to look for this restaurant, this is how it looks from the outside.  To get there, you can take a bus from City Square, and then alight when you see the Crystal Crown Hotel.  Then walk towards Taman Seri Tebrau Hawker Center direction, and then turn into Jalan Keris 1.  Walk all the way to Taman Sentosa.  Or just take a taxi from City Square to Taman Sentosa lah. 

For the address of the restaurant, you can visit their website at http://www.tecksing.com/ . 

For your information, just a few steps away from this restaurant, there is a famous Bak Kuh Teh shop.  I have seen it being busy from 12.30pm all the way to 14.30pm. 

I have not tried this restaurant myself, as it was hard to find a table, but judging from the non-stop crowd , it shouldn't be too bad. 

Johor Bahru Malaysia Update

Went over the causeway to pay Johor Bahru a visit today.  First I went to Pelangi Plaza.  It was a shopping very popular with Singaporeans for its close proximaty to Singapore.

The state of the mall is still good.  Shiny floors and well maintained building facilities.  However, 20-30% of the shops in mall are vacant.  There are no tenants.  The remaining tenants in the mall, ironically, are mostly Singapore-owned companies, such as Cold Storage Supermarket, Popular Book Store, Yun Nam, and some other Singapore brands.  Shopping crowd is still there, just the crowd is very small, very small, although still better than the crowd number I saw in the US malls.

Another shopping mall I visited is City Square.  It is a very very popular mall with Singaporeans, as it is just a stone's throw away from Johor Bahru's CIQ building.  The mall provides almost all the needs to a shopper.  From entertainment such as cinemas, to hang-out places such as Coffee Bean.  Let alone the fast food stores such as McDonald's.  City Square is legend, nobody would expect it would do badly, even with the opening of the new Johor Bahru CIQ building.  However, I again saw quite a number of shops are now vacant.  There are no tenants.  This mall still commands much better visitorship than Pelangi Plaza, but the deterioration is worrying. 

Then I moved to the streets near to the old Johor Bahru CIQ building, which had been demolished.  The stores are disappearing in clusters.  The neighbouring building to City Square - Merlin Tower, is like a ghost town, hardly anyone there. 

There have been reports on Malaysia economy, with positive tones, but obviously that positive development does not reflect in this part of the country.  I wonder as this part of the city is dying slowly, that must be another part of the city that should be slowly booming.  Which part is it?  I am very keen to find out.

Wong Kok, Again

Ended up having lunch at Wong Kok Char Chan Teng at JB City Square again. I used the coupons that we got the last time. For October, we got a free set of French Toast.

The French Toast came simmering in butter, looks really greasy. Inside, the filling is peanut butter, so much better. Smells good, tastes not bad too, just a bit too unhealthy.

For drinks, I ordered almond tea with egg. A fresh egg is poured into the hot almond tea. It looks not bad, but the almond is really bitter. I have to add in suger to soften the bitterness.

Main course for me was baked rice. Baked rice seems to always come with lots of cheese. The rice always tastes a bit strange. Anyway, not too bad to fill a hungry stomach.

Maybe it is time for me to move on to some other eateries to try out some other stuff.

Tebrau City, JB

This is my third visit to Tebrau City, JB, but the very first time that I spent some time there to take a closer look at the shops.

It is a bit disappointing. The shops are very similar to the shops in other shopping centers in Malaysia or Singapore. They have a Harris Bookstore there. A new bookstore huh? Actually it is just another brand name under the Popular Bookstore group. Oh, at least they are selling books that are different from what they sell at Popular.

The anchor tenant in Tebrau City is of course Jusco Departmental Store, which is more well-known than Tebrau City. Jusco occupies many levels of the building, lots of stuff for you to shop till you drop. Price-wise, I don't really see any bargains worth spending my money there yet.

Very few shops are having any kind of sales right now. I ended up coming home empty handed. I couldn't find any bargains. They are all expensive, similar price to those in Singapore.

Level 4 is where all the eating places are. Many restaurants. Next time, I would like to try out that sizzling stonegrills. It looks nice, price seems to be cheaper, but I have not really checked it out yet.

On the way back to JB custom, we took a taxi at Tebrau City. The other cab drivers all asked for RM20.00 minimum, then one Chinese lady cab driver offered to fetch us for RM18.00. It seems like the cost of parking at Tebrau City is RM1.00, the meter fare is about RM15-16.00 (not sure whether the meter has been tampered), so RM18.00 is not that bad. By bus, it is RM2.50.

Tang Shifu @ Tebrau City, JB

Found this small little restaurant at Tebrau City, JB yesterday. It is part of a Chinese medicine shop selling Chinese tonics such as Bird's nest. They leverage on the Chinese tonics and provide customers with Chinese dishes that are cooked with Chinese tonics as ingredients, which are called 'Yao Shan' (药膳).



We were there around 4pm, not really a good time for dinner, so we only ordered some side dishes. My order was Snow Jelly with Ginkgo. The dish was served with a standard white soup bowl. The taste is not very strong, a bit tasteless I must say, while it is supposed to be a bit more sweet. My friends ordered LuoHanGuo Herbal Jelly (罗汉果龟苓膏). Their feedback was also that it was a bit lack of taste. However, their tea eggs were not too bad.

Next time, if I go there again, I will like to try their main dishes and set meals. They look pretty nice. One thing about YaoShan in Malaysia and Singapore is that they are getting a bit 'high class'. 'High class' I mean the dining environment is very good, the utensils are clean and clear, the soup is more health conscious so there is much less salt, much less sugar, sometimes it ends up to be completely tasteless. And to cater to the local taste, many dishes are served cold (they chill it before serving, not left-over). Once chilled, the taste is getting even less obvious.

Pelangi Hawker Food

We had our dinner at a hawker center near Pelangi Plaza. It is a really small hawker centre, with around 20+ stalls only.

We ordered samba stingray, herbal roast duck & satay. Notice there is no photo of the satay? Because the satay was not very nice. Too dry and the meat is too hard to chew.

The stingray is big in size with a thick layer of meat. You can tell that it is from a bigger size stingray. The bad thing about it is that the bigger the stingray, the less tender the meat is. So this time the stingray is not as good as the last time I had at the food back alley near City Square, but it is still not bad. In terms of price, it is the same, RM20.00.

For the herbal roast duck, what they do is roast the whole duck first, then chop it into smaller pieces, then dip the whole thing into herbal soup. By hawker center standard, I think it is not bad, especially at that price (RM18.00). Of course, you can't compare it with Dian Xiao Er, it is a different class.

Johor Bahru Cinema

Yesterday was the very first time for me to watch a movie in a Malaysia cinema. The one we picked is Golden Screen Cinema (Pelangi).

For a Saturday movie ticket, the price is RM9.00, at the current exchange rate of S$1.00=RM2.38, it is equivalent to S$3.80. It is considered to be very cheap by Singapore standard.

What is the difference between Singapore cinemas & JB cinemas then? Here are some of my observations: (Note: GSC Pelangi is considered to be an old cinema in JB)

1. The halls are bigger in JB.
2. The deco and the seats are simpler in JB.
3. The cinema hall in JB is on a much gentler slope, so the entire floor is almost flat; whilst in Singapore, the floor is more steeply sloped for better viewing.

The above are the major difference I noticed. I am not very good at judging sound quality, so I can't really comment on that, but as least they claim they use Dolby Digital sound as well.

If you are not too critical, I think it is pretty acceptable to watch a movie in JB, even taken into account the cost of transport.

JB Dry Fried Rice Noodle (Mee Hoon)

Had lunch at a typical shop house near Leisure Mall in Johor Bahru yesterday. The shop is famous for its dry version of fried rice noodle (mee hoon).

The rice noodle they use is slim & tender. They fried it, I guess, with very little oil, and until the juices is almost completely dry out. It has a slight fragrance due to the frying. Served together with their own version of chili sauce, this dish is not too bad. The speciality in their chili sauce is that they add in some lime juice, I suppose, as the chili sauce has some slight sour taste (not because it has gone bad!)

Another dish worth mentioning is their signature Tofu (Beancurd). The crust of the tofu is crispy, but inside the tenderness of tofu remains intact.

We also ordered two other dishes. One is the wild boar meat, the other is lettuce. The wild boar meat is just so so. The meat is more chewy than pork, not everybody will like it. The lettuce dish is normal.

Here are what we ordered:

Drinks: 6

Fried Rice noodle: 3 plates

wild boar meat: 1 plate

lettuce: 1 plate

signature tofu: 1 plate

total damage is RM47.80 for 3 persons. I think it is reasonable by Singapore standard, but not actually cheap by Malaysian standard.

OldTown White Coffee

I frequently see OldTown White Coffee chain stores in Malaysia. I always wonder: What is old town? What is white coffee? In a previous entry, I have found my answer to white coffee, so in this entry, I will try to find the answer for OldTown.

What else will be better than starting my search from OldTown White Coffee's own web page? There page here gives you a glimpse of the meaning of OldTown. Ok, it is a bit stupid, OldTown is the 'name' of an old town in Ipoh, Perak State, Malaysia.

It is said that in OldTown, the pace is slow, even the birds don't fly, instead, they walk. OMG, I get worried about those birds :P In the past, I only know that Ipoh is famous for producing oriental beauties, I didn't know Ipoh also produces white coffee. Now I am getting very tempted to pay Ipoh a visit, to experience the good feeling.