Car wash, abalone and cheap fuel: One night in Johor Bahru

One of the things my mates and I like to do is to pop over to Johor Bahru (JB) in Malaysia for some good and cheap food. And petrol, and car wash, and groceries.

We wanted to avoid the traffic jam that is bound to happen if we tried to drive across the Causeway any earlier. So one recent Friday night, we decided to do a midnight run.

Yes, we were going to enter Cowboy Town in the dead of night.

You see, to Singaporeans, JB was a town rife with crime and car-jacking. Sure it is great to shop in a place where your Singapore dollar is worth 2.2 of their ringgit but we all hear stories of people getting their cars stolen and folks getting mugged, especially at night.

The words of my mother, a veteran of JB shopping (she does her grocery shopping there every other week), echoed in my mind: "Don't go to JB at night! It is not safe!"

As the "not safe... not safe... not safe..." echoed in my head, I pondered whether it was wise to put our lives at risk for a bowl of abalone noodles and a cheap car wash.

Abalone noodles won.

We grabbed our passports, squeezed 10 people into two cars and headed for the Causeway.

There was no jam when we got there, to our relief. We made our way to a street lined with car wash outlets, near New York Hotel.

Already we are felt like we were in another country! Ok, we were, but wow! New York in JB!

The car wash outlets were all doing brisk business. I do not know what this Singaporean obsession is. I understand it costs S$7 for a Singapore car wash (US$5) and it is usually done badly by some disgruntled worker from China. But to come all the way to JB, Malaysia, for a RM10 (US$3) wash that is slightly more thorough and includes vacuuming?

The queues don't lie. Our outlet had more than 15 cars waiting to be washed, mostly Singaporean cars. We sat down at the coffee house next door to wait. We made a bad choice though because, an hour and a half later, our car was just getting soaped. They were understaffed and over-capacity.

We told the staff we'd go without the drying, because all of us were already hungry and tired. Driving our wet but clean cars to Jalan Kelewang, opposite Wisma Tiong Hua building, we sat down for some good old abalone noodles.

The signboard says Fifty Nine Restaurant but we call it Ah Piao's because I am told that is the boss's name. You can order the wanton noodles there but we were really here for the abalone noodles.

Ah Piao's supervisor.

Ah Piao's abalone noodles.

For RM8 you get a big bowl of soup with clams, pork, abalone and prawns, and a bowl of noodles in black sauce. The soup stock is delicious from all the good stuff they put in it. And for RM3 more, you get an extra helping of abalone. 

Nearby, there was a dude selling lok lok in a van. Lok lok is like fondue. You choose your sticks from the display, cooked in the soup they provide, and carry your stash back to your table. And try not to think about hygiene. 

We also grabbed some Muar otak, spicy fish pate in banana leaves from the town of Muar. Not sure if the ones we ate came from Muar but it tasted good enough.

We really ate our fill. I think if anyone wanted to mug us, we would have been too full to resist.

I went over to take some photos of the place and one of the staff asked, "What is your blog?"

Obviously, the stall's staff were pretty web savvy. I scribbled my URL on a piece of paper for them and took some more photos of the very sporting crew.

As we dragged our full stomachs to our car, totally sleepy from the late night, we had one more stop before crossing back to Singapore. We had to pump some JB petrol.

Again, this is a ritual you must carry out to complete your stay in JB. The gas here is way cheaper than Singapore's and subsidized by the Malaysian government (though I don't think they had us in mind when they did it). Even with the three-quarters tank rule the Singapore government imposes (our tanks cannot be less than three-quarters full when we drive across to Malaysia), it is still worth your while to visit the Malaysian pumps before returning.

Some of us run over to buy bubble gum (not legal for sale in Singapore: it is a long and sordid story) and some of us wait in the car.

With our stomachs and cars filled, and somewhat clean (the cars, not us), we drove back to Singapore, happy, contented and safe.

Perhaps the next time we shall try to do it again but add a visit to a massage place. A clean one, of course. But I am not sure if we can find a non-dodgy joint at that time of the night.

Oh, and note to self, choose a better car wash place too. One and a half hours wait, jeez.