Johor Bharu - What a cowp

Singaporeans refer to their poor neighbour as Dodge City, a lawless dangerous town where crime and personal risks are high.  As hardened travellers we determined to make up our own mind but on reflection the best thing about Johor Bahru is Highway 1 leading to Senai Airport.

To be fair, I’m not sure that we ever saw the place at its best and things didn’t start well with our arrival at Larkin Road bus station.  Larkin Road is a big sprawling expanse of dirty smoke belching buses, food stalls which look like they sell bits from the bins of KFC and unsavoury chaps touting taxis at exorbitant rates.  

The metered taxi rank was ominously empty and we engaged the services of a gentleman whose car was of a vintage typical of a Cameron Highland’s cab – so old that it did not have seat belts in the back – the need for which became apparent as we made the journey to our hotel.  

JB is in the midst of a major road building programme that imposes an extreme one way system on drivers sometimes taking them more than 5 kilometres out of their way.  We learned this when we arrived at the wrong hotel – our taxi driver, reluctant to tackle the one way system decided instead to take on the rush hour by driving into the on-coming traffic – and so we headed off down the three lane highway into dense traffic for about 1 kilometre, occasionally darting to our right to avoid the heavier buses and lorries approaching in our lane with headlights blazing.

John "this is a one way street" Taxi driver "I'm only going one way"

Amazingly, we arrived unscathed at the Thistle Hotel, our 5 star bolt hole in a frontier town of ill repute.  By an amazing slice of luck we found that there was a daily coach service to Singapore and we reserved places for the next two days.  We dumped the bags in the room which had a soothing sound of running water and headed downstairs to arrange a trip into JB.

If the first impression generated by Larkin Road was poor, the second impression created by Danga Bay confirmed the view that JB was not going to offer a favourable tour experience.  Danga Bay looked like Toxteth the morning after the riots – shops lay derelict and the vast expanse of mainly empty car park suggested that the good days were behind it – I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm even for the interesting sounding Danga Bay Petting Centre – although I’m sure plenty was going on in the cars dotted in the dimly lit corners of the car park.

The final nail in JB’s coffin however was delivered by its own tourist brochure – which amongst its top attraction lists the Johor Tourist Information Centre, the JB Rehab Centre, Balai Seni Nusantra (a double-storey bungalow which I think is better described as a house) and Muzium Nanas.  The latter, a museum dedicated to pineapples and boasting more than 18 varieties of the interesting fruit is a mere 45 minute drive from JB.  Regretfully, none of these star attractions were observed.

Johor Bharu - Best seen at night ...from Kuala Lumpur

The concierge recommended a visit to a shopping mall as the best thing in JB and after a two hour visit which was a 45 minute drive from the hotel we returned to the Thistle.  I discovered that the soothing sound of running water was the toilet which had a broken flush and continued to run all night.

I reported the broken toilet before departing for Singapore – we returned at 10pm to the soothing sound of running water but with the added attraction of a flooded bathroom.  Cue raging fury, telephone rant, apologetic customer experience manager, rant at custom experience manager who experienced some direct customer feedback and transfer to an upgraded room which functioning toilet apart was no improvement.

By now we were on a crusade and compiled a comprehensive dossier on the room’s shortcomings including unidentified hairs and assorted muck and dust – a stiff letter will be penned to the manger of this so called 5 star hotel – amongst the worst we’ve ever stayed in.

Thistle Hotel - Customer Experience Department

The saving grace of Johor Bahru was its proximity to Singapore and in the following blog we’ll tell you about our fantastic time there……….