JB Crown Crystal Hotel 24 to 25 Nov 2010

Reserved a room at Crystal Crown hotel via email @RM155 nett per night. Quite a breeze getting through the custom today. Our driver, William, brought us around JB after checking into the hotel at a rate of RM15 per hour -paid him RM75 for his 5 hour service. Of course that was on top of the S$50 getting us from Singapore to JB. We went to this wanton mee stall (Uncle koh) recommended by William for lunch. On our way there we stopped at a stall and bought my favourite goreng pisang. After that he brought us to Sutera Mall - nothing much there - bought the prepaid broadband card there and then went to Merlin tower to buy my medicine. After that went to taman pelangi area- a shop called "bao zi lin" for the massage and then the nearby hawker centre for dinner - the claypot rice and penang kway tiao were fantastic! Went to the hawker centre 大马花园 near to the hotel - many stalls are still closed so we took a cab to Jusco Tebrau. I bought my daily disposable contact lens - the moist type which cost $60 in Singapore but only RM90 a box over there. After that, we went to "Tang Shifu" for lunch and love it. The coffee contains ginseng and the mee sua we ordered have some sort of herbs in it. I ordered the one with scallop and abalone. Lee ordered the one with wine herbal soup. The price aren't too high either - paid less than RM50 for the 2 of us. I also bought some of the TVB series on promotion over there. Imagine buy one get one free - I paid RM39.90 for 2 TV series which is like a quarter of the price I pay in Singapore - and they are original discs! After that we took a cab to merlin tower as I need to change some more ringgit. I must say the rate there is the best so far - $100 to RM239.2. I bought some titbits from the Indian stall as well as the deparmental store. After that we went to the restaurant outside Merlin tower.. I love the "chee cheong fun" and the steam fish (thai) style. I realised that this time round -traffic was pretty bad - quite jammed along the roads. Went to Fizzio massage centre which is located opposite taman seri tebrau (大马花园) for a second round of massage. I must say the massage here is much better. After that we went to 大马花园 for dinner. Not really impressed with the food there though it seemed to receive high recommendations on the net - maybe I will try other stalls tomorrow.'

Johor Bahru 14 Mar Crystal Crown

Went to City Square for more shopping and lunch at Sizzling stonegrill. Hubby ordered prawns and ostrich meat and I ordered prawns and scallops. The prawns are nice but the scallops a bit blend.

Johor Bahru 13 Mar 2010 Crystal Crown

Went to JB again to buy some of my medicine and more makan... I checked into Crystal Crown hotel at first and had to purchase the wireless service at RM30 per day. When I got up to the room on the 11th floor, there was no connection and I went down to the reception to get it connected. However, when I went back to the 11th floor it got disconnected again! I got so fed up with the wireless internet connection that I checked out almost immediately. Took a cab to Selesa Hotel which is near to New York Hotel. Again over here I have to purchase the wireless service at RM21 but at least it worked! We went to a small restaurant near Pelangi Plaza and wanted to try the famous "guo tiao" but was told that it was already closed at 12.30 pm so we tried the laksa, fried bee hoon and the pork ribs instead. Over there I saw a "mai kai" that was cooked in a bun!

After our lunch we took a cab down to Trebau City Jusco. I bought a pair of shoes and a bag while hubby bought a pair of jeans and a earphone. We then we took a cab back to the Pelangi Mall and then proceeded to the resturant Chez Papa which we had made a booking. I missed the foie gras and escargot. This time round we ordered the foie gras and escargot again for starters. For the main course, hubby took the ribeye and I took the stuffed quail. The ribeye was a bit tough though. We returned to our hotel and went out for supper at night. To our delight, we found the luk luk van down the street. We ate a total of 13 sticks of assorted food such as small crabs, prawns, quail eggs, mushrooms, bak kuai etc.. You can have it cooked in hot water, fried or grilled and then dip in the satay sauce, chilli sauce, thai chilli sauce or sweet sauce. Love the deep fried small crabs which was sprinkled with salt and pepper. Each stick cost RM1.60.