2D1N Road Trip to Johor Bahru - Taman Mount Austin

Day 1: Saturday 20/2/16

Be warned, long and photo heavy post ahead.

Our long waited road trip was finally here after a month of waiting.

It's been awhile since four of us last have an outing together. We decided to leave our busy city and traveled to the neighbouring state, Johor Bahru (JB), for a well deserving weekend doing some of our favourite things and spending quality time together.

My weekend has been monotonous lately, mugging on assignments and projects. It's time to give myself a break from all these shits.

The travel-mates: Kelvin, GF, Meryl, Jasmine and me.

 Thanks Kelvin and GF for organising this trip, we enjoyed the trip very much.

We met up at about 2.30pm after Jasmine ended her work and drove in to JB. Be prepared for at least an hour of jam from both Singapore and Malaysia custom.

Usually when I went JB, I will only went to places close to Johor custom like City Square and KSL City Mall as I don't feel comfortable to travel far in cab. This time round, Kelvin brought us to the outskirt of JB - Taman Mount Austin. We traveled via Kota Tinggi Highway to our destination which is about 15 minutes drive.

It was about 4.15pm when we reached. The first thing we did when we reached Taman Mount Austin was to check in to Hotel Austin Paradise to secure a room for a night. This hotel is recommended by the couple as they normally stayed in this hotel when coming over to Taman Mount Austin.

Hotel Austin Paradise is a three-storey high hotel with 49 rooms available. The surrounding was all low rise shophouses.

GF and I lepak at the hotel lobby while the others were doing checked in.

The royal alike sofa seat was too comfortable

We were all staying at level 3.  

We went up to check out our room, it costs us RM180 for a night stay. The room was small but pretty decent with the basic modern amenities cater to our needs for having a comfortable stay. 

I'm rooming with Jasmine and Meryl while GF and Kelvin stayed in another room a few units away from us.

We dropped our barang barang and ready to head out again.

Hop on to the car and off for our first meal in JB. Super hungry as I only had a few mouthful of fried beehoon for lunch. 

We were introduced by rkm to Auntie Lim Cafe located at Jalan Austin Height 3, it was just a few street from our hotel. 

The cafe served a fusion of Asia food, pretty similar to what Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe served.

Welfie with Meryl while waiting for our food.

Our afternoon tea cum dinner.

I have ice milk tea and fried yee mee. We also ordered 2 plates of chives pancakes to share among the 5 of us. I love the pancake, it was tasty and spicy.

Thanks Kelvin for the treat (:

The fantastic four feeling happy after our meal but not quite satisfied because our meal will never be complete without dessert. We went Blackball which was just few stalls away. 

We ordered 2 bowls of Blackball signature.

I always eat this when I go JB.

After which, we went explored around the neighbourhood before we headed for some shopping at Aeon Tebrau City Shopping Centre. 

While exploring, we chanced upon deCAST Karaoke. We were being attracted by this New York theater concept exterior and decided to book our karaoke slot at 10pm after checking out the price.

My Saturday comfort outfit - pairing a loose t-shirt with skorts (skirt + short). Skort is now a staple piece that I must have in my closet, it is easy to mix and match. I got at least 5 pieces of skort in my closet and I still want more.

The girls have a great shopping experience till we don't feel like leaving. I got myself 4 shirts from the mall. We left the mall at about 9.30pm to proceed for our next activity - Karaoke session.

We reached DeCAST just in time for our booking.

The charging at DeCAST was by hour per room. An hour of booking per room was RM29. We booked the slot from 10pm to 1am, the 3 hours singing with free flow of drinks cost us RM87. I like how DeCAST charged us by per room and not by headcount.

Now I no longer sing karaoke in Singapore, where to find such price in Singapore?

We were super hungry halfway singing so I ordered fried rice for my dinner at 11pm. The sausage fried rice cost RM6, not really very nice though.

We came here with the intention to sing our heart out, that's the main objective of our JB trip. I am happy to say that: Mission completed.

3 hours of happy time passed so fast, we slowly switched ourselves from Chinese songs to English songs. So many songs haven't sing yet. 

Not satisfied with the fried rice we had earlier, we drove back to our hotel for wee morning supper. There was a coffeeshop selling Roti Canai besides our hotel. I had one roti kosong and hot milo.  

We had a long chat over our supper. I enjoyed such feeling: no stress, no worries, just enjoy the moment.

Without realisation, the time was already 2.15am.

JB seems to be a town that never sleep, there was still so much activities we could do in the middle of the night with many stores still operating.

We called it a day with our activities and went back to our hotel to catch some beauty sleep. It was a long day for all of us. Nevertheless, we had a fun and fulfilling day.

Back to comfort zone.

Our room was equipped with a queen size platform bed, telephone, TV set, internet connection, a desk and air conditioner. 

When we switched on the TV, Channel 5 was showing The Walking Dead. Though I love watching The Walking Dead, we shouldn't be watching in the middle of the night at hotel.

Feel so good after shower. I felt wide awake after the hot shower.

Reading a magazine while waiting for Meryl to come out from shower.

Jasmine was nice, she brought us cute animal masks to put on after our shower. So thoughtful of her right?

I got myself a tiger mask after a random selection.

The animals came alive, can't believe we were still so hyper at 3am. We have so much fun and laughter welfie with our masks. Jasmine got a sheep mask, Meryl got a cat mask and I got a tiger mask.

Never know that having roommate is so fun. 

Best roommate ever.

Ready to fall asleep in the comfy bed and soft, white blanket. After a relaxing mask treatment, we were slowly dozing off. Good night.

Day 2: Sunday 21/2/16

Good morning, we woke up after 5 hours of rest.

Checking out the view from our hotel in the morning.

Got myself freshened up with light makeup done. Though we still feel a bit tired, we still get up early to get more things accomplished.

OOTD - Outfit of the day.

A black t-shirt with overlap shorts. It looked like a skirt from front and shorts at the back. The overlap shorts is versatile and comfortable. It added details to spice up our outfit, a perfect piece to wear for a casual day out.

With this, we were ready to set up for day 2.

We drove to a nearby eatery at Big Bowl for our breakfast. I had a cup of milo and dry mee siam with luncheon meat at RM7.

The ladies in our second day outfit.

Off we went to Tesco, I got lots of snacks from Tesco. Time to replenish my kitchen stocks.

We went back to our hotel reluctantly to pack up our stuffs before doing the checkout.

Last welfie with the roommate before we left our room. Aww, we will miss our happy time together.

Leaving our room. 

We stayed at room 311. We had a nice and pleasant stay with Hotel Austin Paradise. I won't mind coming here next time again.

Last group welfie in the lift.

With GF while the others doing check out.

Our mandatory photos, we sat on the same chair, same spot when we did check in. Of course we must have a photo for check out too.

We had our lunch at Ichiban Ramen at Aeon Tebrau City Shopping Centre before we left JB. I had Katsu Curry Rice. It was nice to drizzle the thick curry on the plain white rice and just eat on its own.

We reached Singapore at about 5 plus.

Looking at all these photos brought back all the wonderful memories, I really enjoyed myself very much during these 2 days. Travelling is always enjoyable with your close friends. I changed $100 and I spent everything. We could eat and shopping all day long.

Hope to have another round of visit to JB with the girls soon again.