Johor Bahru, Malaysia, 2013

Minature Lego KLIA

It's been a while since my last holiday post, because searching through the hundreds of holiday photos to find the food ones is just too much work that I just about give up everytime. But the fact that holiday posts are the most fun to reread again makes the time and effort worthwhile :)

When we visited Singapore at the end of last year, we only stayed for a day, because we had planned to head over to Malaysia for a couple of days afterwards. With Johor Bahru being just over the border, we stopped there first to checkout Legoland where much fun was to be had. Unfortunately, getting there was not as easy as we'd anticipated on a Friday evening, with literally hours of waiting for the public buses, extremely heavy traffic, huge crowds at immigration, taxi drivers which swarmed us despite the presence of a system for allocating taxis to passengers and taxis which took us through long dark unlit roads which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. By the time we reached our hotel some 4 hours after we had planned, we were exhausted and pretty scarred by the experience.

Lesson learnt: never travel between Singapore and JB on a Friday night!!

Egg Roti

Luckily that was the only bad experience we had of Johor Bahru, and after a good night's rest, we were ready to continue with our trip. We'd purchased tickets for a shuttle from our hotel to Legoland, but it was only upon collection of our tickets that we realised the so called 'shuttle' was actually a Honda Odyssey, seating 7 passengers, so we missed out on securing seats for the earliest shuttle. With more than an hour to spare, we had a nice chat to the owner of Saffron Cuisine, who suggested we have breakfast at his restaurant whilst we wait.

Nasi Lemak

We weren't too hungry, so we didn't order much, but the menu was quite extensive with plenty of interesting Indian options. We went for their breakfast special, of Nasi Lemak, watermelon, orange juice and coffee (there was also a less exciting Western breakfast on offer too, if my memory serves me right!).

Dosa

The waitress also suggested we try the dosa, and since we couldn't choose which one to order, we went with the plainest one. We'd only ever had dosa once in Sydney, but this version was quite different as this one was soft, whereas the one we'd had before was crispier- I quite enjoyed this one, especially dipped in the accompanying sauces, although I my parents preferred the roti we ordered, as they weren't too fond of the slight tang of the dosa.

We  reach Legoland shortly after- I was never much of a Lego fan, but the sight of the brightly coloured Lego blocks was quite exciting!

They even have a Legoland hotel right next to the theme park, with Lego themed rooms which we would have loved to stay at if only they had rooms for 4 people!

I loved the miniland the best, with various minature cities built out of lego. The amount of detail was amazing, though it's hard to really admire everything when all you really want to do is get out of the scorching sun!

Having only just come from Singapore, I really liked the Singapore one- the attractions were so similar to the real thing!

They even had interactive ones, with dancing figures and spraying water with the touch of a button :)

The themepark is actually quite small- we easily visited every ride and attraction within 2 hours. The lack of shelter and the scorching heat also meant that it was difficult to stay there for too long!

Located adjacent to the theme park is the Mall of Medini, where there is an abundance of dining options. For lunch, we chose the first restaurant which seemed to have good air conditioning and an interesting menu, which ended up being Manhattan Fish Market.

Scallop Americana

It's a nice restaurant, with comfy seating, aircon levels just enough to cool us down, and an extensive seafood menu with prices around the same as you'd expect in Australia......but in Ringgits (: We love how cheap everything is in Malaysia! The Scallop Americana didn't come with as many scallops as the picture made us believe (they are there, you just can't see them in the picture!),  and wasn't too exciting, but the pasta was cooked well.

Seafood Chowder

Service was pretty slow,  and they forgot our seafood chowders until we asked for them at the end. It was nice and creamy, though surprisingly light for a chowder.

Manhattan Star Platter

The Manhattan Star Platter arrived with quite a show,  with the 'Manhattan Flaming Prawns' being flamed right in front of us. It's perfect for sharing, with grilled calamari, fried oysters, poached garlic herb mussels, mediterranean baked fish on a bed of fried rice.

And after a satisfying meal, we head off to catch a bus to KL!

Saffron Cuisine
Lot Ptb 22819, Jalan Skudai, Mukim Bandar, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

The Manhattan Fish Market
G29 Mall of Medini, 79250 Nusajaya, Johor, Malaysia