Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Kota Tinggi trip

Firstly, I want to thank God for protecting us through out our journey to Malaysia. We travelled by car, and I was one of the drivers. So as I'm quite inexperienced in driving in Malaysia (so far only driven to Genting and nearby places), I was a bit nervous about not being familiar with the driving conditions and directions. So I prayed a lot and looked at the Malaysia street directory a lot too haha. Thank God nothing happened, though there are a number of exciting stuff that happened while driving. I also wanna thank Him for what a fun trip we had to M'sia, especially to the waterfalls.

This trip is actually organized by Auntie Jill, who's sister has an empty house in Nusajaya, Johor so we could stay there. Our church group met on Saturday at Woodlands Centre mac at 3pm. Filled in our white cards, had a short briefing, and we left. There were about 12 of us in 3 cars. So there was enough space. Only a 45 minute drive down to Nusajaya. Here's the house!




The housing estate. Almost all houses are occupied by Chinese.



Through out the whole trip I was using my N95 8GB's GPS along the road. It works brilliantly! Red marks the house which we stayed in for the 2 nights.


We started our trip by cleaning up the house, as it was quite dusty being unused for a long time. The house is totally empty.

After that the house was clean enough for us to have a very nice devotion, we we did. We sang songs from memory and had a short devotion by Auntie Jill.

In the evening we went to Carrefour at Sutera Mall to do some grocery shopping. Then we brought the food back to the house to cook.

This is a basket in Carrefour we're able to pull on wheels instead of carry. Singapore should adopt this!





Melted yam icecream!


Saw this cute little toad outside. Look! Its holding a flower. Haha. Such cute bulging-out eyes at the side and that super wide mouth from ear to ear.


After spending almost an hour of cutting the long lalang grass we could finally play soccer properly. The "garden" was large enough for a 3v3 game.



Shawn diving for the ball and deflecting it!


Suresh in his pink polo tee and sarong.



Awwww so cute. The Chinese people there are all dog lovers too.


On Sunday morning we drove down to Kota Tinggi waterfalls. About a 2 hours drive from Johor at an average speed of about 70-80km/hr.






We were just coming out of our cars when.... the Indonesian group from Maranatha Church spotted us! Wow. What a coincidence. They were staying at the chalet there at the waterfalls.





Somehow I feel the waterfall is too commercialized already. Not that natural. But oh well...








The main section of the waterfall.


The highest point we could get to.


We didn't take many photos while in the water as we didn't appoint anyone to be the cameraman lol. Almost all of us were in the water. But I did manage to take a few while we were about to leave. Not surprisingly the water was almost freezing. But we easily got used to it. As usual I always took the opportunity to get a free and cooling massage by standing below the waterfall itself.




At every single waterfall I always find places to slide down. Haha. So before trying out the one you see below I had to explore the rock terrain first, making sure there are no protruding points that will hurt us. Once all was ready, I charged!


Then later Suresh joined me. Now our bottoms are hurting!



We spent around 2 hours at the waterfall. After that we had a quick shower and we left for lunch.


Ate at this restaurant somewhere in Kota Tinggi. Chicken rice, fish, vege, eggs, etc.


This is the kind of terrain we drove in all the time.

Watch out for cows!

We finally reached Mersing beach in around 2 hours. Some crab we picked up.


The beach was full of cats! There was this cat below which was very friendly. After I petted it it just followed me all around the playground wanting more. It just loved being carried by us.





When we were about to go we found her sitting by the beach looking out into the vast ocean. She sat there for like 10 minutes?


Seashells Sophraine picked up.


At 12am Monday, fireworks started appearing all over the housing estate. It was Deepavali! I was like telling Suresh, "So now we know where the Indians live.". The fire crackers just kept appearing. All sorts of them.


And then a police car suddenly appeared! And the man I circled below (can't see him because he's in the house) just kept throwing the crackers onto the road. And the police car just drove pass. So I can guess fire crackers are legal there, just that the police car was there to make sure everything was alright.


We had our own little fire festival.

Monday was our last day! So we went down to Jusco shopping mall for our last shopping session. The whole journey we kept singing to the songs being played on radio. Yeah we could receive the station from there. My usual passengers...




More of me driving. I had mentos sweets on standby whenever I started feeling tired.




Isn't Jusco shopping mall HUGE?!

Looks kind of similar to Vivo City.


List of shops.



There are many more fun parts during our trip. But I just wanted to post the highlights. Hope we have another trip like this in time to come. =)