4D3N Johor Bahru | Mount Austin

It's my first time to JB Malaysia...i know right, almost every Singaporean goes to JB for their grocery shop for daily needs. And I have heard so many new shopping malls and cafes on IG that I just had to visit it myself.

Here's my quick itinerary for first timers like me:

Day 1

1. Drive into JB via Woodlands Checkpoint
2. breakfast at Cha Lou
3. Buy HK steam snacks at Kwan Kee (Michelin Recommends)
4. PSLC Drift at Aeon Mall
5. Visit Nimmies Pastry Cafe
6. Visit Keijometo
7. Check into hotel
8. Movie at KSL
9. Dinner Supper at The Fish Man (we had so much food since we visit cafes in the afternoon)

Day 2

1. breakfast at hotel
2. Visit Nanyang street wall art mural
3. Visit Eco Spring Diggersite
4. Visit Morihana
5. DIY keyboard at Keebs
6. Lunch at Grandma Ong (next to Chill n Chow)
7. Visit Chill n Chow
8. Shopping at Mid Valley (Mr DIY, Padini, Vincci)
9. Dinner at Hai Kah Lang (Michelin Recommends)
10. Supper at Powertea Lok Lok

Day 3

1. breakfast at Ban Deng Mee
2. Shopping at Premium Outlet Mall
3. Lunch at Ta Si Xi (Dim Sum)
4. Mani and Pedi at Mount Austin 
5. More shopping at Mr DIY and Supermarket (grocery shop)
6. Buy Chagee milk tea at Mount Austin
7. Dinner at Basilico, super nice italian restaurant

Day 4 (last day)

1. breakfast at hotel
2. visit D.A. little farm
3. Visit Shiba Cafe
4. grab bites from 7-11
5. drive back to SG

Taiwan | Day 3 Monster Village

Day 3. After visiting Rainbow village, the tour guide dropped us at a flower market or flower exhibition. This was not part of the itinerary and I personally think it is not required since we already visited Taichung Flower market yesterday. Sigh, but the tour guide says our lunch place is not far from here, so she dropped us here for a walk walk.

Nothing much to buy here, only bought a cup of Almond milk tea to drink because I was so thirsty. On the way back to our coach, hubs bought a packet of roasted chestnuts but it wasn't very nice.

Lunch was quite sumptuous. There was a mushroom hotpot, prawns, chicken, vegetables and many other dishes.

Next stop after lunch, was a visit to Monster Village. This is a Japanese-inspired Monster Village among the forest of Nantou. Our tour guide says some travel package will have a night stay and there will be sufficient time to walk the forest. However our package doesn't include a night stay here...so it's just an hour's walk around the village. 

Above: Me, Jade and "Kuma" which means bear in Japanese. There are several red gates for photo opps. 

The village also has a story about a monster bread. Nearby there are some souvenir shops and fruit stalls where I bought the honey apple. They look horrible on the skin but they are very sweet. Our tour guide says that these kind of apples are not for sales overseas and only for the locals.

Tonight's dinner, we have a bottle of red wine from the travel agency. How nice. We couldn't finish it so we brought it back to our hotel room to finish it at night. Tonight we were staying in a hot spring resort but we were all too tired to fill the tub with hot water for a soak. 

Although we are too tired for a hot spring soak, we definitely are geared up for a visit to the convenience store to buy drinks and snacks for the night.

Good night!

Taiwan | Day 3 Rainbow Village Taichung

Rainbow Village (source from Wikipedia)

Rainbow village is a miltary dependents' village that was converted into street art in Nantun District, Taichung. It opens at 930am, and it takes about 15 mins to cover the "village" which is really small.

The artwork of the area was created by former soldier, Huang Yung Fu. Huang remained in his village despite many of the villagers moved away as developers began buying the land for redevelopment. Time past and he was the only person left in the village and began painting. And his artwork grew from there. Local university students discovered Huang's work and campaigned to save the village. It became a popular tourist attraction. Uncle Huang died on 23 January 2024 at the age of 100.

There was a huge fire and burnt quite abit of the original artwork. The artworks by Uncle Huang was not restored but newly painted over by other people. Some parts of the original paintings are still visible at Rainbow Village. It still remains as a very instagrammable place to me...so colourful and vibrant.

Taiwan | Day 2 Jiufen , Flower Farm and Fengjia Night Market

 

Afternoon tour. First stop at Jiufen. Went to a local snack shop and bought seaweed roll, old ginger tea. My mother in law bought some packets of dried longans. The old ginger tea was most appropriate because we can use it for Winter Solstice when we cook our tang yuan.

Along the streets of Jiufen, we tried quite a few of the local snacks like - taiwanese sausage, large bowl of assorted meatballs and a separate order of a even larger red meatball, guava with sweet plum powder, a bowl of coloured sweet potato and taro balls (hot). I tabao smelly tofu and a bowl of fishballs to bring back to the coach because we didn't have enough time.

Above: Street of Jiufen and the kids having a bowl of sweet potato and taro balls.

after Jiufen, the tour guide brought us to Flower Farm. It was a photo opportunity place.

Evening came, we visited Fengjia Night Market where we tried big sausage wrap small sausage, beef cubes, noodles bun (disgusting), ginger milk, corn, salt pepper mushrooms, smelly tofu again. We always end up with a box of smelly tofu. And there were young adults giving try outs like nougats and bubble tea...after a mad rush of buying the snacks for our dinner and eating along the way, we went to NET which is a local shopping store like Uniqlo to buy winter coats. It was very very affordable.

Above: Our room for the night. Kiddy room.