Extended Family Malaysia Road Trip 2019 (7th June to 9th June) Pretrip

My mum is part of a big family with 8 siblings (my maternal grandparents had 9 kids, and mum is right in the middle being no. 5) and she had been working hard to organise a family trip for her siblings for the sake of bonding and getting together while they are still fit enough to make the trip. They had made the first trip 2 years ago but the timing was not right for me then, and I was quite regretful that I did not join them. Even though I had signed up for the Phuket Marathon on the same weekend this time, I've decided to give mum my support instead. I was careless when I did Agoda booking for the Phuket hotel resort and had paid for two nights of stay which were non refundable. Usually I'll check carefully for such advance bookings and would chose the free cancellation option sigh...

Even though the trip started on a Friday, Mum wanted to travel to JB a day earlier to enjoy some food at Aeon Bukit Indah, I had heard about the mall long ago as it's quite popular with Singaporeans, but I had no idea one of my aunts is staying nearby. However, I was lazing around and only woke up at 10.15am that day, I packed my things in a hurry and left the house to meet my mum who was already waiting for me at Bishan MRT station. We took the train to Jurong East MRT station, went to the bus interchange and right after I hopped onto CW3 to bring us to Tuas checkpoint, I shockingly remembered that I've forgotten my passport. All the passengers were looking at us as the kind driver made one big round before he dropped us off at the same boarding point again. I felt so tired and angry with myself by this time as the trip from Bishan to Jurong East was already 45min on train and we've wasted so much time taking the train, now we had to go all the way back. Mum and I decided to eat something at the nearby food court as it was already 1pm and we had not eaten anything (we were planning to save our stomach for JB food). We took the train back to Bishan and I got back home to pick up my passport. I insisted on taking Grab to Jurong East interchange this time as I felt too tired to take the train again, the only saving grace was it was a rainy day for the whole island and the weather was not bothering me. It was almost 3pm when we finally made our way to the checkpoint, this is the first time I'm entering JB from Tuas on a public bus.

We only ordered 2 pax meal as we just had Starbucks before this

My very happy mum

Inevitably, we always convert everything to SGD when we make purchases in Msia, and with our strong currency, everything seems really cheap. We had an really enjoyable steamboat session and Mum requested for durians after that as it is the season and she was really craving for those. She managed to get very good and cheap durians at a nearby stall (serving many Singaporeans) and she was really happy about it for the rest of the evening. We got to Aunt's place about 6pm and we decided to hit the sack early at 9pm as we had to wake up at 4am the next morning. However, all three of us only slept a little and woke up at 11pm again as it was hard for us to sleep so early. Mum and Aunt went to the living room to watch Korean dramas and I went back to bed shortly after that when I felt sleepy again.