Birthday JB Trip

Jeff picked me up from work yesterday at 12 pm. We went back home, repacked our stuff & took a cab to Woodlands Checkpoint. We changed S$500 at Sheng Siong & off we went. Stupidly queued for 950 before realizing that the frequency is terrible. So we'll stick to 170 from now on.

1st thing we did was to check in at Puteri Pacific. As the normal rooms were all fully booked, we took the Corporate Floor Deluxe room at S$144 per night. Where else can you get such price? We had to make do with smoking room & twin beds coz the king bed & non smoking rooms were all taken up. Becoz it's Corporate Floor, the floor can only be accessible with our card key. There's another mini counter & the staff gave us a funny look. I guess it's becoz we were wearing berms & t-shirt & they were wondering why such lokkok people are staying at the higher end room. The receptionist said that the room wouldn't smell but I guess coz we're non smokers, we could pick up the stale tobacco smell the moment we stepped in. As for the beds, we pushed the 2 single beds together.

Jeff went to bomb the toilet while I waited. Then we left for City Sq to sing K (S$20+ for 2 pax for 6 hrs) & bought movie tickets (RM$10/S$4.10 per tix) to Ip Man. The KTV session ended at 7 pm & we rushed back to the hotel for their buffet dinner at about S$23 per pax. Muahahaha! Above average buffet at Sakura rates. Shall I say it again? Can you find this in Sg? Then, we rushed back to City Sq to catch the 9 pm show. We got there with less than 10 mins to spare before realizing that we left the tickets in the hotel! Jeff ran all the way back to get it while I went to Body Shop to buy bubble bath. We entered the cinema at 9.10 pm as the show was just starting. I've always liked Donnie Yen! He's so man!!! Enrica loves Kenneth, Serene loves Bosco & I love Donnie. But too bad Donnie doesn't do TV series so I can only catch him on screen. He makes me wanna learn martial arts!

Went back to the hotel after the show & had a shower before running the bath. The hot water bath with the wonderful scent was so shiok! I didn't feel like getting out! Set the alarm for 8.30 am & went to sleep. Went down for the complimentary breakfast buffet, went back upstairs & soaked in the bath 1 last time. Napped for a short while before checking out at 12 noon. Went to City Sq again as Jeff wanted to get games so we could head straight to the checkpoint from Jusco without the need to go back to City Sq before we head back to Sg. I also got a copy of the 2nd book from the Twilight series, New Moon. I couldn't find the other 2 books. Turned out that all copies had been reserved. My gosh! Anyway, I got it cheap also at S$16.50 when in Sg it's selling for $19.

Took a cab to Jusco at Tebrau for RM$20. I got a wallet for myself, Jeff got a watch for his colleague. At Toys R Us, I got a DIY mould. I'm going to make paw print mould for the 3 dogs. I doubt the paws will look very different from 1 another. But it doesn't matter lah. Then I'll hang it somewhere in the house. We then walked over to Tesco just next door. Nothing much there. Had dinner at the Vietnam restaurant before taking cab back to City Sq for RM$18.

In my opinion, I prefer the old checkpoint to the new 1. The new 1 is air conditioned but it's just not convenient. I don't know how to put it in words. You'll have to experience it yourself. Becoz we're frequent visitors to JB so we're familiar with the difference. The new 1 has a design that forces you to walk in a "snake" fashion which I believe is to make you walk much further so it sort of limits the amount of people at the immigration counter as it takes you a long time to cover the distance. It connects directly to City Sq for easy access. Going there isn't too bad coz you basically just walk to City Sq where that's the destination most people have in mind. Going back to Sg is a different thing.

After walking the snake like path & clearing the immigration, you go to the bus bay. It was super congested becoz of the design. 1st, the buses have to slot into the bus bay to board passengers, then reverse out before driving away. The old checkpoint bus bay is like a normal bus stop: stop at the box & drive off when full. So the new 1 is more time consuming. 2nd, if you don't feel like waiting for the bus, you can walk back to Sg in the past which you can't with the new checkpoint. (Anyway, it's not safe. Probably that's why they designed it so you can't walk.) The queue for the bus was really like a snake. It was really messy & everyone just cut queue & the queue actually snaked from bay 4 (where the 170 is) all the way to bay 14. The queue actually blocked the escalator & all the while, people are continuing to pour down after clearing the immigration. It was chaotic. So my advice is, don't return to Sg at peak hours! (We returned on Sunday 8 pm.) A good time will be up to around noon on Sunday coz evening time is when everyone returns. If you wanna go, avoid Fri evening & Sat morning. I think weekdays are generally ok.

I had a great time, gorging & shopping & bathing. Haha. We didn't use up the S$502 = RM$1200. RM$315 went to the hotel & the rest were spent. I had RM$100+ left. I think the most worth it is the movie & KTV. The Puteri Pacific is reasonable. So you won't find me singing K or watching cartoon movies in Sg ever again! 1 downside is that movies in Malaysia are heavily sensored. Simple kissing scenes are cut away. So the only good shows to watch are those with a G rating in Sg, namely, the cartoons or kids show to ensure that you don't miss anything.

To end off, once again, I'll write about something light hearted. Eh, today, it'll be something cheeky. While I was waiting for Jeff to come back from getting the movie tickets, I went inside Watson's. I saw this Sg couple lah. The girl was standing in front of the pregnancy kits shelf although she didn't seem to be looking for 1 to buy. As condoms & pregnancy kits are often put side by side, I realised that she was waiting for her bf who was choosing what condoms to buy. He finally chose the Durex gold box which is the featherlite (aka extra thin for greater sensitivity) version & he took the biggest box which contains 12 condoms. No price for guessing what they'll be doing back at the hotel that night! :P