My fearful weekend in Johor Bahru
It came out of nowhere. I am unsure actually how it all begins so I don't really know how to begin my first post in a few months. I do know I had just bought a new camera in Singapore, where I was living at the time and thought I should put it to good use. I decided to make my weekend to Johor or (JB for short) the topic of this post as when I look back on it, it was really something I will always remember and have a good hearty nut busting chuckle too. So lets set a bit of an understanding for this post, people involved.
Me - Usual me, probably drinking a bit to much due to the fact I was earning a shit-tonne of money.
Friend A (Bob) - Bob is also from Glasgow, Scotland. Completely different from me in the fact that he is a cunt.
Friend B (Dan) - In all fairness I have not done much to mask his name, but either way he is Bulgafrican. Yes nice chap, total idiot but lovely guy none the less.
So like I said, I am unsure how it begins, but I do remember we were sitting in Indochine on Club Street in the heart of Singapore abusing the 2 for 1 pints and probably the best happy hour in town. Epic times. Anyways we were discussing what to do and I had mentioned that JB had an awesome clubbing scene, lovely Chinese-Malaysian woman and cheap alcohol compared to Malaysia and Singapore. Dan and myself had already been and had some good times but it was Bob that was showing the desire to go the most. I had not long moved to Singapore and was tired from a hard weeks graft at work so I was not all that into the idea however after some pints of Erdinger and the thought of some amazing times in a shite-hole town I was soon talked round. Dan had no money and played that card rather well, Bob and myself agreed to fund him as long as he behaved and enjoyed himself with no trouble or issues, this is something that usually comes hand in hand with Dan. Anyways, it was all arranged we all headed back to the flat and packed up enough dancing gear and clothes for the weekend. Easy times, jump a taxi to JB cross the border to Malaysia and we would be ok? Not really.
Our first stumbling block came when we tried to lift money. Singapore as an awful ATM system which means you can only use your correct bank at your correct ATM to withdraw money. Useless for me when I am scooting around looking for a CITIBANK ATM. Hard to find. Anyways I was dressed in my zoot suit ready for a nice weekend of impressing young Chinese ladies with my epic dance moves but sweating like rapist during a feminine freedom weekend. Eventually the money was sorted but we could not for the life of us find a taxi. Not ideal, as a western dude you really do not want to take a bus to Malaysia on a Friday night. It can be distressing, sweaty and smelly. However after a lot of loud noise, hand waving and shouting some nice young Malay guy decided to offer us a ride in the back of his van. Normally this would seem odd and quite scary in Asia but with our alcohol levels being high and the fact we were in safe Singapore we opted to take his lift to the border and cross it via shuttle bus. During the ride the conversations got odd, lots of talk about woman, drugs, alcohol and general things you should not speak about in Singapore or MM Lee will come down on you with the wrath of General Kim. So we kept our mouths shut and bailed out the van at the border to cross eventually after a lot of bad noise and odd situations. Achievement unlocked!
The next stumbling block was then to somehow get across the causeway, now its not as simple as just walking through an airport immigration area, this is quite difficult, you need transport. We were advised to wait on a bus but this was why we opted to ride in the back of some nutcases van for, so we could avoid the local options of a bus. Anyways, we boarded the border crossing bus and as you can guess it was hot, busy and everyone was staring at the nicely dressed 3 white guys standing in the middle of their transport. We kept to ourselves, shuffled off the bus, went through passport control and onto the bus again to finally arrive in the middle of Johor Bahru. We had managed to book the ZON hotel down on the duty free section of Johor Bharu which is probably in the top 3 hotels in the city which was something I was looking forward too as my clothes were damp with sweat. After a bumpy taxi ride we arrived to check in, only to find they had taken our booking down wrong and it would cost us more for THREE people, as they thought we had only said two... We overcame this by booking a suite with a fold down bed for the non paying Dan, we checked in, showered and sat down to discuss where to go from here
Initially I felt like writing the Friday night off as a bit of a lost cause and focusing on a great Saturday day and night then home late on the Sunday but my two comrades had different plans, they had spotted the few busy night spots near the hotel and wanted to check them out, we ordered some room service. Mostly beers. It was around 9 pm when we decided to go to down stairs, walk around and have a look at what was on offer for us to do. Now to those who have no idea about Johor it has a reputation for its good dance music, lively clubs and extremely violent young men so it was really a game of Russian roulette picking a night spot for the evening but we settled on a place called Cabana which looked rather laid back with a decent crowd. The night was going well we settled on a bottle of vodka for the table and danced around having a bit of fun talking to the locals and just generally having a good time. However this is when Bob's true character comes out, after a few drinks. He is very much a handful and constantly speaks to unavailable woman and knows he is doing it then tries to talk himself out of trouble, this is something I would not recommend in Johor so me and Dan tried to have a word with him, one word leads to another and me and Dan walk out.
Dan and I decided to leave Bob at Cabana with the vodka and to his ways while we felt like going to a more classy place, we found the next door bar looked to have a more settled crowd and through the alcohol we decided to buy 2 bottles of Bollinger Champagne, dumb idea considering the price but you know when your drunk, money seems to lose all value. Anyways the night went well and as the clubs where coming out we noticed a young girl crying outside, Dan went over to help out and calm her down to find out her boyfriend had kicked her our of the nightclub and accused her of cheating. As Dan was speaking to her the boyfriend appears and starts screaming at her, Dan and me until the police arrived to sort the situation out, or as we thought. Turns out the police started to think Dan was the person who had came between this young woman and her boyfriend which was totally untrue, however the police wanted to take Dan away unless he paid around 2000 MYR to sort the whole situation out. The whole tone of the evening was turning nasty and the shouting and threatening each other went back and forward for a good half an hour until I finally managed to calm the hysterical Chinese girl down and explain to the police we were just trying to help. She was finally calm and agreed to help us which she did, explaining that it was not in fact me or Dan that had upset her or her partner, but it was another white man much smaller than myself or Dan, in fact she had a note from him which read "Call me +65 98xx xxxx kisses, Bob".
"FUCK!!" We thought, fuck fuck fuck... Where was Bob and what had he done? The good news was the police where not now asking for money, but asking if we knew who "Bob" was? Now this put us in a terrible situation, as we know his flirting is harmless (he was so ugly it could not have been serious) however, we also knew that Johor was very small and if we were seen walking around with him by the police after lying to them it could get messy, especially if it was the following night and we were a tad drunk. We decided to say to the police that it was indeed someone we had seen, but was not actually with us. This seemed to wrap up all the affairs, the young couple left holding hands and it all seemed to be peaceful now and we decided to head up to the hotel room and see if we could find Bob. It was around 4 am and we had been in the room reflecting on what happened and finishing off the bottle of Champers we had when Bob came bursting in the door, sweating and smelling like some kind of wild arsehole. I have never seen a man lock a door so quickly behind himself in my life which was followed by him frantically waving his hands around explaining the situation we already knew about.
Apparently it was all harmless and he had invited the young couple to drink and dance around with him, and Bob got a bit to friendly in the eyes of her partner which left Bob leaving the club through the backdoor and hiding out at the hotel pool area until all the police had left and it had calmed down. We calmed him down, gave him a few beers and decided to get some sleep. "What a day" I thought..
The next day we woke up a bit late for breakfast, around 1 pm however we were considered high rollers and in a suite, so Bob assured us we were welcome in the continental lounge for food anytime we wanted. We got dressed and headed down only to be turned away and told there was no food around and we had to look outside of the hotel to find food. This really got to Bob, myself an Dan couldn't give a fuck to be honest and we sat at the lobby drinking a can of beer while Bob was trying to break the communication barrier and explain we wanted food which was really getting no where at all. After about half an hour he gave up and joined us. The rest of the day was spent walking around looking for food and buying white shirts that all kinda matched each others. Seemed cool and a good idea but indeed we just looked like 3 big white idiots storming around looking for things that would really, never be found.
Finding good food was difficult, we had walked right along the coastal road and everywhere we looked was shut or serving things we had no idea how to eat, never mind what it actually was. A wild taxi driver appears, as if out of no where he has the answers to our issues and promises to take us to a pub where we can play pool, drink beer, eat good food and even sing some songs on the karaoke, which from my past experience sounded a bit like some kind of brothel, which sounded like fun. We hopped in the taxi and off we went, driving around Johor Bharu until we basically arrived back at where he picked us up, but just around the corner a tad and pointed to this little green building buried at the bottom of an old hotel. We had thoughts of an Irish pub, or a Chinese spa by the way he sold it to us, but it was indeed a Chinese gambling den... "Oh fuck, this is the last place we wanted to be" we said to each other as we walked inside, no one else was in there and it was dark and really intimidating. We sat down at a table that had a full view of the front door and around the area, then as if by magic a creepy little Asian woman appeared with a few objects. Objects being a Menu, a jug of Tiger beer and some gambling tools. All of which confirmed our fear of it being indeed, a gambling den. However, the menu seemed very good and we all settled for the Chicken chop, gravy, potato and salad which we bellowed over to the little lady. She took it down and brought over more beer telling us we drank to slowly while agreeing to put on some music to kill the shitty ambiance of this hell hole
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We started to settle, the beers went down well and some more workers started to appear, random people coming and going including delivery men. Our food arrived which was ok not the best but completely decent in most ways. By this time we had started playing a few games of dice with some of the folk working there and we were all getting along nicely, things where really going much better than we assumed and we could see the lovely sunset outside of the tiny door and everything felt good and relax. This was until Dan had upset one of the staff working there by accusing them of animal cruelty, this had seemed to have come out of no where and was a complete surprised and a very big "sigh" came over me and Bob. Apparently Dan had believed they had trapped a cat in a locker and after 10 minutes of waffling in different languages at each other they had agreed to prove to Dan there was indeed, no cat in the locker. The staff seemed concerned that we were concerned about this crying cat we could now all hear after the music had been turned down. Time went on and we continued to explain to the already unhappy staff that we could still hear this animal, until the explained it must have fallen between the wall and the lockers in front of it, there was no way of getting it out. Dan through his alcoholic brain had some how concluded this was animal cruelty and he was contacting the police. The owners of this little den where called and we were told to leave or face trouble, which was being called and was on the way.
After downing our brew we picked up our stuff and bailed out the door and round the corner, discussing how things in this town have the capability of turning to sour, so quickly... Was it us, was it the behavior of our odd ball group? Was it the fact they didn't like white people? What was going on and why did everyone seem to want to kill, Rob or fight with us.... We caught a taxi back to the hotel!
We arrived back and reflected on how close we had come to yet another beating and we seriously spoke about just catching a cab back across the border to Singapore which we were going to do until the hotel explained we would still need to pay for the Saturday night stay which really meant we would just stay. We ordered some drinks from room service, stuck on some music and watched what was left of the sunset from the hotel room. Dan then popped up with the idea he had seen the hotel had an awesome spa, which did indeed sound awesome! What would be better than getting a massage, relaxing in a spa and then some quality food! All was good
.
2 hours in the Spa completed and we all felt excellent and ready for another decent night on the town, we were all buddies again and looking forward to a good but quiet night. I was however skeptical of what it was to bring but I was assured that it was the last night there and if anything got out of hand again we would just take a taxi back to Singapore there and then. That put me at ease and we went down to the hotel bar to watch a local band perform while enjoying a few whiskeys and some fries. The evening was going well and we even managed to get some decent rum to drink and everything was feeling rather enjoyable and relaxing when Bob came back from the toilet where one of the band girls and explained they were going to the same nightclub (Cabana) that we had been to the night before and invited us along, it seemed harmless and the bottle of vodka was pretty cheap. We arrived and straight away the hostess for the club noticed all 3 of us and gave us a very nice greeting, took us to a table and brought our bottle of vodka and mixers... The music was good the place was semi full and the vibe was ok, considering how dangerous of a location JB can be.
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The club got pretty boring and we got pretty drunk rather quick, we stuck together for a change and decided that this club was a bit boring and we should venture out of the tax free zone and into Johor Bharu its self, looking to see what clubs and night spots we could find. We hopped in the cab and asked to be taken to the centre of town where people hang out, we had been told to go to "the plaza" and that is where we directed the taxi driver to.
We got out and straight away we heard what sounded like awesome techno music, now to the average drunk 24 year old male this is a very welcoming sound so we decided to check it out, we had very high hopes of something awesome. It was rather difficult to find and when we finally found it we walked in to find what can only be described as one of the scariest places I have ever stumbled upon. Imagine if you will, a rather empty dark room with seating all around the outside and one small flickering TV hanging from the roof, a small bar in the corner and 3 rather big scary Malay guys with tattoo's everywhere. There was very little light in this room and the smell was not appealing. We were very apprehensive however one of the guys standing over at the bar called us in and asked us "what would you like to drink?, we have carlsberg or tiger!" We chose 3 cans of tiger and moved towards to bar to speak to this guy and explain the only reason we came was due to the loud music, which drew a rather large smile.
Things were going well, we were drinking Tiger with what was clearly the dodgiest men in JB then they asked us to sing Karaoke with them, which was going ok until Bob decided to agree to sing a Malay song with one of these guys. It was going well until Bob decided to start taking the piss and laughing at the song which really caused a very strong bad vibe in the shitty little bar. I tried to break the atmosphere by asking for another beer which again was met with silence, then next thing I heard was "You want a new beer, sure you have a new beer I will get you one" I thought to myself, thank god things were going so well for the three of us up until this point but hopefully we did not offend him too much. I looked over to notice that he was fetching our beer from a deep freeze which seemed odd, only it was not a beer he was bringing out, it was a fucking machete and he started to wave it around shouting at us. I looked over to the door to see it being slammed shut from the other side leaving both me and Bob in the shitty little bar and Dan in the stairwell arguing with someone over the price of drugs or something. This situation was not good and for the first time in my life I really thought I was going to become just another white guy that go's missing in South East Asia. It was very clear there was no reasoning with this man and I was tempted to offer Bob as a sacrifice as it was really all his fault, again however he was not even listening to me, he just wanted to cut us
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The fear that we could very well be hacked to death with a blunt, very cold machete in some shitty backwater town in Malaysia was starting to grip both me and Bob and was starting to show in the frantic waving and general gibberish that was spewing from our mouths. It is funny how in a time of fear your native accent comes rolling out and with me and Bob being Glaswegian, there was not a chickens chance in Thailand of this guy even understanding us, never mind granting us mercy. I decided to make a dash for the door we came thought, pulling at it like some kind of wild ape, banging on it shouting for Dan as I could hear things where not going to well for him in the stairwell. I managed to pull the door open and ran into the stairwell to notice Dan being dragged into the street by 2 guys and I looked behind me and saw Bob flying towards to door with the machete wielding nutter was close behind him. I jumped down the stairs and burst out into the street with Bob behind me and noticed that Dan was fending off someone else with a little pocket knife and then I looked over to Bob to notice he had been struck in the back of head with a Machete and decided to take off up Johor Main Street running as fast as he could with 2 men chasing him, during this time I had managed to frantically flag down a taxi driver who was looking very relaxed although he could see everything that was happening in front of his car. I asked him could he take me and Dan back to the tax free zone and he smiled back at me and said, "No, I leave you here with these guys, your new friends" His creepy grin gave me the shivers and I shoved 500 myr into his hand and begged him to take us, and he finally agreed. I hopped in the car and we moved forward to allow Dan to get in as well and we sped off up the road and round the corner. Madness, what had happened we were thinking? Dan was bleeding from the arm were he had been cut slightly by the knife weilding idiot and I had caught a blow to the side of the face in all the animalistic behavior. As we turned yet another corner we spotted Bob peeking round the corner and I was tempted to just ignore that I saw him as he had caused yet another mess however I asked the driver to pull over and pick him up, which he kindly did.
Bob jumped in the cab and we headed back to our hotel, to shocked to speak to each other and we were all visible shaken up. It was probably around 2 or 3 am at this point and we poured into the hotel, feeling far more sober than we actually were we ordered 12 beers from room service and some food to calm us down. While waiting in the room for the beers we started to play the blame game, who was to blame for another shocking night in JB, both myself and Dan were pointing fingers at Bob and he was blaming us for not wanting to stay in the club, anyways it lead to a lot of drunken ramblings and through out it we realised Dan had taken Ecstasy which made the argument even more eventful. It continued on for a few hours and we finished up all of the beers and a bottle of rum during it to the point where we were all very drunk and I decided to walk out. I packed my bag and left them. I hopped in a cab and asked to be taken back to Singapore please and we drove towards to border, the sun was coming up at this point and I had a huge grin on my face that I had escaped what could have been a very horrible weekend with just a punch in the face
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I crossed the border and took a taxi back to my Condo, at this point it was around 7 am on a Sunday and everything was quiet which afforded me the time to reflect on what had actually happened, where had my travel mates ended up? Last thing I saw was Dan banging on the hotel room door threatening to kill Bob with an empty bottle of rum and a coat hanger. The image, looking back on it made me laugh and I took the elevator to my condo. When I got in I opened a beer and lay on the couch giggling like a school girl at what might have been happening while I was safe home, had they been arrested for fighting in a hotel at 5 am? did they get stopped at the border? Did Dan get a hold of Bob and beat him within an inch of his life with a coat hanger and bottle of rum? Or had they shook hands and decide to keep drinking and continue on with their adventure? I was happy at the thought of whatever was happening, I had no part in it and I could live to fight the good fight another day.
Hours later the door burst open and Dan fell through it, laughing like an idiot and was clearly still drunk, he wanted to focus on more drinking and perhaps go to Sentosa. I was trying to ask him what happened to Bob but he did not quite know, he said he didn't want to talk about it and knowing Dan's criminal Bulgarian background it made me uneasy to ask further. We sat enjoying a beer in the afternoon when Bob popped his head in the door. I think he was checking to see what the atmosphere was like however the sight of me and Dan speaking on the couch was probably more welcoming than scuttling off to bed and keeping whatever happened going, we offered him a beer which he accepted and we decided that we took on Johor Bharu and had won.
Johor is definitely a scary place for a Westerner but it is possible to have a good time there, and it is a good alternative to the night's out in Singapore. Since that happened I have went back and had good trouble free nights but the dangers are there. I don't plan a trip back anytime soon with those two however.
