Noodles, Heat, and No Salad: Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Before crossing into Malaysia from Singapore, I had a working theory: that it would be like crossing into Tijuana from San Diego—a border you step over and suddenly everything changes, the pavement gets patchier, the signage more faded, the whole place a few notches rougher around the edges. Singapore, after all, has one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world, while Malaysia’s is roughly a fifth of that. On paper, the contrast should have been stark.
It wasn’t, really—at least not in Johor Bahru.
Getting There
I checked out of my hotel in Robertson Quay in Singapore just before noon on a Monday, walked to Queen Street Bus Terminal with my Cotipaxi backpack… and promptly boarded a hotel coach bus by mistake.
Upon realizing my error, I bolted off the bus, then tried to buy a ticket from a Singapore-Johor Express bus window outside and was informed that cash only means cash—no credit card, no Apple Pay, no AliPay.
It took a helpful suggestion by a pointing bystander—”over there”—before I found a CausewayLink bus, a basic city bus where you just tap in with your credit card or Apple Pay like you’re riding across the city.
The walk to the terminal in full sun, wearing an ultra-thin jacket and sun hat against a UV index of 7, was the kind of oppressive that makes you reconsider every life choice that led you to be outdoors. The heat and humidity in Singapore—and, it would turn out, in Johor Bahru—were unrelenting the entire trip, the sort that arrives not as a wave but as a wall.
On the highway, car traffic queued for what looked like considerable distances. The bus bypassed all of it. Getting through the border was efficient—the same digital arrival card process as Singapore, the same eGate passport scan—except you had to disembark, walk through immigration, then reboard a waiting bus. There was also a second, more traditional passport control on the Malaysian side of the river.
On a Monday, the lines were short, and the whole crossing took less time than I expected.
First Impressions
Johor Bahru, as Malaysia’s southernmost city and Singapore’s closest neighbor, has clearly been shaped by that proximity. The Tijuana comparison dissolves quickly. There was no particular filth, no graffiti to speak of, only the occasional piece of litter and a handful of hawker stalls that looked charmingly improvised rather than distressed. Many of the open-air shops lacked air-conditioning, which in that climate is not a minor detail, but these felt like features of the city rather than symptoms of neglect.
The cars on the road were a different matter—brands I’d never encountered, including one that required further research. I wrote specifically about the vehicles of Malaysia in another post, but suffice it to say that motorcbikes are far more prevalent than in Singapore, though not quite at the level I remembered from Vietnam in 2006. Traffic here has an energy to it.
My hotel was the Z Hotel—not affiliated with the Z Hotels I’ve stayed at in London, which offer tiny rooms at a fair price for the city (a deliberate value proposition in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets). The JB Z Hotel, by contrast, is positioned as boutique and a touch upscale, which makes sense given that a spacious room with a view of the old town and the Johor Strait. Yet, for an American, this was kind of a mind-blowing bargain—just US$55 a night. The room was large by any standard, and the view was the kind you can appreciate both during the day and when the city lights up at night.
Eating Well (or Trying To)
The food in Johor Bahru is cheap, flavorful, and—if you are keeping even half an eye on what you put into your body—a sustained negotiation between what’s available and what you’d prefer.
My first meal, at 1:45 p.m. after arriving, was nasi ayam gulai (curry chicken with white rice) and an ice syrap—a brilliant red, rose-flavored syrup drink served over ice. The total was 14.30 RM, or US$3.55. The curry was good. The ice syrap was refreshing but essentially sugar water with a compelling rose fragrance, which is to say it’s the kind of thing you enjoy once and then wonder about for the rest of the day from a nutritional standpoint.
That evening, I went to Restoran Syed Ali without doing enough advance planning, so I defaulted to the kuey tao seafood—fried flat noodles with shrimp—because I saw the word “seafood” on the menu and made an executive decision. It was fine, though not a huge portion.
For the first time ever, I tried paying with AliPay—which I thoughtfully signed up for and set up the night before. I confidently opened the app, scanned the restaurant’s QR code… and the handshake failed entirely and repeatedly.
Fortunately, they also accepted Apple Pay—at least Apple Pay with a Visa card. In Asia, the payment system landscape is bewildering—AliPay, DuitNow, Touch ‘n Go eWallet, QR codes everywhere, each one accepted by some vendors and not others. I kept finding myself longing for the elegant simplicity of Europe: one chip card, one tap, done.
Perhaps making it worth the trouble, though, was the cost of the meal: just 14 RM, or US$3.68.
It rained the entire second day, so I ended up eating at Old Town White Coffee inside the Johor Bahru City Square mall—the only vendor in the food court serving anything resembling traditional Malaysian food, surrounded by Burger King, smoothie shops, Baskin-Robbins, and, inexplicably, a Mexican restaurant.
I ordered asam laksa, a sour, fish-based noodle soup that is apparently considered one of Malaysia’s national dishes. The broth is made from poached mackerel, tamarind, lemongrass, and galangal, and served with thick rice noodles, slivers of pineapple, cucumber, red onion, fresh mint, and a spoonful of petis udang—a thick, fermented prawn paste—stirred in for a deep umami that balances the sourness of the tamarind. It cost less than US$4 and was excellent.
That second night I returned to Restoran Syed Ali with a plan, having fed the menu to a Microsoft Copilot (which knows my dietary preferences) before going. It recommended ordering tandoori ayam (Tandoori Chicken), capati (an unleaved flatbread), sayur-sayuram (mixed vegetables), and hot lime tea, providing the following rationale:
This gives you lean protein with anti-inflammatory spices, whole-grain carbs, fiber-rich vegetables, and a refreshing antioxidant drink-all aligned with longevity goals.
I confidently sat down and recited my order to the waiter.
“Sorry, we don’t have that today,” the waiter replied when I said tandoori ayam.
Same answer for the capati. And the sayur-sayuram. Despite maintaining a smile, I was particularly disappointed about the latter, since I was really looking forward to some vegetables.
At least they had the hot lime tea Copilot suggested! It was good enough that it has made me wonder whether a squeeze of lime belongs in my morning jasmine green tea too.
For the meal, I ended up ordering mee hoon goreng seafood. It was more fried noodles with some pieces of prawn.
This pattern—of wanting vegetables and finding more fried noodles—was not a complaint so much as an observation about the structure of Malaysian cuisine and the geography of downtown JB. Raw leafy salads are not really part of the culinary tradition here. Vegetables show up in cooked form, in soups, or as ulam—raw herbs served as a side to rice.
Fresh produce, I’d later find out, is largely the province of wet markets that wrap up by mid-morning, while the hypermarkets with actual salad greens are situated well outside the city center, where there’s room for parking lots and the rent is lower. In the tourist and commuter corridor right at the border crossing, real estate goes to malls and cheap eateries—not to refrigerators full of romaine lettuce and spring greens.
For a few days, this is a mildly amusing logistical puzzle. For longer stays, it would become a genuine problem. I noted it and kept Malaysian dishes—most of which contain some sort of noodles.
On the other hand, a late lunch on my third day at the mall’s Empire Sushi—grilled spicy salmon, grilled lobster, spicy tuna maki, tuna maki—came to 13.10 RM, or US$3.26. At prices like those, the high starch-to-vegetable ratio becomes easier to accept philosophically.
The City Itself
The mall—five stories of Johor Bahru City Square—had H&M, Decathlon, and a number of chains you’d find in any mid-sized American city, which made the whole thing feel simultaneously familiar and slightly surreal. Prices across the board did seem lower than equivalent goods in most countries I’ve visited.
Outside the mall, Johor Bahru has pockets of genuine character. The old town area features 19th-century pre-war shophouses with a blend of Chinese, Indian, and colonial architecture, traditional lanterns strung above the narrow streets.
The Bangunan Sultan Ibrahim—completed in 1940 and, at the time, the tallest building in all of Malaya—still commands its hilltop with the quiet authority of something that has watched several eras come and go. It served as the administrative heart of Johor for nearly 70 years before the state secretariat relocated. During the Japanese occupation of 1942, General Yamashita reportedly used the tower to plan the invasion of Singapore; bullet marks from that period are said to still be visible on the exterior walls. Plans to convert it into a museum have been discussed for some time.
Along the Segget River Walk, there’s a contemporary “S”-shaped monument that reimagines the state’s royal crescent and star to mark the rejuvenation of the Sungai Segget. It’s the kind of civic art installation that signals a city trying to refresh its public spaces, which JB clearly is.
Running in the Heat
I ran three times during my stay, each one a reminder that the weather here makes exercise an act of stubbornness. The first run was 31 minutes at Zone 1 effort after dark, when the temperature had dropped to merely very warm. Finding a good route required some improvisation; some roads had no sidewalk, only a narrow painted bike lane shared with the pedestrian or cyclist, which other runners were also using as a de facto path.
On the evening of the third day, I ran 6.9 kilometers along similar streets:
I came back soaked through every time. My recovery protocol became a ritual: strip off immediately, wash the damp clothes quickly in the sink, alternate cold and hot water in the shower, turning it off after the hot cycle for the evaporative effect, waiting in the stall, rinse and repeat. It worked well enough to make the next meal feel earned.
The second day, the hotel’s gym turned out to be a pleasant surprise—discovered only because my room key stopped working and a helpful staff member, who had noticed me heading out to run the night before, took me up to the eighth floor to show me the treadmill on our way back up. Good gym, well-equipped.
That evening, the treadmill sure beat running dark streets in the rain. It would be my fastest-paced run in a week.
Leaving
The return crossing was straightforward—passport control, a CausewayLink bus to the Woodlands checkpoint in Singapore, passport scan at the eGate. Efficient in both directions, which in the context of one of the busiest border crossings in the world is remarkable.
My first stop upon arriving back in Singapore was a supermarket. I bought greens, chickpeas, sardines, and various vegetables for a proper salad, and made one in the hotel room that evening with the focused satisfaction of someone who had been missing salads for three days.
Johor Bahru is worth the crossing. It’s not a place I left with strong affection, but it was genuinely interesting—the cars I’d never heard of, the architecture layered with colonial and Japanese and Chinese history, the food that’s cheap and often very good if you’re not fixating on leafy greens, and the Westernization that has arrived in full force without quite erasing what was there before. The Tijuana comparison, it turns out, says more about the assumptions you bring to a border crossing than about what’s on the other side.