Johor and Pahang areas visited, luckilly not flooded

I set off to Batu Pahat on Tuesday morning to do our first installation of the EMS, Environmental Monitoring System. Name only canggih, but thats how the client likes to refer to it. Before going down , everyone was worried about the flooding situation and so forth. As such my installation for the Pahang site will be slightly delayed. But nevertheless, we were to finish installtion at the Johor site and I had to be back in Pahang ( appointment already made) on Friday morning.

On Tuesday, it rained the whole time we drove down, but the client was having meetings so he delayed us one day. So the next day, lucky for us, we were "blessed" with good weather, in other words, hot and sunny. Little did I noticed it until we got back to our hotel room, that I realized I got sun burnt, on my neck and face. Darn !! Kononnya good weather la.

FOOD

The first night we were on our own, and with a little research and talking to the locals, Briyani Gam, is famous here in this region. Had to try it, and found out there is this restaurant called, Beriani Power Restoran. Got directions to go find this place, but it took us 45 mins to finally find it. It was fragging closed at night. Mahai !! nobody told us they were not open at night. So we ended up having food at a mamak stall in town. Restoran Meriyiam, Nasi Kandar. But there weren't selling Nasi Kandar, Sup and Nasi Lemak saja ada !! Ok lor, ordered Nasi Lemak Ayam Goreng and Zup Campur ( Ayam, Kambing , Daging Campur wo). Nasi Lemak wasn't good, because their sambal was burnt, like my face. But their Ayam Goreng, fuiyooo, punya la bes rasanya. Its along the main road in Pusat Bandar Batu Pahat, opposite of Maybank. Ayam Goreng panas... bes !!

When you drive to Batu Pahat, you have to try their APAMS and Putu Bamboo. Where ? After exiting the Air Hitam Toll Plaza, you will see very prominent signs put up by stalls there, at this moment there is only one and that stalls sells superb apams and putu bamboo. They are nice and cheap. On Thursday, it rained in the morning, until the evening , non stop. We rushed to finish installation and testing of our equipment before we headed back home. All wet and soggy, we began our journey home after a quick change of clothes. As we reached Air Hitam town we stopped by a place for lunch. Thats where we saw a goreng pisang stall there. Pisang Tanduk prominently displayed on the booth. I call them Pisang XXX , why ah, you go figure out yourself la. The Pisang goreng was superb. This one from Air Hitam town. Go for the pisang tanduks, the huge ones, because they are very sweet and aromatic.



After lunch we left in a hurry. It has been raining the whole entire day , as far as we were concerned. The little lake where we installed the equipment recorded a 0.6M rise in level. I had to be in Kuala Lipis the same night.




The black marking is the road up to Kuala Lipis. Its via Bentong, Raub, Benta and then you will finally reach Kuala Lipis. Siti Town they call it. Spent the night day before I began on another crazy day, of driving up to Kuala Medang ( Felda ), visit 2 sites. From there we had to drive back down to Kuala Lipis en route to Jerantut. Red markings , the Ikan Patin Trail I call it. Why Ikan Patin ? Simple, you drop by any Malay stall, you are surely to find Ikan Patin sold. My favourite style too, Patin masak Tempoyak ... yummy.. The kicks come after eating the dish... when you begin passing gas !! hehehe

On the way down to Jerantut we were met with a long queue. Wondering what the commotion was , I took a slow stroll to see what was happening. It is not common for this alternative trunk road to be congested like this. Then we saw this. It had some sort of a fiesta feel to this.


Some smart ass decided to set up stall to sell his Petais. So this is the first time I had so much company driving on this road to Jerantut. Lucky for us, all this lasted no more than 15 minutes before we began to inch our way through. The Crane decided to stop rescuing for awhile so that the kilometer long queue could move.



We then drove up to the Sg Tembeling area, pretty much very close to Kuala Tahan. Here if you are lucky, you could catch yourself Ikan Kelah. Apparently this fish has been fished out to almost extinct. It is an endangered species now, however so, the Wildlife department has set up many Kelah Sanctuaries in Taman Negara's rivers. This because Ikan Kelah can not survive in dirty or turbid waters in the wild. Therefore, the only place it could survive is in National Parks like Taman Negara, where the river is clean.

So I came back via Jerantut - Temerloh highway to the New EastCoast Expresway. Nice drive back home and it took me only about 2.5 hours to reach home from Jerantut.

Basically I have never seen so much rain before, I mean in KL everything seems to just pour out and stops. In Johor it just never seems to stop. Luckilly there were no floods at the places where I visited. Even for the Pahang rivers, they did not seem to be as high as when they were in December.