Lost in My Own City

Monday 26th December, I decided to drive down to Johore Bahru alone to join daughter Ayla and SIL Syahmi on a short holiday. The condition was I shall get my own room at the hotel instead of gate crashing on them as I did on the trip to Bandung. I wanted to enter JB city via Danga Bay but instead I entered via Jalan Tebrau. I was lost in my own city...

That very day, arriving late in JB, I joined them at the City Square Plaza. JB has changed so much from those days. The smelly black water of Sungai Segget, the wet market and the REX Cinema at Jalan Wong Ah Fook had long gone disappeared.  The railway Station at Jalan Tun Razak, now with yellow facade is like a monument to reflect memories of the old railway station and is now replaced by the JB Sentral. The station hold sad memories for me as I remembered my mom and dad sending me off as I take the train to my boarding school in Negri Sembilan with my friends after every term holidays and fetching me home during the holidays. How I miss them even after all these years.

The Meldrum Walk is one place I think the bosses in Johore Bahru Municipality should go. If they do maybe they would want to improve it. I am sure the big guns in the Municipality have travelled the world to see how eating places should be. Sad... I find it unacceptable that such places still exist and worse it is so close to the multi-million facility as JB Sentral. Wake up people!!!

The next day showed my daugther the 'graveyard village' (see my earlier blog) where I was born and lived for the first 11 years of my life, next showed her my school. The school compound looks small now. The sports field is not there anymore, that made way to multi-storey block of classrooms to cater for more students. I wonder if it is still the best all Girls' school in the city. It was at least I think so. 

Showed them the Sultan Abu Bakar Mosque, the park or lake gardens adjacent to the Johore Bahru zoo where I used to go during my childhood, the grand prix circuit at Jalan Gertak Merah. We ended up at the zoo, where as a child I could actually see tigers and lions then and the zoo was so close to where I lived.

I later showed them our Taman Sentosa house where the family moved from our second home in Kampong Melayu. Taman Sentosa is right in the middle of a business area. The big Sentosa mall is just behind the house. Not ideal to live there especially if you have small children and that was the very reason my youngest sister moved to Puncak Alam, Selangor. Totally different.

I felt good showing my daughter round JB and she now knows that I am a city girl who goes to the library every Saturday morning instead of playing in the sand or river. No wonder I hate to get dirt in my feet or simply stroll in the forest like Taman Negara.

The Lido beach is not what it used to be, in fact no beach anymore, we just spent the evening flying kite at Danga Bay. As much as I love JB it is not home anymore. All I have are just beautiful memories of my childhood.