We embarked on a long drive trip (approx. 6-7 hours) to Kemaman, Terengganu, early this morning. We woke up at about 5am and left home at about 6am, hoping to avoid the potential heavy traffic at the causeway. However, as we approached the Woodlands Checkpoint, there was already a long queue of cars. Took us more than an hour to clear both Singapore and Malaysia customs. We had a brief toilet break at Jambu Jepun R&R before we continued our journey.
There are actually two routes towards Terengganu, one by taking the inland highway via Segamat while the other going along the east coast via Mersing. As it is currently monsoon season, we were worried that there may be potential flooding along the east coast, thus we decided to go via the highway though we need to pay more tolls. Talking about tolls, we encountered some "incidents" which I will share now. As my car's RFID is linked to my Touch'nGo app on my iPhone, we assumed we could go through the Touch'nGo lane. At the first Toll Plaza (Kempas), we followed the Touch'nGo lane and upon reaching the counter, the barrier did not raise up. Fortunately, that lane accepts credit card payment which we did and the barrier was then raised. At the second Toll Plaza (Skudai), once again we attempted to go via the Touch'nGo lane thinking that the earlier one could be due to some technical issues. When we reached the barrier, once again it did not raise up. What's worse was that this lane does not support credit card payment and there were already cars queueing behind me. No choice, I had to turn on my reverse light to signal the cars behind and slowly reversed out to get to another lane. I decided to go through the MyRFID lane and the moment I approached it, the barrier immediately raised up. So that's the lane that I should go. At that moment, we were confident that we should not encounter any "drama" from then on. As we approached the third Toll Plaza (YongPeng), we panicked for a moment as there was no MyRFID lane!!! So no choice, I drove towards the leftmost Touch'nGo lane and hoped that it was a manned counter. Fortunately, it was manned and I bought a physical Touch'nGo card at the counter, which we used for all subsequent Toll Plaza.
After about 6 hours of driving, we finally reached the state of Terengganu.
We drove for another 45 mins and finally reached Kemaman at about 1pm. The first thing on our mind was, we need lunch! As such, we drove around trying to look for a nice cafe or restaurant, but all the shops (including Kemaman Mall below) in the town seemed to be closed. We then realized it's Friday, and at that time, most of the males were probably at the mosques having their Islamic prayer time. We actually went into an A&W restaurant that was opened but they only served takeaway orders.
With the help of Google, we managed to locate a pub cafe (De' Office) that was opened and served Chinese cuisine. We were the only customer at that time. When we entered the cafe, the air con wasn't even turned on. However, the boss was nice enough to turn it on for us.
We ordered a plate of Fried Noodles with Salted Fish and a plate of Kampung Fried Rice.
One thing to note is that Terengganu observes a Friday-Saturday weekend. In other words, Friday is the start of the weekend for Terengganu, along with Kelantan and Kedah, while most other Malaysian states have Saturday-Sunday weekends.
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