Kukup is a Malaysian fish village on the west coast of Johor. Because of its location and its reputation for cheap seafood it has become popular among tourists from Singapore, including our group!
The 2-day trip included transport, accommodation and all meals and cost us SGD88 each. On Saturday morning, half of us who were lucky enough to have both days off were picked up by a van in Singapore. We went through the immigration check point at Woodland and stopped for breakfast at JB. I slept through the rest of the journey to Kukup, which took about 1.5 hours.
The first thing we noticed after getting off the car was the smell of the town! It was coming from the water by the restaurant where a lot of people disposed of their rubbish. But once we started walking away from the town centre it was not noticeable any more.
Our accommodation was at one of many "floating chalets", houses supported by stilts over the sea. Some of them were the local people's homes while some have been turned into chalets for tourists. The walkways linking all the houses were quite narrow and were shared by pedestrians, motorbikes and bicycles. Our chalet had a large living area, three bedrooms and a balcony outside the kitchen overlooking the sea. There are 3 bunk beds in each bedroom, dining tables and chairs on the balcony and a karaoke set in the living room, which turned out to be the biggest entertainment in this trip!
"Floating chalets" next to ours
Once we picked our roommates and our beds, we headed back to town to have lunch at a seafood restaurant. The food was OK and the seafood was probably not the best I've had. After lunch we had a walkabout around the shops, the schools and the residential areas of Kukup. We were waiting for the rest of the group to arrive so the afternoon was spent on playing cards, Monopoly Deal and Mahjong!
We decided to take a walk before dinner. The town centre was getting busy and crowded as it was the night of "Hungry Ghost Festival" 鬼節. A huge stage was set up for performance and hawkers were selling food and drinks at their stalls. We got a few skewers to share before returning to the chalet. Dinner was prepared by the house owner and included grilled sting ray, prawns, otah and other local dishes.
While some returned for more Mahjong and karaoke a few of us went for a stroll downtown. The performance for the festival has already started and was probably one of the most embarrassing (at the same time funniest) shows I have ever watched. The choreography and the costumes were really tacky and the music was way too loud. But the place was packed and most people seemed to be enjoying themselves. 15 min later we decided we have seen enough and went to explore the rest of the town. It was mostly residential houses, most of them built on stilts. We also saw people lighting floating lanterns and fireworks.
Back at the chalet, it was more Mahjong and playing cards before bedtime.
Those houses were very beautiful !!
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