Kota Bharu

Published on 2024-07-17

wide Last weekend me and a friend took a trip to north of Malaysia, via the east coast railway line. This railway line is referred as the Jungle Railway and considered one of the most iconic rail lines in Asia. Train trip from southern Malaysia (Johor Baru) starts at 2030 and finishes at Tumpat after a 17 hours long journey.

We went to Johor Baru (JB) on a Thursday evening to catch the train. Train starts from JB sentral. People started queuing up for the train at 2000.

Train started the journey at 2030 to the dot. Train coaches were clean and comfortable.

It also had a café coach with hot drinks and food. wide

The most of the train trip is through the night, and I unknowingly booked backward seats which didn't make the trip any easier. There were sleeping coaches in the train, but tickets all sold out at the time of booking (a week before). If I'm going to make this trip again, I'll definitely book a bed in a sleeping coach.

Sun was up when the train was reaching Gua Musang. The train through its route via central and east sides of Malaysia runs through mostly rural areas with lots of palm cultivation and occasional patches of jungle. wide

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We also crossed few of muddy rivers.

And few big cities. wide

Train stations were big and looked new. And It's possible to see the old stations beside few new stations. The train was fully air-conditioned and freezing at the night.

We got off from Wakaf Baru, the nearest station to Kota Baru (KB) around 1230 on Friday

KB is 10 min taxi ride away from Wakaf Baru. And it's the capitol of Kelantan state and the biggest city in northeast Malaysia. State of Kelantan is known for woodwork and batik painting, which we got to know from few museum visits on the following day.

Once off from the train we took a taxi to the place of our stay, which is through the KB city and about 10kmm away from the train station. It's a bit hard to find the place at first. But once found, the place was nice enough.

After taking a shower and resting for a while we took another taxi to the Aeon shopping mall. Which is the biggest in the KB city. The train ride was taxing more than expected. So we're not in the mood for any adventures.

On the way we saw lots of mosques.

When in Malaysia, I feel most comfortable when I'm in a shopping mall. Most probably there similarity to the malls in Singapore. The mall we visited was huge and looked new. We walked around the mall and had lunch/dinner at Nandos. Then took a taxi back home.

Following day (Saturday) we visited following.

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Then we took a taxi back home.

For the Sunday we're planning to visit a beach and a Thai temple before taking the train back home. We started with the beach. Which was quite nice. wide And we had an interesting lunch near the beach.

But we ran in to trouble finding taxi back home. It took an hour to book a taxi. This experience discouraged us going to the Thai temple. Because it's also a bit far from the city, and we were in tight schedule to catch the train.

So instead of going to the temple we went back to the Aeon shopping mall. And chilled there for few hours before going to train station to catch the train. This train starts from Tumpat at 2030 and reached the Wakaf Baru at 2045. Train was on time though out the whole journey.

Return trip was quite similar to the first trip. But this time we managed to book seats facing forward. (And we got a 50% refund for the original return ticket). Also, we managed to sleep in the train more than we did on first trip.

Once we reached the JB Sentral it was around 1230. Our next leg of the journey is a train shuttle from JB Sentral to Singapore at 1400. We had a quick tea before queuing up for the shuttle.

The whole trip costed ~140 SGD including train tickets (MYR 43 one way per pax).

To be honest, though the trip is quite good, the best part of it is coming back home.

More photos, photos/Kota-Bharu.