LIFE Blog

Without realizing, it’s been years I haven’t really got any holiday. So, on 10th July 2009, together with one of my buddy, Ryan Tay, we decided to breakaway from our works, businesses and busy schedules.

Since we didn’t have much time, we agreed to travel South all the way to Johor, the most southern state of West Malaysia, to a place called Pulau Kukup or you can call it Kukup Island.



We traveled by car and the distance according to the GPS was 339Km from Subang Jaya. Well, for the direction, you can always refer to Google Maps. Basically, we lost our way for a while as the GPS gave unclear directions. However, we managed to find the place by manually asking the local peoples.

As we didn’t plan it at all, we reached there not knowing where to head or what to expect. After asking around to find a place to stay, we were led to a boat owner that agreed to fetch us to the chalet. He sailed us around and introduced us the place around. Cost? Rm15 for 2 persons. Cheap? Not really! We later found out that there is a road connecting the main road to that chalet.



Here’s an overview on what we saw during the boat ride…



Ok, “kelong” is a malay term of a traditional fish rearing method. Sections will be compartmentalized using fish nets to properly separate the fishes according to their species.

Then, we also saw this…



The boat will ferry the people to Tanjung Balai, Indonesia. The boat fare will cost RM90 to and fro + RM10 for the custom clearance fee. It will take around 1 hour 45 minutes to reach there and the departure interval is every 1 hour.

Well, we didn’t go. After asking around, we were being told that nothing special to be found there. It’s just a gateway for people to shuttle between Malaysia and Indonesia.

In less than 5 minutes of the boat ride, we reached the chalet and it looked like this…



The chalet was too big for 2 persons. Really TOO BIG! Let’s check how does it looks like inside…



Let me give you some brief description about the facilities that you can get there…

This particular chalet can accomodate about 30 peoples at any time. It has 7 dormitories with double deckers. In the living room, you can watch Astro, sing Karaoke, play computer games, online (wireless), play mahjong, play all sorts of board games and table tennis. It is a well maintained chalet as well. The air-conditioner in the master bedroom was really cold.

Cost? RM50 per person per night! Meal inclusive? Nope!

Well, here’s the deal; If you come in a team exceeding 10 peoples, the rate will be RM85 per person per night. Not only that, it will include 2 lunchs, 1 breakfast, 1 dinner and 1 supper for every person. All meals will definitely have seafoods. For dinner, you can have bbq and steamboat seafoods. Doesn’t that sounds great?

I strongly don’t recommend you to eat at any of those restaurant there. The price will be quite expensive. Go only if you really need to.

Try to go with a team of people that exceed 10 persons and get the rate mentioned above for the chalet and meal. It is the best deal to visit Kukup Island. Imagine, that chalet big and spacious enough that you can do team building inside of it. Definitely it is going to be fun.

Here’s some more views of Kukup Island…



It’s really a very peaceful village on top of sea. You don’t need to lock your house as it is very safe. The people are friendly. The village is not very big. I think it only contain less than 100 houses. The entire area are connected with small roads that linked to the main access road near the Kukup Terminal.



It was totally a different world over here. It will be a good place to experience something different from city life. Perhaps some people will not be able to adapt to this kind of environment. However, it’s good to have a taste of  such life.



After staying 1 night there and had some real expensive meals there but good experience, we packed and headed further south towards Singapore! Check out the next post …

By the way, if you are interested to visit Kukup Island and need further information, feel free to drop me an email.

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