1st Trip to East Coast (Day#1: Butterworth - Jeli)

After almost 9-months advance room booking thru AirBnB, I had finally step into Kelantan for the 1st time. This time, I am not alone, my family joined me for this wonderful journey.

Today, we started our journey from Penang by car. Immediately after lunch at home, we left Penang at 12:30.

It took us 3 hours to reach R&R Titiwangsa. A cooling place for an afternoon tea before we continued our journey to our 1st destination. On the way, we passed a landslide area before the Banding Island and an accident after Banding Island. Lake surrounded Banding Island is so beautiful...

R&R Titiwangsa is a great place. Located at the top of the mountain with cooling environment, scenic view and reasonable price of foods and drinks. Toilets are clean too.
- Burger Special (with egg): RM3.50
- Nasi Lemak Biasa: RM3.50
- Hot Milo: RM2.00
- Teh Tarik: RM1.40
- Toilet: RM0.30 (per person)

From R&R Titiwangsa, we took about 1 hour to reach our 1st desitnation, D'Jeli Hotel (opposite R&R Jeli). By simply clicking on Google Maps, I found this hotel opposite R&R Jeli. We called 2 days in advance and make a reservation. From 1st impression, the hotel looks clean and new. It costs us only RM70 per night for a standard room with 1 Queen bed and 1 single bed. There are free WiFi provided. Evening walk surrounding the hotel lead us to the female student hostel (terrace houses) of UMK (Universiti Malaysia Kelantan). UMK Jeli campus is just next door.

We make a round at Jeli town nearby and found nothing good for dinner. End up, we returned to D'Jeli Hotel and took our dinner here, at the restaurant attached to the hotel.

We ordered the following and it costs us RM30 nett. Reasonable price, foods are not bad.
- Maggi Goreng (Fried Maggi) x 2
- Sup Tulang (Bone Soup) + Rice x 1
- Maggi Kerabu x 1
- Fried Egg + Rice x 1
- Barli Madu x 2
We bought satay + nasi himpit across the road (night market in front of R&R Jeli which was no longer in operation).

We had a short chat with the restaurant owner. They moved back from KL to Jeli (after working there for 20 years), their hometown. A friendly malay family (grandparent, parent & children).

After dinner, we drove about 15 min to nearby town (Bukit Bunga) looking for the only supermarket operating in this area, Pantai Timur Supermarket. When we lined up for payment, only I realized the cashier counter splitted into Male Counter, Female Counter, and Family Counter. I believe this is normal practice in Kelantan, but for us, it is new experience.

Bukit Bunga is one of the newest path to enter Thailand. Thus, along the road at Bukit Bunga, you can see lotsa of small stalls selling goods from Thailand. We will try to visit this area again tomorrow morning if got time before heading to Kota Bharu.

Weather is cooling, raining season now.... but not so heavy rain for today, at least no rain at all during dinner time.
Heard that thunderstorm will be hitting Kota Bharu area by tomorrow ! (hopefully not)

Returned to hotel. Watch TV and sleep zzz...