Johor Bahru Delight

The kissing calls slipped so soon from memory. Even before taking a seat a luscious couple criss-crossing the room like love arrows. Crowded before nine AM, but luckily a table available against the wall on the side facing the old bakery. Three or four tables have been placed across the other side of the street against the rolled shutters on the opposite corner. Well-to-do biz types well represented in shirts, trousers and shoes, grand-dads and ma’s, perfections of children in cream school uniform—pleated skirt, bivouac shirt and tie. As ever a good number of Singaporeans out to recapture the past, at bargain rates of course. A new gap-toothed tubby Chinese waiter quick and light on his feet like the rest hung a wet white cloth from his wrist. Taking an order the man stands firm and steady, pointing to each side of the table to repeat details. Chirped orders called by the Money-collector on the other side of the street rise like a note from an exotic forest bird whose existence could never have been guessed. In order to convey a tricky double to the Hot-end behind the walls inside one of the usual chaps cries in a rhythm of his own invention: teh flat lower bass, followed by a teh Ohhh in rising falsetto. The impulse to leap to the feet and applaud the artist must be restrained. More than an hour one could not wipe the smile from the dial one thing after another. An old bent tree trunk on the near side carries a couple of red paper lanterns with lines strung further round; plastic tables and stools, heat rising without any fans outdoors, the old building's grimed walls in a state of disrepair—all turned into a whirling choreography of ceaseless, spectacular theatre. RM1.30 for plain hot tea—teh O kosong—splashed onto the saucer. Impossible to convey the uncanny glory of the place.