Danga City Mall

Danga City Mall was featured some months back in the papers. Previously a quiet and rundown mall known as "Best World", it has received a complete makeover. The interesting part was how the Mall could be reached from Singapore by taking a "choo-choo" train from Tg. Pagar. I had in fact passed it many times after exiting from the CIQ at JB, on my many shopping trips. Little did I know, that just within 2 km from the Malaysia CIQ (Customs, Immigration and Quarantine) exit, there is a fairly good shopping mall just round the corner. The main attraction is the anchor tenant, MetroJaya.

That Saturday, we didn't have any plans on and decided to venture in for some shopping. Wife was craving for the Burong Penyet (flatten bird!) that we had two weeks ago when we were at Permas Jaya. Departing from the usual routine of going into JB at 5.30am, we drove into JB after 3pm instead. But it was a costly mistake, and we were right smacked into a Jam. Reaching the Singaore Checkpoint was rather speedy, but just onto the bridge, the Jam was a tailback of 1.5km traffic all the way from the Sultan Iskandar CIQ at JB. The entire stretch took me an hour to bypass and really push up my blood pressure to the brim when inconsiderates drivers would cut in and out of the traffic at will.

However, upon exiting the CIQ, it was then a smooth straight drive heading towards Skudai. I could see Danga City Mall looming up ahead on my right. However, we needed to make a U-turn to get to the other side fo the road. The U-Turn junction unfortunately was a long drive ahead almost reaching to Danga Bay itself. Coming back on the other side of the road, we navigated right into the mall.

The main entrance


Arriving at the Mall. Long queue into the carpark


First impression was that the car park was huge. Really huge indeed. And even so, the carpark lots were fully taken at the upper levels. I had to burrow into Basement 3 before I could find a lot. Security seems ok, with the carpark brightly lit and clean. From there, we took an escalator and arrived at the ground floor of Danga City Mall.

Digital Valley (IT Mall)


Danga City Mall was clean and obviously pretty new. On the ground levels, there were many assortment of shops selling clothing and fashion accessories. There was a Sony road show event going on, and the level was quite packed with shoppers. Up on level 2, there was the Sim Lim Square Equivalent of their Digital Valley. Most of the entire level 2 was taken up by shops selling computers and IT related products. It was indeed very crowded as there was a fair going on. However, as I browsed around a couple of shops, the prices didn't look very attractive to me. SLS in this aspect, is still better.

Wow. 7 storeys of shopping!


MetroJaya




As mentioned previously, the anchor tenant here was MetroJaya. So big that it occupied 7 storeys of the building. I think that it is related to the Metro that we have in Singapore as the branding and setup is very similar. Prices seem pricey for Malaysian, but I supposed that they are cheaper than the Singapore's counterpart.

We had dinner here at the Penang Corner


Interesting Japanese Food place, Hokka Hokka



We were rather hungry by then and went to the Basement level to have a bite. There were quite a number of interesting foodie shops there and we opted for one that looked rather nicely decor and serving Penang food fares. Food was ok although the staff seemed quite inexperienced. (Food came late, wrong order etc) My guess was that the place was newly opened.

A kiddy ride


Other than the shopping, there wasn't much else to do in the mall. Also, I have no idea of how people are coming in from the train station. From inside, I couldn't see it at all. To see the train schedule, check this link. http://dangacitymall.com/lang/en/getting-here/train-schedule. It only cost $3 to reach here by train.

My take on the place was that since the targeted audience are Singaporeans, the facilities are a tad better than the local Malaysian malls that you find. However, I still find people smoking at the mall, especially at the IT section. But good thing was that it was just a few isolated cases. I am sure that the Mall management would seriously control this situation if they want Singaporeans to stream into their place.