Johor Kaki Interview with UFM100.3 DJ Anna 林安娜 Singapore Press Holdings

I had the privilege to be interviewed by Anna 林安娜 of UFM100.3 on 29 Oct 2015. We talked about Johor food and a bit about Johor Kaki blog.

Anna hosts 新加坡电台 UFM100.3 DJ on-air 早午餐, 早午安 show from Mon to Fri, 10:00am to 1:00pm. Anna is a multi-talented lady with many interests and she is an avid foodie too :-D You can follow Anna on:

Instagram anna_singapore <- click.

The interview was conducted in Mandarin and broadcast on UFM100.3 座上嘉宾‬ segment from 2 to 6 Nov 2015. My spoken Mandarin is very elementary but I did my best :-D I enjoyed the interview and hope that listeners found it interesting and helpful too.

The following are rough notes of the interview in English as I am unable to write in Mandarin.



How did you start blogging?  

I started around Christmas 2011 just to keep an online reference of the nice food and places that I have been to in Johor. It is very easy to start a blog and I still use a free platform, Blogger by Google.  To find out a bit more about the food, I speak with the hawkers. Once I started to do that, I realised that there are many more interesting food, people, places and stories about Johor. So, I began to look for more, and the more I look, the more there is. Soon, friends and readers from Singapore, Johor, all over Malaysia joined me, offering me their suggestions and recommendations. Now, I couldn't stop. Before I know it, Johor Kaki blog is already nearly 4 years old.  

I will continue as long as I could ;-D



Why did you choose Johor as your main topic?

Like many Singaporeans, I have been visiting Johor for food, shopping and leisure for many years. Johor is very near by. I like it that there are many hawkers who still prepare food in the old traditional way. These old flavours and aromas are harder to come by in Singapore. So, I went in search for them in Johor and share where I found them and how they tasted and smelled. I hope to blog about as many of such hawkers as possible.



What do you blog about?

Actually, I blog everything about my eating and travelling experiences. I reserve at least 50% of my blog content for Johor and the rest can be anything and anywhere that is related to food and travel.

70% of my readers are Singaporeans and I believe that they are reading my blog for both my Johor content as well as my Singapore and international content.


Click for full story ^

What is you most popular post?

My most read post is about how to explore old downtown JB on foot for good food. There are many interesting eateries and delicious food which are just 10 to 15 minutes walking distance from the JB CIQ. Many are located around the Jalan Tan Hiok Nee 陳旭年 area which is also JB's cultural street 文化街.

There is curry fish head at Kam Long 金龙咖喱鱼头, nearly century old wood fired banana cakes at Hiap Joo, also wood fired traditional curry puffs at Salahuddin and more.

At night, there are push cart stalls offering kambing soup, oh luak, roast chicken, kway teow kia and more at Meldrum Walk.

Many people use this post as a guide to explore the area on foot. You can just take a SMRT bus over to Johor Bahru and enjoy all these interesting food from breakfast to supper.


Click for full story ^

What is your most exciting post?

My most exciting post was about my food trail with the Militia Riders Motorcycle Club. A club of super bikers from Johor and Singapore. We rode from Johor Bahru, to Mersing, to Kluang, Layang-Layang and then back to Johor Bahru. It took slightly more than half a day and over 300 kilometres. It was very thrilling with the wind in my face as we rode the straight and winding roads together. We bonded over the exhilarating ride and good food along the way. I found the super bikers very passionate about biking, very friendly and big hearted. They were also very responsible, professional and serious about road safety.


Click for full story ^

What is your most fun post?

I went on a night of hunting for Ramly burgers in Johor Bahru with a group of young Johor friends. It was so fun :-D We set out to visit 10 burger stands throughout Johor Bahru but could only manage 6 places before we ran out of stomach space and time. We grew very close with such crazy projects and hope we will do more in the future.


Click for full story ^

What are your future plans?

I am very interested in iconic food. Food that represents a country or community. I hope to be able to do more in depth writing about such representative food - it's history, how it is prepared, how does it taste, the place and people behind it, trends and it's possible future. For example, I had a lot of satisfaction writing about Singapore's national dish chicken rice <- click and Philippines national dish lechon <-click. These articles were also very well received by readers. I hope to write more such articles.

Date: 29 Oct 2015

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