Here is my short story ...
Long long time ago (actually no so long lah)...when I was in Univ, my frens and I visited JB for shopping and food .. we were robbed at Holiday Plaza in broad daylight...lost a few hundred dollars. No weapons, we ignored them but were threatened.."Do you believe that I will not let you return to Spore?", one of the robbers said. So we gave in and parted with our cash.. .. .. Since then, for 10 yrs or so, I stopped visiting JB.
I became excited when the Malaysia government initiated development plans for JB (
http://www.iskandarmalaysia.com.my/). Wouldn't it be nice if we have a bigger region to visit/explore by land transport, do day/weekend trips? In 2008/09, a fren told us about Austin Heights. We procrastinated and missed out on the first few launches. But in Sep 09, made my first trip to JB since Uni days. Saw the surroundings in Austin Heights - eateries, schools, golf resort, safe environment - and loved the development. Believe it or not, we placed our deposit for a linked bungalow on that very day (got to trouble our fren to issue a malaysia cheque for us). Made a few more trips to check on progress (unfortunately, never to Nusajaya area). Collected our keys in Dec 10 and moved in early this year. Since then, we have been travelling to JB every weekend, exploring new places. So far so good, no incidents (touch wood), except for that durian sellers who conned us...... we look forward to weekends and do miss our JB 'home'.... ...
I like the developments in Nusajaya (HH, EL, LF..etc), but never regretted our purchase in Austin.
Oh, I only found out the existence of this forum this year ... and thanks all for your contributions/sharing, especially Wuqi for starting this thread ...
** I am excited about developments in JB ! **