Desaru

The coast where Desaru now stands was, until the 1970s, a thinly settled shore of fishing villages and mangrove rivers at the far south-eastern corner of the peninsula, behind which the federal land development agency FELDA and the Johor state schemes had cleared jungle for oil palm and rubber smallholdings. The planned town of Bandar Penawar was built inland as a service centre for those settlements, and the beach itself, a long stretch of sand facing the South China Sea, was almost empty.

Development began at the end of the 1970s, aimed at creating a holiday coast within reach of both Johor Bahru and Singapore. The first hotels, chalets and a golf course opened through the 1980s, and Desaru became a familiar name to Singaporean families, who came by ferry across the strait and then by road. Growth stalled at times — some early properties closed or changed hands — and for years the place had the slightly faded air of a resort built ahead of its market.

The second wave came in the 2010s, when a large integrated development, Desaru Coast, was built at the southern end of the beach with international hotel brands, two golf courses, a water park and a conference centre, opening in stages from the late 2010s. The Senai–Desaru Expressway and the long bridge over the Johor River cut the drive from Johor Bahru in 2011, and a ferry terminal opened in 2022 with services from Tanah Merah in Singapore. Time magazine listed Desaru among the world's greatest places in 2021. The older strip to the north still trades alongside it, and the plantations and fishing villages that were here first continue much as before.

Desaru has no old town and no deep local tradition of its own: it is a resort grafted onto a farming and fishing coast. The culture that surrounds it belongs to the villages and the land settlement schemes inland, which are overwhelmingly Malay and Muslim, with Javanese and Bugis ancestry common among families whose forebears crossed from the islands generations ago. Mosques mark the centre of each settlement, Friday prayers set the rhythm of the week, and the major festivals of Hari Raya empty the plantations as families return to their villages.

Fishing shapes the coast north and south of the resorts. Boats go out overnight and land their catch in the morning at Tanjung Balau and Sungai Rengit, where the small museum at Tanjung Balau records the equipment, boat types and beliefs of the Johor fishing communities. Chinese Malaysians run many of the seafood restaurants and shops in the coastal towns, and Chinese New Year is marked in Sungai Rengit and Kota Tinggi.

Inside the resorts the atmosphere is international and largely Singaporean, with golf, buffets and family activity, and English and Mandarin as common as Malay. The contrast between the two worlds is unusually sharp here, and visitors who leave the estate find the ordinary dress and manners of small-town Johor: modest clothing, quiet greetings and an early night.

Few people live at Desaru itself; the resident population is concentrated in Bandar Penawar, a small planned town, and in the fishing and plantation villages along the coast and inland, within the Kota Tinggi district. Most households depend either on oil palm — planting, harvesting and the mills that process the fruit — or on fishing, or on work in the hotels, the golf courses and the water park.

The resort economy provides the wages that keep young people from moving to Johor Bahru or across the border, though many still leave, and a large share of the hotel and construction workforce is made up of migrant workers from Indonesia and Bangladesh. Pengerang's refinery and petrochemical complex, an hour to the south, has drawn thousands of workers to the district since the 2010s and changed the character of villages that were fishing settlements a decade ago.

Life runs early: boats return at dawn, the plantation day starts before the heat, and the market at Bandar Penawar is busiest in the morning. Weekends bring a surge of cars from the causeway, filling the coast road and the seafood restaurants, then draining away on Sunday evening. Coastal erosion, the effect of the monsoon on fishing incomes and the pace of development are the local concerns.

Seafood is the coast's own food. Boats land mackerel, squid, prawns and crab, and the restaurants at Tanjung Balau, along the beach road and in Sungai Rengit cook them simply: fish grilled in banana leaf with sambal, squid fried with salted egg, crab in a thick chilli gravy, prawns in butter and curry leaves, with rice and stir-fried kangkung alongside. Ikan bakar, charcoal-grilled fish, is the dish to look for at the roadside.

Johor's mainland dishes are all here. Mee rebus, yellow noodles in a thick spiced gravy with boiled egg and green chilli, and laksa Johor, a fish and coconut gravy served with spaghetti, appear in the warungs inland, and otak-otak, the spiced fish paste grilled in leaves that made nearby Muar famous, is sold in packets at roadside stalls. Nasi lemak, coconut rice with sambal, anchovies and egg, is the standard breakfast everywhere.

The plantations and farms inland supply tropical fruit through the year: dragon fruit, jackfruit, papaya, rambutan and, in season, the durians that Johor grows in quantity. Inside the resorts the food is international, with buffets and hotel restaurants, but the cheapest and most local eating is in the coffee shops of Bandar Penawar, where a plate of rice with two or three dishes costs very little.