Johor Bahru is the great overland gateway to southern Malaysia: the border city right next to Singapore, separated from the gleaming city-state only by the Strait of Johor and a causeway crossed every day by hundreds of thousands of people. For a long time it was seen merely as a place to pass through, the last (or first) stop before crossing the border. But JB, the country's second metropolis, has become a destination in its own right, especially for family and shopping trips: theme parks like Legoland, gigantic shopping malls, modern marinas and a terrific food scene, all at prices that, for a Singaporean, are a bargain.
Its history is tied to that of the Johor monarchy and, in particular, to Sultan Abu Bakar, considered the 'father of modern Johor', who in the 19th century turned a village on the shores of the strait into an organised city, with a palace, a mosque and even its own constitution, ahead of his time. From that era survive some of the few historic monuments of a city that today looks mainly to the future, booming thanks to the development of the Iskandar Malaysia region and its symbiotic relationship with Singapore.
This guide organises your visit with a practical, friendly approach: what to do if you're coming with kids (Legoland and the Puteri Harbour area), where to shop and eat cheaply, what to see of old JB (the mosque, the palace, the temples), how to get around and —key in a border city— how to handle the crossings with Singapore so you don't lose hours at the border. Johor Bahru is best enjoyed over one or two days, ideal as an overland entry or exit point for Malaysia, as a getaway from Singapore or as a family stop before continuing your trip around the country.
Johor Bahru ('new Johor') was officially founded in 1855, when the ruler of Johor, Temenggong Daing Ibrahim, moved the seat of power to the shore of the strait, to a place then called Tanjung Puteri. But the decisive figure was his son, Sultan Abu Bakar (who reigned from 1862 to 1895), known as the 'father of modern Johor': a cultured, cosmopolitan ruler who travelled around Europe, mixed with Queen Victoria and modernised his kingdom, giving it an organised administration, infrastructure, a magnificent palace (the Istana Besar), the great state mosque that bears his name and, in 1895, a written constitution, something unheard of for a Malay state at the time. The lineage of the Johor monarchy goes back to the Johor Sultanate, founded in the 16th century by the descendants of the last Sultan of Malacca after the Portuguese conquest of 1511. Under British influence and later protection, and with the construction of the Causeway to Singapore in the 1920s, Johor Bahru grew as a border and trading city. After Malaysia's independence (1957), and especially in recent decades with the large Iskandar Malaysia development plan, JB became a thriving metropolis of industry, commerce, theme parks and services, closely bound to neighbouring Singapore. The full history of the royal city of Johor is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Malaysia's historical and economic frontage: the coast along the strait through which every empire arrived, with Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Malacca and the tin highlands.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Johor Bahru's history goes back to one of the most dramatic episodes in Malay history: the fall of Malacca. In 1511, the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the great Sultanate of Malacca, the largest trading hub in Southeast Asia. The last sultan, Mahmud Shah, fled south, and his descendants refused to accept the loss of their kingdom. They founded a new state along the Johor River, at the southern tip of the peninsula: the Johor Sultanate. It emerged around the middle of the 16th century as the direct heir to the crown of Malacca.
For centuries, the Johor Sultanate was a regional power. It fought the Portuguese, the Sumatran kingdom of Aceh and other rivals for control of the Strait of Malacca, in a complicated game of alliances and wars. Its territory and its court moved from place to place over time. The kingdom went through periods of splendour and of decline, along with internal conflicts and dynastic disputes.
A turning point came in the 19th century. The balance of power within the sultanate had shifted. Alongside the sultan, two senior dignitaries had gained influence: the Bendahara, in the Pahang area, and above all the Temenggong, the military and territorial chief, whose base was in the Singapore region and southern Johor. When the British founded Singapore in 1819, through an agreement with the Sultan and the Temenggong of Johor, the Temenggong's family found itself in a key position. Shortly afterwards, that branch of the family would give rise to the city and to the modern monarchy of Johor.
By the mid-19th century, real power in southern Johor lay with the Temenggong's family. Temenggong Daing Ibrahim decided to move his seat of government away from Telok Blangah, in Singapore, which was already under British administration. He moved it to the Malay shore of the strait, to a small fishing settlement then called Tanjung Puteri ('the princess's cape'). The new administrative centre was set up there around 1855 and was soon renamed Johor Bahru, which literally means 'the new Johor'.
The person who really made the city, however, was Daing Ibrahim's son Abu Bakar, who took power in 1862. Abu Bakar was exceptional for his time and place. He was educated and cosmopolitan, spoke fluent English, admired European culture and got on very well with the British. Under his leadership, Johor Bahru grew from a village into a planned city and the capital of a modern state.
Abu Bakar built Johor's economy on commercial crops, pepper and gambier. To grow them he encouraged Chinese workers to settle through a system of land concessions, the 'kangchu system', which brought people to the territory and developed it. The city grew in an orderly way. Abu Bakar was a skilful diplomat and kept Johor fairly autonomous while its neighbours fell under direct British control. His international standing was such that he mixed with European royalty.
Sultan Abu Bakar, who formally took the title of sultan in 1886, is remembered as the 'father of modern Johor'. His reign (1862-1895) left a lasting mark on Johor Bahru. He was convinced that modernisation was the key to keeping his state independent, so he remade the city and the kingdom in the image of the nations he had seen on his travels in Europe.
Abu Bakar gave Johor Bahru infrastructure and institutions that were remarkable for a Malay state of the time: an organised, modern civil service, public services, and monumental buildings that are still the city's pride today. In 1866 he had the Istana Besar, the Grand Palace, built: an elegant colonial-style residence surrounded by gardens and facing the strait. He also built the magnificent State Mosque that bears his name, completed around 1900. Its unusual mix of Victorian and Islamic styles reflects his cosmopolitan taste.
His most forward-looking achievement, though, may have been political. In 1895, shortly before his death, Abu Bakar enacted the Undang-Undang Tubuh Negeri Johor, a written constitution for his state and the first of its kind in the Malay world. It gave Johor a modern legal framework for its government, which was unusual and visionary. Thanks to his diplomacy, Johor was one of the last states on the peninsula to accept a British adviser, and only in 1914, under his successor. That let it keep its autonomy for longer. When Abu Bakar died in 1895, he left behind a transformed city and state, and a dynasty that still reigns in Johor today.
In the 20th century, Johor Bahru became firmly established as a border city, shaped by its relationship with neighbouring Singapore across the strait. The landmark that sealed that relationship was the Johor–Singapore Causeway, the road-and-rail link between the two shores, opened in 1923-1924. It is a raised roadway across the strait that carries a road, a railway and water pipes. It made JB the land gateway between the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, and tied the two cities' futures together for good. Water became a sensitive issue for decades, because Singapore relied heavily on fresh water from Johor.
The Second World War brought a dramatic chapter. In 1942, during the lightning Japanese invasion of Malaya, Imperial Japanese troops swept down the peninsula to Johor Bahru. From there they launched the final assault on Singapore across the strait. The British had blown up part of the Causeway to slow them down, but it didn't work. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 was one of Britain's biggest defeats of the war. Johor, like the rest of Malaya, was under Japanese occupation until 1945.
After the war and the return of the British, Johor took part in the process that led to independence. Johor Bahru in fact has a place in the nation's history: UMNO (the United Malays National Organisation) was founded there in 1946, and it was the party that would lead the way to independence. In 1957 Johor became part of the independent Federation of Malaya, and in 1963 part of present-day Malaysia. Singapore was briefly a member of that federation (1963-1965) before it separated and became an independent country. This strengthened JB's character as an international border city.
In recent decades, Johor Bahru has grown into a thriving metropolis and Malaysia's second-largest urban area after Kuala Lumpur. Its growth sped up because of where it sits. Being next to Singapore, one of the richest economies in the world, made JB and the whole of southern Johor a magnet for industry, investment and tourism. Thousands of factories moved to the region to take advantage of lower costs. Hundreds of thousands of Malaysians cross into Singapore every day to work, while Singaporeans cross the other way to shop, eat and have fun, helped by the favourable exchange rate.
The big project of the last two decades has been Iskandar Malaysia, a huge economic development zone launched in 2006 that covers JB and the surrounding area. Its goal is to turn the region into a major urban, industrial, financial and tourism hub, a kind of Malaysian counterpart to Singapore. New districts grew up as part of it, such as Iskandar Puteri (formerly Nusajaya), with housing developments, universities, marinas like Puteri Harbour and large tourist attractions. These include Legoland Malaysia (2012), the first Legoland park in Asia, which made JB a family travel destination.
The relationship with Singapore is still what the city revolves around, with its upsides and its tensions: huge traffic jams on the Causeway, negotiations over water and transport projects, and now the construction of the RTS Link, a fast cross-border rail system designed to ease the crossings. Today Johor Bahru is a lively, commercial and somewhat chaotic city, far more focused on the future and on leisure than on its past. But beneath its skyscrapers and shopping malls, you can still feel the legacy of Abu Bakar, the visionary sultan who, a century and a half ago, dreamed up and built a modern 'new Johor' on the shores of the strait.
