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Published: October 14th 2011
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pico!
some big company but I don't know what it's for This morning we headed to Melaka Sentral at around 9 and it took about an hour to get to the station. We were headed to Wonderland, a water park about 15 minutes away but decided to switch our plans and go ahead and buy a ticket for Singapore in the afternoon. All of the bus companies were the same basically, so we just picked one that left around 14:00 and went back to the apartment to gather our things and come back.
We almost didn’t make it on time, but when we got there it was a few minutes before 2 pm and we hadn’t eaten yet so I asked the bus driver if I could run to the McDonald’s in the station before leaving. He said it wasn’t a problem so I ran there and back for our lunch. We were told it would be a 4.5 hour ride, so we were prepared when it really took 5. We stopped for 20 minutes two hours in at a little bus hub and the only other time we stopped was when we left Malaysia and then entered Singapore.
Leaving Malaysia was a breeze – we deboarded, walked through a building, and got back on the bus. There was some confusion for Ronald and me because we didn’t know if our bus would be waiting at Bay A or B. Luckily we guessed right with Bay A and headed to customs for Singapore.
Entering is a bit more complicated and you are taxed if you have certain items. I had a 1.5 liter Tiger bottle so I went to declare it at the little window. She asked me about how much I’d paid for it and I told her I guessed about 14 Ringgit and then she told me to go ahead and go through security and come around the other side to pick up the bottle after. So I put my bags through and went back to the office and she handed me the bottle and said that it was normally a $1.00 fine so, “in the future…” and winked. So she was nice and let me go through without paying, I assume because I had such a small amount.
When we arrived at the final bus terminal we walked about one block to get to the metro, Lavender Station. There we needed to get in touch with our CS host so I spent a good deal of time trying to find a place to change money (there wasn’t one that was still open) and ended up just taking out money. Then I had to get small change so I could use the public telephone. When I went to the phone, I was confused about the instructions it gave for inserting money, put in two dollars, and almost topped-up our host’s phone. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the public phones don’t give change! So I was two bucks down and had to go ask for more change. The second time I finally got a hold of Timothy and he told us what metro to go to.
When we arrived we dropped off our bags at his (parents’) house and went to a nearby food court to eat. It was a strange dinner, but it was only $6.60 total, so we were happy. We were set up in the study room and it was a nice house with two floors and two bathrooms – on upstairs with hot water and a western toilet, and one downstairs by the kitchen with a squatter toilet that flushed.
Tomorrow we plan to meet Nicholas, the policeman who helped us get the bus into Kuala
Lumpur.
Technical details -DS: Left
-Cigarettes and alcohol are taxed when entering Singapore
-Pepper spray is not allowed to enter the country
-The official language of Singapore is English, but Mandarin and Indian dialects are widely spoken by their respective communities
-When, for example, a Chinese person and an Indian person get together they converse in English
-Signs are in American English (“Tires” instead of “Tyres”) as opposed to the British English we saw in Malaysia
-Tap water in Singapore is safe to drink – yay!
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