Advertisement
Published: July 26th 2008
The next sampan.
They just keep coming!The morning was the time to cross the river - by sampan. This was always going to involve a lot of bending down and logistics - which side of the boat should I sit and how many Malays woud need to balance me?!!
The tradition is to place your fare on the end of the boat as you leave; all the info I had found said it cost 30 sen, but inflation has pushed it up to 60 sen - about 8p!! The jetties are really quite well built, you walk down one and wait on the platform util the boat turns up. Getting into the boat has to be a folding up process for the tal, not only is it quite a small boat, but the roof is low, then the boatman stores his pole for pushing things inside at the apex of the roof. Needless to say I didn't see it and whacked my head.
The reason for crossing was to visit the fort on the other side, this is verey close to the new parliamentary building so I could see even more of that - I aso found a job I don't want to do -
laying the roof tiles on that!! The fort is a ovely simple building which they used to check invaders at the end of the 19th century. It is directly opposite from the small fort like building on the south side, so they used to shout 'All's well' on the hour to each other to make sure that no-one was sleeping onn the job!
Which reminds me - I need a coffee!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.287s; Tpl: 0.025s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0715s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
H
non-member comment
Roofing?
Got a chimney you can play with until you get used to it, if you'd like! Sounds like fun though, even "dodging" the poles!