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Published: August 10th 2005
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I miss Singapura already!! What a contrast just crossing a little river.
I've noticed a few distinct differences straight up, but to summarise I'd say it's like going from Hong Kong to the Chinese Mainland.
A couple of things I've already noticed:
* Only one language can be heard on the street, minus the tourists. Along with that, there's just the 2 types of writing on the signs - Bahasa plus English. I'm certain there's Chinese in Chinatown, Indian in their Little India etc, but there would be that anywhere. I'm getting used to Singapore now, with everything in 4 languages.
* The air is SSOOO polluted, I couldn't believe the difference while I was heading North. The air turned pinky-orangey, and the sun became red. You can't see anything in the far distance.
* I have to say it already, ... the people aren't as nice. BUT remember I'm comparing to Singaporean's, who I think are the nicest people on the earth. It's harder getting directions from people, the service isn't as good, you go back to cabbies that consider whether they want to take you or not, and I just had a cabbie trying to tell me where I should go and not just take me where I was saying, and even the check-in lady at the hostel wasn't very good at all.
* Everything is just overall older and dirtier. The older aspect is a plus, don't get me wrong. I'm not up for any more boring Singapore skyscrapers. And the dirt is more interesting and fun.
* The hostel didn't give me a great room. It's lovely in some ways, but the toilet doesn't flush properly... and that's all I really want in life. Other than that, the phone doesn't work, and as I've said, the service isn't good either. I got some food from the restaurant downstairs, and they didn't have what I wanted so they just made up something similar and totally wrong, including a warm drink that hadn't been in the fridge at all I'm pretty certain.
Oh, and get this. Short story showing the difference between the people.... Of the hundreds of nice people I've met in Singapore, one of the great ones was the first customs or immigration guy, I can't remember which he was. He was trying to get me to take these
Tree farms
We went past hectares and hectares of planted trees, harvested areas, new growing areas .... About 3 hours of it really! lollies, desperate for me to start enjoying my stay in Singapore. It was like my second last day on the detox and I really didn't want one, but eventually I had to take one. He just wouldn't stop. And when someone just smiles big and wants to give you something, eventually anyone will melt and give in.
Contrasting with my Malaysian Immigration guy at the train station --- this guy asks me:
Immi: "Do you have anything to declare?"
Moi: "No"
Immi: "Liquor?"
Moi: "No." (pause and show bag) "I just have this bag of dolls." (I'm like joking of course, and saying subtlely 'can I go now?')
Immi: This guy gives me what seemed to be a look of DISGUST and waved me on. I'm like "What the..? Well, I've officially left Singapore."
Well, the only other thing to tell you about is the actual train ride, cause that's most of what I've done today, which there isn't much to even write about. It was great being on old, dodgy local transport. I enjoyed that. We went up through the forests of Malaysia which are lovely. The whole of the centre of the south seems to be tree farms. We went by the cutest little dodgy villages where I wanted to get off and check it out but couldn't. I had 2 seats to myself for about half the way and tried to sleep. When I couldn't I watched a movie they played and get this - IT WAS ABOUT A RUNAWAY TRAIN! I gotta tell you, this one time the train jolted at a real action part of the movie, and I thought we were dead. Let's say it was quite an interactive movie. I had some lovely rice and got my head absolutely blown off for the second time this trip. I've been pretty good asking for "not spicy", especially staying in Little India like I was, but I forgot and my god!! Again, I thought I was dead. The only other thing really is that I took a little video with the digital camera. Just quick snippets showing a bit of each of the kinds of things we passed and I'm going to put them together somehow when i get back. I've already got them on disk.
Well that's about it. That's what I'm up to right now. I'm escaping the heat and the pouring rain at the moment, so I'll stay here a bit longer and add some photos, so I hope you're checking all them out too. Bye!
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