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Published: December 5th 2007
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We caught a taxi from our hotel in Kuala Lumpur to the bus station to ensure that we arrived in plenty of time for the bus to Singapore. However we could probably have walked it 3 times over by the time the bus pulled out of the station. The buses were luxurious, big seats with lots of leg room even for Gary!! The journey included the usual stop at a service station for refreshments, however as we got back on board the bus, our driver informed us that we would have to change buses. Along with another 4 passegers we moved our bags over and settled. This was a different bus company, although by this time we were used to sudden changes and didn't think much of it. We were dropped off at passport control, collected another stamp on our passports and headed back to the bus, however we did have to run as the bus was pulling away as we reached the bottom of the steps.
Shortly after, we reached immigration where we had to take all our belongings from the bus for them to be scanned in search for anything illegal!!! Normally this wouldn't have been a problem
but pirated video content (as well as chewing gum) was prohibited to take into Singapore!! And we had a few DVDs!! I was a bit unhappy when the security guard decided that he wanted to see in all my bags!! Happy with what he had seen though, he let us through having obviously not checked Gary's bag too thoroughly as he had a few DVDs kicking about!!
We arrived at the bus stance long before the rest of the people on our bus, however the bus was not waiting on us. We asked one of the conductors who said that the bus would be away for checking and would be through in 10 minutes. 30 minutes later the bus had still not arrived and we were all beginning to get a bit impatient. We were all first timers in Singapore with no Singapore money between us and no ATM in sight!! Eventually we discovered that our bus driver had not bothered to wait for us and had just driven straight through, leaving 6 of us stranded at the border. No other bus company would accommodate us, even though they were leaving the border near empty!! We were informed that
Carving
Is it a dragon? Is it a lion? Don't really know but it was pretty cool. we would have to wait for another bus from that company to come through, however when that would be was unknown. One slight problem, due to us changing buses, we did not have a bus ticket for that particular company. Never the less we waited patiently in the hope that another bus would pass through soon.
Eventually another bus arrived and all 6 of us ran to the bus like excited children on Christmas morning, only to be told by the bus driver that the was not going to Singapore!! We decided to wait and I asked one of the passangers who came off the bus where they were going - to Singapore!! So we waited in anticipation with them. The bus driver returned and told them to go onto another bus, at this point we asked the bus driver if we could join them, however he was having none of it. Luckly one of the guys from our bus was Malay and he managed to communicate with the bus driver who eventually allowed us on the bus to Singapore!! What a trip!!
The bus only had a few passengers on board, one of whom was a local
who had rather too much to drink. He spent the remainder of the journey singing anti-american songs, and was relieved that we were Scottish when he enquired on our departure. He decided that we were to be liked and gave us directions (very vague directions) to Bencoolen Road, where the cheap accommodation could be found!! Perhaps some might describe us as being crazy but we decided to follow his directions in the search for some cheap digs!!
We walked about for ages with our backpacks in the heat looking for this possibly fictitious street. We even ended up jumping on the MRT (Singapore rail network) and trying to find it that way. Eventually we found the road that he was describing as it was getting pretty dark, however many of the hostels there were full, but we did manage to find a small chinese run hostel near by and above a McDonalds, Burger King and KFC, where we settled for the night followed by a much needed dinner.
The next morning we decided to explore the area around our hostel which was just off Little India. We spent the day visiting numerous different temples, including a hindu and
buddhist temple and an islamic mosque. All of which were really beautiful and we were made feel really welcome, despite this part of me still felt that we were intruding!
We sampled some of the local cusine from the food stalls at the side of the road as we took a walk through Little India on the way back to our hostel. We were both quite tired from all our walking so following a little laundry we headed to bed excited about Singapore Zoo the following day!! (Big Kids).
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