Tuesday, July 25, 2017

So long Singapore


Singapore at night
Tuesday, July 25, 2017

We are off to Kuala Lumpur, by train.  The train leaves at 10 am, but we leave the hostel at 6 am because we are not sure how long this is going to take.  It is a little confusing in an organized way.  The subway ride is about 50 minutes, but trains are delayed so we end up waiting for about 15 minutes for our first ride.  We have to change trains to get to the edge of Singapore, and the train is packed.  We manage to eventually get seats for the remaining 40 minute ride.  We then get off the subway and onto a bus for the Singapore passport control station.  The buses are lined up, but the guy next to me says we are lucky as there are no traffic jams today.  This is good today?  Oh yes, you should see weekends when everyone is heading home.  Amazingly for the mass of people, there is no line up to get our passports stamped out of Singapore.  On the otherside, we then jump on a bus (amazingly the same bus and driver as what got us here) that takes us across the causeway to the Malaysian passport control.  Again, we are packed and there are dozens of buses.  However, once again no line up to go through customs.  Immediately after getting through, Cindy decides to take a picture of a sign.  One guy walking by tries to discretely tell us not to do that, but too late, and an official calls Cindy over and views her photo gallery.  After satisfied that no picture was taken, we are allowed to leave.  We get to the waiting area of the bus about 45 minutes ahead of schedule.  Over three hours to get to the edge of the city and checked through customs.  Glad it was not a weekend.

The trains of course are airconditioned to the max.  As this is being typed, my fingers are freezing.  As we explore southeast Asia, all day we sweat, but on the train we have are sleeping bags out to keep warm.  The ride is an amazingly quick seven hours.  When in Vietnam, we would have to wait in steaming hot crowded waiting rooms, never knew what was going on, and then the trains were discussing.  Here, it is like boarding a plane, nice air conditioned waiting area, and you get paged when your train is ready.  
Arriving in KL, we board the monorail.  In our full backpack gear, we squeeze onto the train during rush hour.  It is like sardines, and we keep Nate close to us for fear of losing him and he gets pushed off the train before our stop in the swarm of people herding on and off.  When it is our turn, we use our mass and try to gentle bowl our way out.  A short walk and we our at our hostel.  Dinner is on the food street only a couple of blocks from us.  Lie everything else today, it is crowded.  No one wants to explore tonight, as all our very tired.  But they are excited for the upcoming days, as we discover there is one of the top playgrounds in the world by the twin towers.
Transferring to our second train at Gemas.  The trains are nice, but oh so chilly.


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