SG March 2005

I had to attend a court auction at Johor Baru High Court in the morning (last week). For that, I had to wake up at unearthly hours just to catch the earliest plane there.

I was fortunate enough to bump into another fellow chambering student from another firm. He too had to attend an auction. But our auction didn’t go through though as there were no bidders.

We had breakfast at the cafeteria at the court. There I had the MOST VALUE ever breakfast. It was breakfast buffet. I had half a plate of fried rice, curry cuttlefish, pulut with peanut curry. It only cost me RM2.30!!! WTF where can you find such value meal?? NOT EVEN MCDONALD’S VALUE MEAL!!!

Since the matter ended early and my flight was at 640PM, I had no choice but to…

head down to Singapore!! Woohooo!!

It’s been more than 10 years since I stepped in to Singapore. So based on my limited knowledge of travelling into Singapore and a little bit of luck, I managed to cross the border to Singapore. I was a little bit confused in the beginning. We had to get down from the bus to go through the immigration procedures and then walk out to look for our bus. The procedure was repeated again when I had to go through the Singapore immigration.

I got this guide from a website

Border Crossing from Johor Baru to Singapore
Do not try to walk over the border bridge. It is too long.
If you take a direct bus to Singapore from a town in Malaysia, it stops at Malaysia immigration then Singapore immigration. The bus waits for you. But many similar buses are waiting so you have to remember your bus.

However, my trip had a horrible bump. My camera broke down!!! I accidentally dropped it when I was about to put it into the xray machine…SOB. No pictures from Singapore!!!

Here a small summary of my sighting in Singapore:-

The escalators are faster
Loads of Chinese around
The MRT carriages stink
Orchard Road shopping centres remind me of Tokyo
Singapore Girls are HOT HOT HOT!!!!

I even had the opportunity to see the environmentalist of the year. Well, she was a woman I saw in the train. She has this tiny notebook made of a small clip and paper that she could salvage from everywhere and even THE DETACHABLE FLIP OF A TISSUE BOX!!

My first destination was Orchard Road, the shopping haven of Singapore. The highlight for me was the shopping centres. I particularly liked the 3 shopping centres that were connected underground.

Further, the food at Takashimaya was fabulous! Their okiyaki, unagi stick and cream bun were excellent! It taste exactly like the one I had in Tokyo! The cheese okiyaki was so good till I had 3 pieces of it..BURP..

The bad part about Singapore is that I CANT FIND ANY POST OFFICE AROUND. After hours of rounding Orchard Road and Raffles’ place, I still couldn’t find one. Fortunately, a grocery shop was selling a booklet full of stamp. I snapped whatever variety he had. It costs me SG23!!

According to my guidebook, the Merlion is located behind Fullerton Hotel, so I went searching for it. Instead of find the Merlion, I found 2 big breasted young ladies dressed in bikinis. They were promoting some sort of marine club membership! If these girls were posing in Malaysia they would be raped immediately since some of our brilliant MPs claim that rape is a result of skimpy clothes. How dumb.

I didn’t get to see the Merlion though. Fortunately, my aimless roaming ended me at Boat Quay. Boat Quay is a modern style romantic dining strip on the edge of Singapore’s business district, has an impressive skyline as a backdrop. The atmosphere is added to by the old, restored shop houses of the colonial era and the waterfront setting with its reflection of lights (phrase copied from a website haha). It somehow reminds me of Melaka.

My flight was slightly delayed due to the heavy rain. I managed to catch couple of winks while on my way back. Ahhhh…Singapore! I don’t mind living there!