Sayonara Singapore

So that was it for Singapore, and we were to be leaving later in the day, so soon after arriving. We weren’t in a particular rush to get to the train station, so we allowed ourselves a little lie-in. And we needed it. At stupid o’clock in the morning a family had got up early, opened the room to their door and let their child/children run absolute riot down the corridor. The room was a fair distance away, but the noise carried through into our room and through the pillow that was now pressed against my ears. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it was early. I pondered getting out of bed and storming down the corridor and telling them all to shut the heck up, but that would require me getting out of bed. So I waited it out, getting more and more frustrated at the kid(s) crying their eyes out, shouting, running and getting shouted at by the parents. And then it was morning and James was showered and clumping about, and it was time to get up and get everything ready to leave.

We knew we were going to be in for a relatively rough journey there due to the lengthy walk to the station in the baking heat. We would also need to phone the hotel to ask them if we were OK to check in at 9pm, as they had a check-in time for 12:00 to 18:00 for some reason. We left the hotel and set off on our last Singaporean trip, down the usual road to the Metro we knew oh-so well. Due to it being a Saturday the train was packed and I must have knocked about 3 people with my massive bag, but thankfully no prams or anything were overturned. It was only two stops on the Purple Line and we changed to the Red Line that runs North – South. Thankfully this was much quieter and we managed to get a little spot by the doors and wait out the long trip up north.

James in the Metro...

As we were on the train we had been bracing ourselves and discussing the best strategy for dealing with the walk at the end of the Metro journey. And then the heavens opened. This would put a spanner in the works and our strategy would need a rethink. Instead of baking in the heat and humidity we would need to tool-up with our wet-weather gear. When the train arrived at our stop it was still raining so we got the rucksack covers out and raincoats and tried to cover everything so none of it would get wet in the deluge. It worked. None of it did get wet……mainly because it stopped raining as we left the train station. Typical. So we were back to dealing with the heat, but it wasn’t all that bad, apart from the fact that I had switched footwear to my flip-flops and occasionally aqua-planed along the pavement. James had a similar problem in his hiking boots, but we managed to get to our destination unscathed and only a little bit sweaty and out of breath. We hung around in the air-conditioned waiting room and packed all the wet-weather stuff back into the bags and until we had cooled down.

 It wouldn’t be long til our train would be departing so we got upstairs and into the queue. The trip would take us across the border and into Malaysia, so we weren’t sure what kind of security would lie ahead of us. Once through the ticket inspector we lined up for passport control, and this didn’t take long to get through at all. Apart from the woman nearly keeping hold of my ticket until I grabbed it off her desk. Then it was the old finger-print and x-ray machine to get through, but it didn’t look like there was a metal-detector so we shouldn’t have to de-belt and everything, which was a nice bonus. No problems there either, and that was it…we were in the waiting room, technically in Malaysia.

My iPod entertainment centre

The train pulled into the station and it seemed…OK. Nothing outstanding, but certainly satisfactory for the journey that lay ahead of us. We grabbed our seats and got lunch on the go straight away. Whilst in the air-conditioned waiting room earlier, there had been a kid screaming and throwing a tantrum for about 20 minutes. We had remarked that the kid would probably be in the seats next to us on the train to make the six and a half hours just fly by. Well, guess who walked through our carriage and settled in about 5 seats behind us. Bingo. The mum, dad and the screaming kid. But at least they weren’t right behind us so maybe we could drown out any tantrums with the ipods and suchlike. And then we heard someone settling into the seats behind us. We thought that at least they couldn’t be as loud or annoying as the kid behind, but guess who it was. They had actually got out of their seats and moved 5 seats forward to sit directly behind us. Me and James just laughed, like you have to in those kind of situations.

The train pulled out of the station, and for some reason the annoying people behind us had moved back down the carriage to their original seats, but we sure weren’t complaining! We watched the Malaysian countryside fly by and the journey was surprisingly quick. Maybe because we were using long Greyhound trips as a yard-stick.

Malaysia from the train

We pulled into Kuala Lumpur Sentral at about half 8 and began looking for an ATM, a taxi rank and some toilets. There didn’t seem to be anything working in the train station: the two ATMs we came across were both out of order and the toilets were all being reconstructed. On searching for a usable toilet I happened across another ATM that seemed operational. But I was going to withdraw Malaysian Ringgits, and had no idea what the exchange rate was. I didn’t want to get a huge amount as we would only be in Malaysia for 4 days, but I didn’t want to come up short in the taxi ride to the hotel. I plumped for RM100 and it turns out that it was about £20, which should hopefully see me through to Thailand. The taxi rank was a small office inside the train station and after telling the guy where we were going he replied it would be RM10, or £2.00……bargain. This taxi driver seemed much more competent that the ones we had come across in Singapore and we were there in no time.

The Mayview Glory Hotel seemed quite nice – certainly better than the Arianna Hotel that we had been in for the past few nights. The beds were comfy and the Arsenal v Chelsea game was on the telly downstairs. It was £10 each a night and it looked like it was worth every penny. It even had a bathroom arrangement whereby you could, if you wanted to, have a shower whilst sitting on the toilet. I won’t tell you if I ever did this. It was getting late and the Grays were getting hungry for food before settling in for the night so they went for a quick scout of the local area. We happened across a few eateries and suchlike but we thought just to play it safe we should grab a KFC and then get organised in the hotel room. Thankfully the beds had some give in them so we were in for a decent nights sleep for a change. 

The view from the Mayview Hotel