Ok ok, so let’s start today’s entry by rolling back time to Sunday and going through the way in which we have come to arrive in the amazing country of Singapore.

It all started in the morning when we got up to make our way to the bus terminal at the end of our road. Our recent experience has taught us that buses, although relatively slow, can be a much better alternative to a long distance train. So with a huge backpack and a small one each, we set off to find our stop.

Usually we would have already booked our ticket and been simply waiting at our hostel to get picked up. But this was the first time we had literally left it to the last minute to do anything. We had no idea what we had got ourselves in for. The walk to the terminal was awful. We were attacked by people trying to sell us tickets to get on their bus. Like literally jumped on by 100s of different operators all wanting to get our business. But as far as we were aware these were all con men like in Thailand. Willing to say and offer anything just to get us on their bus. We just wanted the bus terminal ticket office.

After pushing off a dozen tickets touts, we managed to find a woman who could help us. She pointed to the top floor and said the offices were there. Phew….So we headed up the stairs, relieved we had managed to fight off the con men downstairs. Something we probably wouldn’t have done had we not just experienced a month in Thailand. We even had to run away from a group on the stairs, they were everywhere and probably the most persistent we’d witnessed…anywhere.

But as we reached the ticket office floor we immediately realised it wasn’t going to be an easy day. The whole floor was a square waiting room with tens of different operator’s ticket kiosks around the outside. Then filling the empty space were more ticket touts trying to get you to their kiosk.

So..time to put in our stern face and get things done. We nodded at the closest tout and told him we wanted a one way, direct, no messing about ticket to Singapore. He smiled and led us to his company kiosk. We were stern and pretty rude but it seems to be the only way to get what we wanted. They agreed to what we needed so we passed over the money and some lady went off to get our ticket. But when she returned the ticket said, maybe unsurprisingly, the complete opposite of what we’d asked for.

So you know what we did? We ripped up the ticket into tiny bits and blew it in her face before performing an evil villain laugh that went on for just long enough that everyone in the room felt slightly uncomfortable..

…Ok so we didn’t do that. But we did get our money back. Things weren’t going well. Soph had taken to sitting down on  a bench for a bit just to escape the mayhem while I dived back in ready to get what I wanted. I gave the exact same requirements to numerous other touts to see who could get us the cheapest ticket first. At first they all nodded and shot off in excitement. But when they returned they all had the same issue. There were no direct, no messing about tickets to Singapore today. In the end I had to return to the original lady I’d just ridiculed to give her my money…again.

Right. So. Our ticket was going in the direction of Singapore, but it wasn’t crossing the border. Instead we would have to jump on another bus to cross. Simple enough aye…aye?…We got on with seconds to spare. The only two even remotely Western people on the bus. No bother. The worst was behind us. We thought.

The journey to the border was simple enough. It’s just one straight road all the way. We stopped at a very random service station in the middle of nowhere, yet it was the busiest stop ever. Fish head curry was of course on the menu. We chose to stay hungry. Apart from a waffle biscuit that filled about 0.1% of our stomachs. Then we were off again.

Along the way the driver was on his mobile pretty much the whole time. He even thought it a nice gesture to pick up some hitch-hiker along the way when there were no available seats left. Suppose sitting on the floor isn’t an issue when there are no seatbelts on the thing anyway. Who cares if they fly through the windscreen as soon as we brake.

Arriving just outside Singapore, we grabbed our bags and looked around at the chaos we were about to dive into. Soph asked the driver how to get over to Singapore and he duly delivered that help by walking us to another kiosk before handing us the 6RM fee for the next bus.  Soph does all the asking. I hate asking. I would rather walk us down a dead end than ask someone holding a sign that says “ask me. I’m here to help” for any directions. Maybe it’s a male thing. Soph seems to think it is.

As we purchased the tickets we asked what bus we were meant to get on. The ticket fella simply grunted and pointed at the bus behind us. We took that as “get on that one” and hurried over. The place was packed full of Malaysians and Chinese and Indians and Singaporeans all trying to get a bus. It was crazy and definitely not a place we want to be again. Thankfully our bus was leaving immediately. But it was full to the brim. Apart from two lonely seats on the back row. The isle was just about big enough for my little toe to squeeze through, so you can imagine the awkwardness of having to barge our massive backpacks through everyone to get to our seats. But we were told back in KL that this journey would be no longer than 25 mins. That we could handle.

Unfortunately we had totally forgot to incorporate crossing the border in that time too. We were on the bus for about 5 mins before it got held up in traffic. There were rows of cars and other buses all at a stand still. That’s when the doors flew open. Everyone stood up, got off and started walking. What the hell was going on man! Soph used her special asking abilities to find out. We were crossing the border. Of course we were!

A friendly man who could clearly see we were lost told us to go through and meet the bus on the other side. Simple. So we went in, got stamped out of Malaysia and walked through the glass doors only to find a fork in the path. Bus lane A or Bus lane B. Nobody told us this. What the hell! There are no signs and yet everybody seems to know where they’re going. Soph, quick, ask someone.

Bus lane B turned out to be our path so we headed down the escalator. But at the bottom there were 100s of people all forming what looked liked queues. Yet, again, there was not one single sign to show what they were queuing for. It’s a good thing most people have a good understanding of English here or we’d probably be still in that bus line waiting, slowly starving to death. Someone told us our bus queue was further up behind some pillars. But even when we got there we couldn’t be sure we were in the right place. Jesus this was hard work.

Luckily we got good seats in the back corner of the bus where we could hold our bags on our laps and not be in anyone’s way. The bus was moving, we were on it and we would soon be in bed. We crossed the bridge between Malaysia and Singapore and looked around at the big tall buildings in the distance. Then we stopped. The doors flung open and we were all getting off. Christ! Now we had to do it all again to enter Singapore. What a mess!

First we got in the wrong queue. Then we were told we had to fill out a departure form before queuing. Then nobody had a pen. Thankfully someone behind us lent us there’s to get it all sorted. But to be honest we sat in the queue for so long we could have used that pen to write a novel. Maybe about a couple who set out on a quest to cross the tortuous Singapore border by bus. It was very busy.

On the other side we had the same predicament we had before with no signs pointing us to the correct bus queue. We sort of gambled on one being ours and waited. And waited. And waited, until every other bus had been and gone at least 5 times without any sign of ours. It was at least an hour we stood there waiting. You could say at least it wasn’t cold and wet like in the UK, but the heat of Singapore is arguably a worse fate.

When the bus finally arrived it was as packed as an Asda on Black Friday. We both managed to get a seat but we had to settle for someone else on our lap and a couple of arses in our faces. And to make things worse we had absolutely no idea where in Singapore the bus was taking us.

When we did stop it was on Queens Street. A place with numerous shopping malls and places we could grab some rest before moving on. We grabbed some Dollars from an ATM and tried to work out the conversion to GBP by seeing how much a quarter pounder with cheese was in the closest McDonald’s. We’ve gone from eating no western fast food to eating only western fast food recently. But it felt good.

One more session of asking members of the public for help and a taxi ride later, we arrived at Howard’s apartment. We have been here for two days now, which I will write all about tomorrow of course, and we’ve loved every second.  Worth that horrendous journey to get here. But we wouldn’t do it again. Just fly. But what about your Carbon footprint? If the alternative is that journey, we wouldn’t care if we left a giants boot print on the environment. Well maybe we would. But we’d still fly.

Thanks for following x