Backlog: Malaysia - Singapore Travelogue pt.1

Generally, I won't say that I'm in favor of traveling. Not enthusiast, at least. Hence, when an opportunity to travel appeared before me, I wasn't really hyped up for the task. However, time and again, I found myself actually enjoying traveling. The past week is one of an instance where I found myself enjoying traveling.

I was on an office's errand in Pekanbaru last week. A week off-work for a three days duty? Why not? So, me and a couple of friend from the office went to Pekanbaru. On an impulse, my wife bought me a ticket to Kuala Lumpur, and one of my friend, unknowingly asked me, half-joking, about going to Singapore after Pekanbaru. I told him about me and my wife's plan to go to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and shown him our respective round-trip tickets and he immediately jumped into the wagon and so, there we were, three of us, with a huge baggage, two laptops, plenty of dirty clothes, and a totally unplanned trip.

Mind you, none of us three has ever gone to an unplanned, unsponsored trip to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore before. My friend comes from a rich family (filthy rich family) that never in his life he stayed in less than a 5-star hotel whenever he went to Singapore with his family and no, I'm not kidding. My wife and I comes from a rural village where our idea of delicacy is simply plenty of rice and chillies and had planned to have this trip as cheap as possible. Go figure how we managed our differences.

Malaysia

Initial plan: 0840 hrs from Pekanbaru, 1025 hrs arrived in Kuala Lumpur, immediately bought an over-night train ticket to Singapore, spent an evening sight-seeing in Kuala Lumpur, enjoys local delicacies, etc, and finally head to Singapore with a 2230 hrs train, scheduled to arrive in Singapore around 0400 hrs. Perfect plan, if you asked me.
Miniscule details: None.
Execution: Our plane got delayed. Instead of 0840 hrs from Pekanbaru, we departed at 1015 hrs. Arrived at Kuala Lumpur at 1155 local time. My friend, whose passport due to expired in 4 months immediately put himself in trouble at the custom. Apparently, it seems that there's a new rule that your passport must had at least six months of remaining validity before entering Malaysia. We had no idea about this rule, although that the custom in Pekanbaru has warned us about it. The custom dude even said in a harsh tone that my friend shouldn't even be permitted to enter. Fortunately, my friend could produce our return ticket from Batam and wise enough to keep his mouth shut (he was Bataknese and they often stereotyped as being hot-tempered) and so, he was permitted to enter.

After having a small lunch at the airport, we decided to head to Kuala Lumpur. This is our first time in Kuala Lumpur so we spent a little bit of time fuzzing about deciding what to do next in the terminal. We decided to go to KL Sentral as its name suggest that it was located in the center of Kuala Lumpur and after asking for direction a bit, we board a bus (fare: RM 9) that heads to KL Sentral. The trip took an hour, the road was definitely better than in Jakarta, but the driver seems a little bit timid that although the road was beautiful, wide, and traveled by few, the driver put his speed at check all the time.

In KL Sentral, we're asking around a bit for means to travel to Singapore. This is where our plan deviates greatly. Only three tickets available for the night train, first class (fare: RM 125 each). But, the ticket-master refused to sell us ticket because the tickets were meant for two females and one male not one female and two males as our party currently consists of. Even a persuasion from my wife couldn't wavered the ticket-master to sell us the tickets. That leaves us with only one option even if my wife disapproved greatly, we couldn't see any other feasible way to travel to Singapore. Bus.

For a RM 7, we ride a taxi to Pudujaya bus station. I tried to converse with the taxi-driver but he doesn't flinch, either he is deaf (which is unlikely, given his profession) or he loathe us for bringing huge baggages to his taxi and for traveling a very short distance to Pudujaya (you could actually walk from KL Sentral).

Arriving at Pudujaya, we tried to keep up with the plan of bought an advance tickets to Singapore as late as possible, and spent an evening in Kuala Lumpur but of course, there's no ticket to satisfy our needs. Improvising greatly, we asked for a direction to Johor Bahru instead and bought three tickets (RM 27 each). This include us running around crossing the crowded street, bumping and probably stepping another passerbys, with our heavy luggage (my friend's total luggage was around 18 kg, mine has around 12 kg, and my wife has around 7 kg). The trip wasn't actually as bad as I would've expected. We could really get some decent sleep from KL to Johor Bahru and except for one stop where we were ushered to switch bus by the driver, there's nothing to complain about the trip especially considering that the fare was one fifth of the train's fare. Without accident, or anything worthy to report, we're arrived in Johor Bahru bus station around 2130 hrs local time (Almost 5 hrs travel).

But our problem actually had just made its official start. To be continued.. tomorrow.