After a ten night stay in my hometown, Kuching, I said goodbye to my family. It had been a busy stay attending to things like renewing my passport; researching and opening a bank account. Without internet at the house, it was a chore to have to drive to an internet cafe every few days to check my emails. [Edit: Looking back, life was so “difficult” without mobile internet.]
Today I move on to the Lion City again, in anticipation of my adventure in Iran, starting in two days time. But I travel to Singapore on the cheap, by flying to Johor Bahru and then crossing the border into Singapore.
My Malaysia Airlines flight left Kuching at 1340 and despite being a little more than an hour’s flight I got fed a good meal of chicken tandoori with rice, plus vegetables cooked with mustard seeds. Pretty good I say, and much better than the fish with potatoes. The flight attendant even brought beer to my neighbour on request during descent; I had thought there was no alcohol on domestic services.
We landed earlier than the 1500 scheduled arrival time. With no one to share a taxi into Singapore, I took the Malaysia Airlines bus to the republic. It was only a brief wait while we waited for passengers from our flight and also another one from Kuala Lumpur.
Exit immigration on the Malaysian side was swift. While there were some queues on the Singapore side, it only took 20 minutes including baggage x-ray. The ride including border formalities took just over 2h which saw me arrive at the Copthorne Orchid Hotel at 1750.
It was a quick taxi ride to my aunt’s place. The taxi driver was a chatty Singaporean Malay guy. While I always thought Singaporean Malays have been brought up to be patriotic to Singapore, I found otherwise with this chap. He would like to retire in Malaysia because it was cheaper and he had relatives there. But he referred to it as “balik ke” (return to) Malaysia as if it was his ancestral homeland.
As the sun sets rather late in Singapore, I squeezed in a quick swim at the pool before dinner. My uncle is a talker. He’s blind but still takes an interest in everything.