Note: I’ve given up on uploading photos for now. Will try later. Although I only have one for this day
I decided on Melaka, Malaysia – about a four hour bus ride from Singapore. I had some stuff to do in the morning so I settled on a 2pm departure time.
Got my ducks in a row, and headed to the bus depot for about noon. I only had $19 Singapore dollars left, and I was determined to make it last. $2.10 went to the subway, and I was counting on $11 of it to go to the bus ticket, but the ticket was $16. Thankfully, I had enough, but now I still had lunch to worry about (and didn’t want to take more Singapore dollars out). To complicate matters, it had decided to start pouring (and I do mean pouring) rain. I threw the raincover on my bag, put on my jacket and ran across the street in search of a food vendor that took credit cards. No luck, but at a convenience store I found a steamed bun, filled with vegetables, for 80 cents. There was an Esso across the street, so I waited patiently for the rain to die down before crossing over. No such luck. Throwing the bag over my head, I darted across the street and into the Esso. Thankfully they took credit cards, so I grabbed some snacks for the bus, and headed back to the depot.
We had to disembark the bus twice – once to go through Singapore customs, and once to go through Malaysian customs. Both went very smoothly (think Canada/USA crossing on a good day), and then back on the bus to Melaka. The rain came and went throughout the drive – quite hard at times. The bus also bounced about, but I had a nice seat at the back with plenty of room, so it was pretty good. I replied to some emails, and did some reading (back to “Next”), and before long we were in Melaka.
Grabbed some Melaka Ringlits (cold hard cash) from the ATM at the bus terminal, and caught a cab to the hostel. Cab wasn’t as cheap as China, but not too bad. Hostel is pretty cheap and not particularly nice. Clean enough, but a few too many rules. No footwear allowed in the hostel, no pork or beef products, no Chinese food (muslim owners I guess). Things like that.
I grabbed some chicken and rice at a place near the hostel, but because of the rain, I figured I’d stay inside. Read a bit more, and wrote this, but it’s getting late, so I’d best get off to bed. Hopefully I can hook up to the internet in the morning and get this uploaded – already I miss the free wifi I had in China and Singapore.