Getting into Singapore

Location: Singapore

NP: Metallica - No Leaf Clover

Mood: Disgruntled

We took the bus from Malacca straight to Singapore for 24 ringgit (6 euros). The bus made a brief stop at Johor Bahru and then continued straight to the border checkpoints. This is how it's supposed to work: You have to disembark the bus at the Malaysian checkpoint, pass the checkpoint and get a stamp on your passport, get back on the bus, step out of it again at the Singaporean checkpoint and board it again for a ride to town. Getting out of Malaysia was easy and without hassles, but getting into Singapore was far from it.

We arrived at the Singaporean checkpoint at about 7 PM. Clearing immigration took us about 30-45 minutes (we had to fill an entrance form and queue), after which we went to declare one bottle of booze per passenger in the toll office (required for those entering from Malaysia). It took us another 30-45 minutes and they wanted us to pay nearly 12 SGD (7.5 euros) of taxes for the two bottles we had.

It was more than the bottles had cost. Thus we wished to leave the bottles at the customs, which also seemed problematic. We couldn't just leave them there for them to dispose of. Instead we would have to wait for this to take place, I suppose, which the official estimated would take 10 minutes. Then, when we seemed hesitant to accept this, another official, probably of higher status, came by and told us it would be okay to take the bottles through customs this time without taxes, but we had to open them up there in the office. Fine, no problems there. Though I was tempted to take a gulp of Sangsom as I opened the bottle.

The problem with the border checkpoint is that there aren't any currency exchange points or ATMs and you are required to take a bus out of immigration - you may not walk out. This would work out well, if the same bus with which you'd come from Malaysia would wait for you.

Ours had not.

It wasn't really surprising, seeing how long it took for us to get past the checkpoint. We noticed most of the buses waited for just 10 minutes before moving on after arriving. So now the officials adviced us to wait for the next bus from the same company. That should take us into the city.

So we did.

Singapore's strict rules - a sign by the river in Singapore.

After about an hour of waiting, a bus from Starmart (which was the company that had taken us to the border from Malacca) arrived. We asked the driver if there was room on the bus for us. He asked us to wait for his original passengers to board first. So we did. After about 10 minutes, the driver went in to see how many seats were left on the bus. There was only one, so he could not take us into town. He told us to wait for another bus from Starmart that he claimed would be there in just 10 minutes.

We waited for an hour.

I went to ask the customs officials for advice again and they said they didn't know the schedules for the buses and had no idea if another bus from Starmart would be there today. They suggested we use a taxi that would cost us about 30 SGD (18.7 euros) or wait some more. We asked if we could get a ride on one of the other companies buses to which they responded by telling us the other companies usually didn't allow this, but that we would be welcome to try and bargain with the drivers for passage.

A notice at Chanqi Airport.

We decided to wait for a while longer. The whole experience was getting on my nerves.

When less and less buses started appearing at the border (with none from Starmart), we decided to try and bargain with the drivers. The first driver declined, but the second one agreed to take us into the city for 20 SGD. We told him we had no local currency. He then accepted Malaysian Ringgits. 50 of them would do (about 12 euros). The price was far more than the entire bus trip from Malacca had cost us, but it seemed a cheaper option than a taxi.

The bus took us to town and dropped us off at Novena at 2 AM. In the end we had to take a taxi (costing 8 SGD) anyway, because the locals in Novena didn't know where Little India was nor could they point north or south for us...

Tired, disgruntled and sweaty we arrived at the hostel we'd planned on staying at only to find out it had closed its doors two years ago. There was another, much more expensive hotel in its place from the same hotel chain. The receptionist kindly pointed us to a nearby guesthouse with dormitory accommodation on Dunlop Street (costing 28 SGD per night) that, as we later in the night found out, was filled with cockroaches.

Ahh, the pleasures of travelling... But at least we had beds and a roof over us. It would do for the night.