Tired. Tired. Tired
Singapore was a good way to 'ease ourselves' into Asia; most of it could pass as Brisbane, except the Asian:White ratio would be slightly higher than normal...
Having a few hours to kill before we caught the train, we ventured forth from the Airport into Singapore for some brief explorations and dinner. The lady at the Airport Visitors Centre and the man at the MRT ticket machines that we spoke to both seemed somewhat troubled by our lack of set plans and 'let's just wing it' attitudes. Both were very helpful, but I think they were sure we'd end up utterly lost (which we didn't!).
The Singapore MRT (mass rapid transport) system is
very simple to navigate; all very well signed and the ticketing is very easy to understand.. miles ahead of Translink back in Brisbane, not to mention that it's never late!
As instructed by the Visitor Centre lady, we hopped off at City Hall, found our way through the Citylink Mall, and somehow ended up in the Esplanade Theatre/Concert Hall that looks like a giant durian fruit. There really is some very interesting/quirky architecture in Singapore! We made our way to a strip of restaurants on the river edge and ate dinner there.
Later that night we caught the MRT and a taxi to the railway station where our overnight train to Malaysia departs. The station is run by a Malaysian company, so Customs was a bit backwards (and very laid back - they barely looked at our documentation and never took our departure cards) (not to mention that they let me(steve) back through customs, past all the queues, just to get a bottle of water...then just stroll back in without a word from the officials...Awesome! hehe - steve) as we went through Malaysian entry before half an hour later stopping at the border of Singapore to go through Singaporean exit procedures. Unfortunately, when we stopped and got off the train at the Singapore border, I left my Singapore Arrival Card stub (which apparently you need) in my bag on the train and had to be escorted into a separate room to wait. Luckily the guy there did something up fairly quickly (not sure what) and I was free to go again.
The overnight train ride was possible the worst sleep I've ever had, rivalled only by the time I stayed overnight at uni, sleeping on the floor under a computer desk. Someone thought it'd be a cool idea to smoke on the train, so I inhaled that all night which made me feel nice and nauseated. People kept talking and listening to music to all hours, which I guess really didn't matter anyway considering the fluro light on the roof was positioned perfectly to shine directly over the curtain into my compartment, making it bright as day! It wasn't a very smooth train ride; at one point the train was shaking so violently and loudly that I woke and said a quick prayer that
we'd survive. Woke up again at one point (I seemed to sleep in 1hour naps) and had to use the toilet, stumbling down the hall to find the 'automatic' door to the compartment was jammed, so I stumbled down to the other end, into the next cart to use their toilet. At this point the train was still violently shaking, and although it was a 'sit' toilet, there was no way I was about to sit on it... you can imagine the rest. Oh and to top it all off, the guy sleeping in the bed under Steve, across from me, had some sort of rifle with him! haha.
We are now in Kuala Lumpur and enjoying it a lot! Although we have been overseas for less than 2 days, due to lack of sleep it feels like we've been gone a week! Amiee.
On Thursday we took a bus up into the Genting Highlands. It was very cool, and the air was very crisp up there, compared to the polluted humidity of KL. There would have been a gorgeous view of KL, but the clouds were in the way (I'm told they usually are). Genting consists of several huge hotels, a casino, shopping centre, and an indoor and outdoor theme park of sorts. The whole place is very Westernised, considering we only saw 2 other white people there. We spent most of our time around the (overpriced) indoor theme park area. The whole place was a bit too 'crazy' for our liking, but it reminded me a bit of the arcade area that used to be up the top of the Queen St Myer Centre, but 100x bigger. We took a cable car down the mountainside, which was very scenic.
