Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 3

The second sleeper train from Kuala Lumpur back to Johor Bahru was definitely better than the second-class sleeper we experienced the day before. For one, it was private and therefore meant that we could move around more freely. Two, there was a bathroom and an electrical socket. What is luxury?! Avon, my roomie for the night, and I were glad to have some electricity and a shower at our disposal for the next 6 or so hours. Since our electronics were all out of juice and we still had a full day of picture taking to do, we scheduled 2 hours each for our gadgets, 2 hours for her camera and 2 hours each for my camera and cellphone. Worked out quite well since we were wildly clicking on our cameras by the time we got to Legoland.

One thing that you absolutely must know when you're commuting everywhere is the bus schedule. We had spent a couple of hours at JB Sentral after alighting the train to stuff our backpacks in lockers and grab some breakfast and some free wifi. What we didn't get a hold of was the bus schedule to Legoland, unfortunately. Since we missed the bus to Legoland and we had a schedule to follow (sort of), we hired a cab to take us to Lego land. Since there were five of us and only three were allowed inside one cab, we had to pay more for two cabs instead of the 4 RM (I think) that it would have cost us to get to Legoland by bus. But it was no big deal, just a minor speed bump in our Malaysian adventure. We got to Legoland, didn't we?

Hello, Legoland Malaysia!

Now, Legoland is a theme park. It has rides, it has a store where you can buy all sorts of Lego, and Miniland, where tons of Asian landmarks are displayed, all made out of Lego! 

Check out Lego Kuala Lumpur. Use the people in the background as reference to the size of this creation.

Look! A Lego Singapore! Complete with a mini version of the Merlion. FYI, the boats in the water move as well.

Here are some others that I particularly liked

Taj Mahal in India

The Forbidden City in China

Karaweik Barge in Myanmar

Wat Arun in Thailand

AngkorWat in Cambodia

Last but not the least, Bolinao, Pangasinan in the Philippines. 

 

I was a little surprised by what was presented in Miniland to represent the Philippines. Though Bolinao is a beautiful place (though I haven't been there yet), what happened to the Banawe Rice Terraces or Chocolate Hills in Bohol or the underground river in Palawan or a multitude of other beautiful places in the Philippines? Those places would've looked awesome done in Lego, I think.

Legoland is literally a land of Lego. Lego statues everywhere! Here are my favorites:

It's Einstein!

If you want to see a bird's eye view of Legoland, you must ride The Tower. It looks just like a Lego piece and it rotates so that you can get a 360 degree view of the theme park. Unfortunately, Legoland is still in the process of expanding, I think, so there's a patch of land that's just full-on construction. But it's still nice, though. 

To end our trip to Legoland, we rode Project X. There were lots of other rides that we wanted to try but we were running a little late. Compared to the roller coaster we rode at Universal Studios, Project X was way tamer and less scary. Funny thing was, based on the picture taken of us while on the ride you'd think that Project X was the scariest thing in the world. A lot of scared faces in that picture. 

The original plan was to spend the morning in Johor and get back to Singapore a couple of hours after lunch. No deal. It took us a little while to actually leave Legoland because we didn't know when a bus would arrive to take us back to JB Sentral. We got there, thankfully, and after getting our backpacks and passing through a first round at immigration, got on a bus that would take us through Woodlands (where we'd pass through immigration again) to Kranji station. 

Passing through the border from Malaysia to Singapore wasn't much of an event, one moment you're in Malaysia and the next you're in an MRT station bound for Changi airport. We decided to leave our luggage at the airport before we went to Orchard where we had dinner and met up with Raymund, my and Avon's friend from college. H&M at Orchard Road was our store of choice to partake of the Great Singapore Sale but we only had about an hour and a half to go around and shop because we had the Merlion to see and a flight to catch in a few hours. Having Raymund as our guide helped us a lot since we knew exactly where we were going. Getting around was quicker,  but our legs were starting to give up on us. I guess three days of being on your feet will do that to you. 

Muscle pain and foot blisters were momentarily forgotten when we got to the Merlion park, where the Merlion is found chillin like a villain and spewing out a continuous stream of water out of it's lion mouth. 

I shall name you...Merly!

I was pleased that we visited Merly at nighttime, we got to admire the Singapore skyline alongside the Merlion. 

Taking a photo with the Merlion was the symbolic finish line to our Singapore-Malaysia adventure. Our itinerary was done and the only thing left to do was thank Raymund for seeing us, get on our last MRT ride to Changi airport, check-in, and wait. The waiting turned out to be longer than we expected because our flight was delayed. Good job, Cebu Pac. 

I don't remember anything from the flight back home to Manila. We were all dead asleep throughout the entire plane ride, I think. All I remember is that the day was new when we touched down at NAIA 3 and that my sister was waiting for Avon and me. I was happy to come home to a family, to a bed and to internet after a few days of being away abroad (naks!). I had pasalubong to give out and stories to tell. 

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So that was my Singapore-Malaysia backpacking adventure. I made some new friends and reunited with an old one. I got to experience the hardships that came with not having a strict itinerary nor any real place to stay for the night. I got to see a lot of beautiful things and experienced a different way of life even if it was just for a few days. I learned things about travel that I wouldn't have learned from anywhere else. I've tasted food that I'm sure I'll be searching for when I get hungry. I rode trains and buses and taxi cabs, survived the blazing heat and humidity, took photos, dealt with the unexpected curveballs with spontaneously formulated Plan B and C and D's, and laughed through the bitch fits, all with just a backpack, a sling bag and a water bottle in my hand. 

Cool. :)

Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 2

Good morning. After about 7 hours on board a sleeper train, we finally arrived in KL Sentral.

Good morning, KL. Show me what you got.

We quickly grabbed our bags to alight the train and since we hadn't had a bath since we arrived in Singapore, we were desperate to find a place to leave our bags and freshen up. We had a bit of trouble finding a place because the hostels were full and check in was at 2 in the afternoon. Thankfully, we booked a room in YMCA and finally got a shower and an electric socket to charge our phones. Feeling refreshed, we went back to KL Sentral to grab a bite for breakfast and get our ticket to Putrajaya. Thanks to the Putrajaya local government, we were able to tour Putrajaya for only 1RM. By far the cheapest 2-hour tour you can ever get. 

This is our very chatty tour guide who showed us some of the
best places in Putrajaya. 

In those two hours, we were able to see some really beautiful architecture. These buildings look so beautiful and grand up close. There was an abundance of curvatures and decorations in all of the buildings that I saw, a stark difference from the buildings that I see at home where they all looked like gigantic concrete boxes. 

We got a little break from the tour and had a quick lunch of chicken rice (with a spicy, Malaysian twist) and teh tarik. I saw some bread being prepared and took a picture, because I'm curious like that. 

After spending the morning soaking up some prime Malaysian architecture, we went back to KL Sentral to catch another bus -- this time to the famous Batu Caves. The climb down from the MRT station was congested, the crowd multinational. It looked like we weren't the only ones excited about the caves. 

This greeted us when we came down from the MRT station.
The rock formations reminded me a lot of Coron, Palawan.

Hanuman

Murugan

1 step down, 271 more to go.

one of the many colorful temples found in the Temple Cave

Majestic, huh? If you're visiting Kuala Lumpur, this is a cultural must-see.

Our day in Kuala Lumpur was almost over, but there were still a couple of things that we needed to do. One was that we needed to meet up with Paige's neighbor Eric who works in Malaysia, another was that we needed to buy some pasalubong for our officemates, friends and family, and that we needed to see the Petronas Twin Towers, of course. OF COURSE! 

We took the monorail from KL Sentral. We took so many stops that I can't even recall which station we met up with Eric at. We were famished by that time so Eric took us to a place he frequents for some dinner. It was cool. The restaurants were all lined up on the street and hawkers were everywhere. It was a familiar sight. It felt like home. After stuffing ourselves at dinner, we took another train to get to Central Market where we bought some Beryl's chocolate to take home. We were under time pressure, sadly, so we couldn't really get some shopping done apart from the chocolates and some pashmina scarves. We still had the Petronas to visit!

And visit we did. 

Hello, beautiful. 

Seeing the Petronas made the day in KL complete. Despite the sweaty clothes, the tired legs and the sleep deprivation, all were forgotten when I saw the towers gleaming against a canopy of stars. It was awesome that I actually had to lie down on the ground to get this photo. Totally worth it. 

Thus ended our adventure in Kuala Lumpur. After getting off the monorail back to KL Sentral, we checked out of YMCA and headed back to the train station to catch our sleeper train (First class this time! A bathroom at our disposal!) back to Johor Bahru, where our next adventure waited--Lego Land. 

Singapore-Malaysia Adventure: Day 1

A week ago today, I was at the forefront of a backpacking adventure with my friends. Mind you, this was my first backpacking trip abroad and my first trip abroad without any family with me. The plan was pretty simple: we get to Singapore, spend the day there, go to Johor so we could take a sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur, spend a day in Kuala Lumpur then take another sleeper train back to Johor where we'd spend the first half of the day in Lego Land and the other half of the day back in Singapore, hopefully shopping our asses off. The plans are usually simple, it's the execution of the plan that gets tricky. In our case, it was tricky with a side of bipolar bitch fits (disclaimer: I am not the source of bitchfits, FYI) and fits of laughter.

Day one, Singapore. We deplaned very early in the morning of June 29, around 1:30 am. Originally, we planned on staying at the airport til there was sunlight, and we did for a couple of hours, but apparently after deplaning passengers should immediately go through immigration. So we had to leave the airport during the wee hours of the morning and resorted to taking a couple of taxi rides around the city to look for a place to stay. In the search for cheap lodging, we sort of felt like we were part of some nativity play. Every place we went to were too expensive, closed or full. We ended up wandering around Chinatown at 5 in the morning before we decided that we could wait for the MRT station to open. That way we could actually start our trip by going somewhere.

that's us walking around Chinatown

That somewhere was Botanic Garden. Imagine us walking amongst morning joggers with our backpacks and cameras! We must've stuck out like a sore thumb. No matter, our brains said, we just wanted breakfast. In our quest for breakfast, we managed to walk around the vast greenery and took some pictures.

Here's an old uncle doing his early morning taichi. 

Botanic Garden is huge. And after a lengthy walk around this huge piece of land, we still couldn't find the food court, much to our dismay. But just when we were about to give up (and I was getting cranky) and find a way out to hail a cab and take us to somewhere with food, we found the food court. Hallelujah! 

Egg and Cheese Roti Prata. Tastes best when you're tired from walking. 

Next on the agenda, Universal Studios. We rode the MRT to get to Harbourfront so we could leave our backpacks at the leave baggage. From there we also managed to get tickets to Universal Studios at a discounted price. We decided to take the cable car to get to Sentosa even though some of us were afraid of heights. 

Thousands of feet above ground. We got a bird's eye view of the city, too. 

Fortunately, by the time we arrived in Singapore, the haze was a thing of the past. We got to enjoy the Singapore heat at its finest at Universal Studios where we got to see some of our favorite characters, like Optimus Prime.

We also got to ride awesome rides like these:

Battlestar Galactica

Transformers 3D

After spending much of the day on our feet, we were tired and sleepy as we left Sentosa. But we still had places to be and trains to catch. After getting our baggage back at Harbourfront, we hopped on an MRT and walked to Maxwell Food Center, the home of Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, featured by Anthony Bourdain in one of his travel shows. Unfortunately, Tian Tian was closed when we got there but we still got to eat some chicken rice because of Ah Tai, the place notorious for opening three stalls away from it's arch nemesis, Tian Tian. 

After a delicious dinner of chicken rice, it was time for us to go to cross the border between Singapore and Malaysia to get to JB Sentral where we'd catch a sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur. By some stroke of luck, we got there relatively stress free. 

A welcome message at Woodlands checkpoint. Be sure to have your passport ready.

Taking a bus from Johor to KL would take about 4 hours. Taking a train would take about 7 hours. Why choose the slower route? How else would we get any sleep?! 

This is Franz showing us his crib for the night

Finally, some sleep. 

And thus concludes Day 1 of the Singapore-Malaysia Adventure.