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.