The Other Half Of The Train Journey And Customs (Kuala Lumpur To Singapore)

As it happens the train did get a little more uneasy in areas so the grim reality is you have to be an absolutely hardcore heavy sleeper to get through the journey. The scenery is nice enough to scope out though so at least it isn’t pure boredom all the way there! I would have watched a film or listened to headphones but as I hacked apart my computer to salvage the hard drive in Kuala Lumpur this was not possible. This teamed with the fact that my headphones are buggered from the beach in Phi Phi and my phone is dead secured the fact that I was isolated for most of the trip haha. I nodded off at times and went through about 6-7 different positions before eventually sticking my foot in the guy’s head in the seat in front of me…I honestly didn’t think anyone was there so I stuck my leg around the seat near the window to get some much needed leg reach before resting my foot on some small Singaporean head. To be honest I think he scared me more than I scared him! I tried for the apology but he didn’t understand me…but hey ho you can but try.

We were handed a form before arriving at the Singapore customs and it was a form we had seen many times before and asked for all you passport credentials like name, place of birth, blah blah blah but the only thing different with this one was we were handed it whilst the train was having a dickey fit so getting those letters on the page was a new form of awkwardness. Oh and the lights were off too so we had sporadic rail line lighting combined with power squinting to try and get something legible down on the page!!!Needless to say we just about succeeded and were left to sit back and await our stop. The train grounded to a halt and about three or four white coated Singaporeans boarded the train with smiles asking for everybody’s arrival cards and passports which naturally we just handed over. The obligatory laugh followed as it always does when someone sees the absolute disgrace of a photo harboured inside my passport – a rabid ape combined with Russell Brand gone wrong is a way of placing it in a good light ;). The smiley lady squiggled a date in red pen and proceeded to do the same with Scotts, minus the laugh of course as he has a moderately normal photo tucked away in his! Gutted.

They left and the train began on its journey again before its final stop ten minutes later. We grabbed our bags, lives and tangled bodies and walked across the impeccably shiny and clean floor to the passport control desk. When I say clean I mean ridiculously clean…The fact that the floor was actually cleaner and more sterile than any room we had stayed in 7 weeks gave me the right hump haha…Just kidding, I was partly shocked and partly elated to be walking on such a clean floor that didn’t have puddles, sewage or pissed up bodies on it ;).

We cruised through the passport control with no worries and I noticed some sniffer dogs and some quite stern looking chaps lining the wall. So like I have said before, all you gangster, drug lord wannabes and glue sniffers can forget about it, you have no chance of getting through that lot not to mention the insane penalties they push on you in this country for drug related offenses. Although the prison is probably gonna be the cleanest one in the world haha. Outside the customs area was taxis and buses all neatly lined up looking for people to escort about like they do best, so what did we do? We f**ked about looking for food across the road and winded up settling for the traditional Chinese cuisine of Singapore haha. It was a beauty though and only cost $3 Singapore dollars which is the equivalent of £1.50. Now the buses and transport is a different ball game altogether, so stay tuned, I’m off to the Quay now to splash things and take some photos of literally anything.

Thomo x