What Can We Fit Into 18 hours?, Part I

Our Singapore experiences started with a bus ride from KL.  For about $12.00 each, we bought tickets on what turned out to be a nice, comfortable bus where we kicked back, read, napped and relaxed for the five-hour ride.  We made a few stops where we managed to spend the last of our Malaysian ringgits on fruit, Mentos and chocolate :)  Two nice guys behind us helped to navigate the stops we made at the Singapore border.  We had to take our luggage through customs and then reboard the bus.  As we were waiting to reboard, Val took a few pictures of the Immigration building and then left to talk with the two guys about transportation once we got to our destination.  He left the camera with me.  A few minutes later, two uniformed men approached me and asked if I was taking pictures because that wasn't allowed.  They asked to see my passport and made a call.  Presumably to the office who monitors the activities of suspicious characters masquerading as clueless Western tourists.  Meanwhile, Val is now wondering what's going on and the bus driver is telling us we have to go - or at least I think that's what his flurry of words and the scowl on his face meant.  Turns out we didn't get hauled away, they just made us delete the two pictures while the entire bus watched the show. Darn tourists.

We had an address to the restaurant so we splurged and took a taxi once we got off the bus.  We were going to have dinner and ask couchsurfers for a good, inexpensive place to stay one night, but we were a bit early so we decided to find a place before dinner.  We were lucky to get two beds in a six-person room all to ourselves.  AC, free breakfast, all for only $48.00 - we felt like royalty!  The two other hotels we checked out were $300.00 (the one the guy in Phuket suggested) and $500.00/night so we felt pretty good about where we ended up.

This group of people were just as interesting and welcoming as the group the night before in KL.  We spent the evening sharing travel stories and learning about our different countries.  I left about 10:00 and went back to the hostel.  Val stayed another hour or so to chat.  A great way to start our visit in Singapore!

"What Can We Fit Into 18 Hours? Part II" next . . .