Ticket to ride

Friday, 28/09/2012 – 106 A.D.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide

We didn’t really have much to do today except book our train tickets for Kuala Lumpur, hereafter referred to as KL. An easy job, no? No. We tried to book online, but the frustratingly unhelpful website only displayed the available seating for Sunday’s trains, rather than Saturday’s. Sunday’s sleeping berths were already full-up, which was a bad sign. Well, I say bad, but at least if we got a daytime train we’d get to see the Malaysian scenery. I still regret getting a night bus through Utah and missing the stunning sights, but that’s all ancient history now. We decided we’d have to phone the train company to check the seating situation, so we left the hotel and went to find a pay phone.

Just over the road is The Mustafa Centre which we’d stared at from our window for the last few days, but had no clue what it was all about, except that it was open for 24 hours. We decided to give it a go and discovered it’s a big shop that sells…everything! Especially gold. The presentation is a little off though, a bit like Debenhams if it was going through a closing down sale and couldn’t be bothered putting up new displays. Upon entering, the two security guards told us the zips on our day bags needed to be tied with tags in accordance with store policy, presumably to stop people putting stolen goods into them. What they didn’t tell us was how we were supposed to remove the tags if we wanted to go to other shops and fill our bags! We bought some blank dvds upon which we could back up our laptop data, but when purchasing them and asking if there was a public telephone within the store that we could use, the woman behind the counter assumed we wanted to buy a telephone. We gave up and left. And Tim bit the tags off our bags.

Back on the streets, we located a payphone and tried to make the call to the train company. Despite the generous rate of 12 minutes for 50 pence dialling a foreign country, the call would not connect, despite getting through to the queue for an attendant.  There was only one thing for it, we would have to take the train up to Woodlands again and go to the terminal to buy our tickets in person. Still, what else did we have to do with our day? Unfortunately it took an hour out of our lives to get there, although it was naturally less crowded than yesterday because we weren’t travelling during rush hour. Singapore is a very clean country and one reason for this is that they dish out fines of up to $500 for eating or drinking on the trains or in the stations. Merseyrail, take note. Actually, it was a bit of a bummer because I was parched on that train and desperate for a swig of water!

This was the hottest day so far, with no cloud cover to shield us from the punishing sun. I don’t know how these people put up with the lack of variety in their weather – I love the fact that England has seasons! We walked for about 15 minutes to the station known as Woodlands Checkpoint, the clue in its name being that its where you go to cross the border. In what passed for a ticket office we were told there was only one bed available for the Saturday night sleeper, so we’d have to get the 13:45 train (six hours to KL). Then we were told we could only pay by cash. Only by cash? What sort of an international ticket office featuring an automated online booking system does not accept cards??? This meant we had another 15 minute round trip to the cash machine in the nearby run-down shopping complex.

We decided to take a varied route on the way back, mainly because we were getting sick of passing through the same stations. Thing is, our varied route took even longer than the normal one! We got off to the east of Little India at the Geylang district – the traditional red light area. No, no, no. Stop thinking that. We just wanted to walk around and maybe see some interesting sights (from a distance). Unfortunately we missed the red light zone by about 50 metres, though at the time we were unaware of the miscalculation, just puzzled as to why there were no big red numbers outside the houses, which is the tell-tale sign for a brothel around these parts. By this time it was late afternoon and too hot to be wondering things like this, we just needed to get back to the hotel for a shower and some aircon.

All clean and rested, it wasn’t long before we were out again and heading into deepest Little India to enjoy a typical curry. As we sauntered along the kerbside we were beckoned in by the owners of several establishments, all promising us the best cuisine we’ve ever eaten in our lives. With our stomachs rumbling, we just couldn’t decide amongst them, so we went back to the first guy we spoke to and made his night. I had a “murg makhani”, which tasted bloody good, but Tim was a bit disappointed with his chicken-and-spinach concoction, mainly because it was on the bone (and a lot of bones at that!)

To walk off our medium-strength meals, we headed back to good old Raffles to stroll around the hotel complex by night and pretend we were wealthy. We took plenty of pictures and ignored the crass English nouveau riche who were hovering around. Of course, we had to try the lavatories, which were spotless, even by Singaporean standards. However, once we saw the prices of the drinks at the bar we suddenly decided we weren’t thirsty. Didn’t like the look of those Singapore Slings anyway. 

Next we headed down to the harbour to get some shots of the city by night. The Marina Bay Casino somehow looked even more impressive lit up against the big back sky. There was a performance taking place of traditional Chinese music, very rhythmic in nature, with cymbals crashing, drums beating, and various other percussive instruments being whacked. Seeing it live was great and made me consider downloading a CD of this type of music, though at the back of mind I knew that it would end up being one of those albums that gets played once a year at most. We also came across what appeared to be an outdoor street version of Play Your Cards Right, but given that I don’t understand Chinese, it might well have been something else (but not the oriental version of Blankety-blank).  

[“Higher! No, lower…errr…you’re wallied – you can’t answer this one…”

It was a steaming hot night, and in some ways warmer than it had been by day. On our way back to the hotel we decided we were thirsty again and stopped to grab a bear at a place that looked like it hadn’t changed much since Singapore declared itself independent from the British in 1965. Well now the British were back, and enjoying a drink in the kind of place where the locals drink. I also sort-of did my first bit of haggling by agreeing on a price for the beers before ordering them – 6 dollars for 660 millilitres of Tiger – best price in Little India! It was a fine end to day in which we hadn’t expected to do much, yet ended up doing quite a lot. Cheers!