A Better Title

Wow, today (which refers to 21 July) must be one of the most exciting days in the past week. It was the first time that I smuggled drugs into Singapore visited Malaysia, albeit only to Johor Bahru.

BTW, I completely blame Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for my absence in the blogosphere. Yeah, it’s an old game, but I couldn’t finish the game the other time as my laptop kept on crashing at one point in one of the missions.

After my internship ended, I suddenly found a lot of time to finish the game (Oops, actually I still owe the company the documentation of my code. Should not procrastinate any further…). Moreover, using the desktop the crashing doesn’t occur anymore. I’m currently at 62% completion. Those who have played the game would know how hard it is to achieve 100%, with all the hidden items and missions that you have to discover.

Anyway, I digress. The trip was supposed to be a class outing, but unfortunately only 6 could make it in the end: Terence, The Hung, Tai Tat (the tour guide), Grace, Berdine, and yours truly. But on the other hand, it was also good because then we could pack ourselves in Tai Tat’s car, although the four of us sitting at the back had to cram ourselves into such a small space.

And it was great too because I personally prefer a smaller group of people to go out with (I’m somewhat intimidated by large groups).

I won’t be able to imagine what happened if more of us turned up–maybe some of us would have to sit in the boot or the roof.

The plan was that all of us (except Tai Tat) were to meet at King Albert Park, and then head over somewhere nearby for lunch. Then we would take 170 to the checkpoint, and skip immigration and swim across the strait and meet Tai Tat directly in Malaysia.

In the end, I was terribly late and had to catch a cab down to KAP. We headed down to the Bukit Timah market for lunch, where I had fried oyster, much to the amusement of the others since we were planning to eat seafood at JB later on.

After lunch, we took 170 down to Woodlands Checkpoint. It was a spanking clean building, complete with semi-automated barriers to control the human flow. After clearing immigration, we took a short bus ride across the causeway to Malaysia.

Stepping into Malaysia is like stepping into another world altogether, right down from the moment I alighted from the bus at Malaysia’s side of the causeway. Barely five minutes after being in a clean environment, I was walking through a hot, filthy immigration building. The moment I walked out of it, the sight of teksis touting for business, broken sidewalks, Malay-language advertisements, and potholed roads greeted me.

And suddenly a fleeting thought filled my mind: Welcome to Singapore! Just like at home. At least that’s how it’s like in Jakarta anyway.

We headed down to a nearby shopping mall to wait for Tai Tat. While walking around, I realised one unique thing about stores in Malaysian shopping malls: all of them has a text saying which company the store belongs to/is being managed by, along with the company number, near the shop name. So for example a shop called “ABC” may have a text saying “Diurusi oleh: DEF Sdn Bhd (12345-A)” (literally means “Managed by: DEF Sdn Bhd (12345-A)”) next to the shop name.

We walked around a bit, and girls being girls, they had to shop for shoes/cosmetics/shirt. I saw a Mentos chewing gum in Watson’s, but I didn’t buy it as I didn’t have any Ringgit with me. In fact, throughout the journey I didn’t touch any Ringgit at all.

The reason was simple: Tai Tat thought that we had exchanged our money, while we thought that he would bring us to the money changer first. Luckily Terence and the girls had some Ringgit with them, so they paid for the food, and I returned the cash to them in Singapore Dollars.

Tai Tat arrived with his Proton Wira, which contrary to popular belief, is not that bad for a car.

He brought us to Danga Bay, a beachy recreational area in JB which is under development at the moment. We had our seafood dinner at a floating restaurant called Restoran Asli, near Taman Perling. It was previously managed by the orang asli, but recently it is being managed by Chinese people. After the dinner, we had our dessert at a mamak stall called Treetops (if I’m not mistaken).

Do head over to my moblog for the photos and the details of the trip:

• On The Way to JB
• The Guys
• Danga Bay
• Restoran Asli (where we had our dinner)
• Dessert at mamak stall
• Back in Singapore

One funny incident happened to me while at the mamak stall. I wanted to get some spoons and order coconuts for the group. Unfortunately, I wasn’t confident enough of conversing in Malay, even though my first language is Indonesian. So what was supposed to go like this between me and the waiter:

Saya mahu tiga sudu I want three spoons
Tiga ya? Three right?
(gives spoons and forks for eating food)
Maksud saya sudu untuk air batu campur I mean spoons for mixed stone water ice kachang
Oh ok Oh ok
Terima kasih. Ada kepala kelapa tak? Thank you. Do you have heads coconuts?
Ada We have
Saya mahu tiga kelapa I want three coconuts
Awak duduk mana? Where do you sit?
Di situ There
(points to group)

instead went like this…

Uh… sudu Uh… spoon
Dua? Two?
Tiga Three
Tiga ya? Three right?
(gives spoons and forks for eating food)
I mean sudu for uh… the uh… ais campur batu I mean spoons for uh… the uh… ice mixed with stones (!!!)
Hah? Huh?
Uh, the sudu only Uh, the spoon only
Awak duduk mana? Where do you sit?
Di situ There
(points to group)
Tunjuk untuk saya Point for me (not sure if this is correct Malay)
(walks towards where I pointed)
Di situ There
(points to group again)
Ok, tiga air batu campur ya? Ok, so three ice kachang, right?
Bukan, tiga kelapa No, three coconuts
Ok, tiga kelapa Ok, three coconuts
(thinks to self: what on earth just happened?)

Whatever I said must have come out as gibberish to the girl, especially when I inadvertently mixed English and Malay all over the place!

Luckily noone in the group knew what happened, otherwise I might have to bury my head in sand.

After dessert, we headed for the causeway for our trip home. All in all, it was a fun trip. I think what made the trip really great was the company: it isn’t everyday that a few of us can go out together, let alone to another country altogether.

Oh yes, and guess how much each of us paid for the seafood?

SGD 12.

PS: Happy birthday to my sis!
PPS: Reminder to self: do a reflection entry on the internship.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 3:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.