Here's how the trip to Singapore went. We left on one of Johor Bahrus buses from the marina at 0830(it came 15 minutes early)for one of the bigger bus stops where we we caught the CW3 bus for Singapore. First stop, Customs and Immigrations for Malaysia to get checked out of the country. Easy as pie. Only problem was that the bus we had been on had left and we had to wait for the next bus. Just because you caught one bus, doesn't mean it's going to wait for you. So we stood around and waited. After a while, another bus showed up and we climbed on it for the trip across the bridge to Singapore. First stop was Immigration. They had 22 stalls for processing people but we made sure to get in the slowest line. The clerk that was doing our processing took her jolly sweet time with each person as other Immigration people were stamping and processing people quite quickly. At one time, ours processed one person while the clerk to our left processed 6!!! In the end, we were the last people to get processed in all the lines. The people that were behind us were obviously smarter than us and jumped into other lines. By the time we got through, again the bus we had been on was long gone so we joined others from our bus that were also left behind. About an hour later, another bus showed up and we finalized our trip into Singapore.

We visited a bank after getting off the bus and then went into the shopping center across from the bus station as it was now just about 1150. It had taken us over three hours to get there! We found a pet store in the shopping center that carries Science Diet for the kids and we placed an order for two big bags of food for them. It won't be in to Tuesday at the earliest so we will be here a few more days.

Once we had had lunch, we headed out to another shopping center that specialized in electronics. We needed to either get our hand held ICOM radios fixed(all three have now stopped working) or get a new one. Our base station(Ray Marine) stopped working on the trip up the river to Johor Bahru. It seemed to be transmitting but no sounds come out of the speakers on it. We'd gotten clued into the best place to go. A simple train ride from the bus station and some hunting and we found it in the basement of one of the local high rises. Blazer Marine carries all types of gear and radios at what we later found out were great prices. We ended up buying a Standard Horizon hand held for $130 Singapore($102US) and a Standard Horizon base station for $150 Singapore($118US). I checked them on the internet and the prices we paid(in Singapore dollars) is the same price we would have had to pay if we bought them at Defender! We'd saved a ton(22%)on buying them in Singapore and we didn't have to pay sales tax as we had our crew list with us and that(plus our passports) made our purchase sales tax free. With the radios in tow, we headed back for the train to return to the bus station we would make the long journey back to Malaysia.

This time, getting out of Singapore was easy as it was near the end of the officers day and they were I'm sure, tired. Malaysia was the same. I did get stopped at Customs as the radios went through their scanner. The office wanted to inspect what I'd bought. He looked at the boxes and asked what they were for. I explained about our boat and the old radios that had died and these were replacement since I didn't get the old ones fixed. The boxes even said "Marine Radios" on it. Enough said. He passed us right through. Again, we had to wait for a bus but only about 20 minutes instead of an hour. We all piled on and off we went for the bus stop where we started this adventure. OOPS, guess not. He didn't take the exit for our stop but just kept going heading for the main station. We waited till he got to a place were we could grab a cab(miles from our expected bus stop and even further from the marina). We caught a cab and off we set for home finally, arriving about 30 minutes later--close to 1900. Ten and a half hours after we left on the first bus. We were both exhausted but glad to have made our first trip to Singapore. After all, this is an adventure isn't it?

After what happened today, we are off for Singapore again tomorrow. Sure hope Saturday is faster and with less people. As for what happened today, it's just going to have to wait as this post is long enough.