We traveled by bus to Singapore soon after arriving in Malaysia and had a wonderful and hurried visit. It started out by taking a public bus to Johor Baru, a city about 20 miles west of our marina. We then cleared out of Malaysia , took a bus across the bridge, cleared into Singapore and then boarded an express but that took us into the middle of Singapore. The trip took about 2 ½ hours and we encountered traffic along the way. Before we left the marina, we visited some yachtsmen who had lived at the marina for 3 years and they gave us all the relevant details for our trip, where to shop, where to eat and where to stay. We followed their itinerary closely and were not disappointed!

We first walked to a building called Sim Lim Towers and encountered the most fantastic collection of electronic and electric shops and suppliers. One of our priorities was to purchase a step down transformer so that we could plug into the 240 v power at the dock and run our refrigerator without using the generator. This has been an obstacle for us since we have been unable to leave the boat as our freezer needs 110 v power twice daily to keep our meats frozen. Since we want to travel in Malaysia we need to be able to leave the boat hooked up to power to keep the freezer/refrig happy. Sim Lim Towers had every conceivable electrical part available at what seemed to be wholesale prices. We spent several hours just browsing and completed our shopping for the transformer.

Then we walked across the street to Sim Lim Square and there we encountered 6 floors of computer stores. Everything conceivable was available for sale. Nancy brought her Mac computer in for repair and in 45 minutes she was up and running for 30 dollars US. We then walked down the main road to a commercial baking supply store where one could find everything conceivable for baking plus exotic baking supplies. Our senses were thrilled.

The main area of Singapore where we were staying was relatively small and we walked everywhere. We encountered a row of maybe 15 hardware stores all next to each other. We went to a hydraulics store that had every conceivable brass connector in their inventory. After coming from Indonesia, walking in Singapore was like being a kid in a candy store.

After a marathon two days we hired a Malaysian taxi to drive into Singapore and pick us up and take us back to Malaysia. We had this heavy transformer that we needed to pass through customs with. In the cab, it only took one hour to make the trip including passing through both customs and immigrations.

This time we went first class and didn’t even have to exit the cab to clear in and out of both countries.

So Singapore was great but very high energy. It would be nice to go back to as a tourist and maybe we will.

From the Crew of Always Saturday