JB Adventures

A few of coursemates/friends (John, Toto, Allen & Peter) and I made a day trip into JB over the weekend. It was good to see them again, I kind of missed my "study group" coursemates after the exams ended. I was really surprised when some of them told me they felt the same way! I guess we've all gotten (too) used to each other :)

My Uni coursemates and I were never this close. I guess that's because we weren't "allocated" a fixed set of modules, and so we usually saw a different bunch of people during each class and didn't get the chance to know each other better. Well, hopefully my MAF class of 2005/2006 will stay close and keep in touch even after the course has ended :)

Ok, I digressed. Back to topic. Though I've been into JB countless times, this trip was a real eye-opener for me because it was the first time I took public transport into JB! We took bus 160 from Kranji MRT to the Woodlands checkpoint, where we joined the (long) immigration queue. There were 5 of us and we split up to join 3 separate queues. John and I were in the same queue and we chatted about our respective "queue curses":

1. The person in front of you has a problem with his/her passport
2. The immigration officers change shift while you are in that queue
3. You realise the queue you're in acually merges with another queue as you near the immigration counter

Of course, Murphy's Law prevailed and we were struck by Curse #2 and #3. Arggh! The other 3 were luckier and cleared customs fairly quickly. Of course, that didn't help them much because they still had to wait for both of us to clear anyway. Haha!

We then spent more than 1 hour waiting for SBS Bus 160/170 to bring us across the Causeway. $*@&#*@!! There were 3 buses you could have taken to Woodlands - TIBS 950, Causeway Link & SBS 160/170, and only ours took ages to arrive!

(Tip 1: Take 950 or the Causeway Link bus to JB next time. The frequency is much better!)

Anyway, when the bus finally arrived, 2 of my friends started clapping and cheering and making a big hoo-haa about it. The funny part was that some others in the queue followed suit and started joining in the commotion. Haha. I guess everyone was equally peeved and had to let off steam.

When we reached the JB checkpoint, we found out (to our horror) that the queue for Singapore passports was extremely long, so much so that it snaked out of the building. 3 of my friends (being foreigners) were able to join a much shorter queue for Foreign passports. I think our queue was at least 20 times longer than theirs, not to mention that our queue seemed to be 2 to 3 deep (refer to Curse #3 above). We estimated that the queueing alone would take us around 1.5 hours! Luckily, we met a friend who took us through an alternative route past the border :)

(Tip 2: Don't take the bus into JB! Noooo! It's much better to go to Queen St. and take one of the "yellow" M'sian cabs)

(Tip 3: If you're changing $ in JB, make sure you exchange big notes - at least SG$50 - and not SG$10 notes, because you get an inferior rate if you use "loose change")

Well, after all that "adventure", the rest of our trip was pretty sedate. We went to City Plaza to cool down, had lunch at a duck restaurant, took a bus down to Holiday Plaza (where Allen bought RM$30+++ worth of Ricola!!) and had KFC for dinner before heading back to SG.

Thanks for a fun trip, guys! :)