South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 30

Sleeper train from Singapore to Malaysia – January 30, 2000

We took three separate taxis to the Singapore train station.

The station was pretty low-rent compared to the rest of Singapore because Singapore has no trains of its own and the whole train system is Malaysian. I was relieved to see a bit of dirt after the sterile order of Singapore.

One of our group taxis was driven by an evangelist. Four of the new girls had been preached at steadily en route to the station. One girl had asked the driver what religion he was.

“No religion! I believe in the revelation of Jesus Christ!”

The girls hadn’t encouraged him to talk after that.

Still, their driver had insisted on chatting a bit more. As they’d come in sight of the station, he’d let his xenophobia show, as he complained bitterly of the Malaysia eyesore on the perfect Singapore landscape.

We all sat in the train station lobby for 20 minutes until we suddenly had to rush through Customs and onto the train. We all were assigned top bunks. Our leader Peter apologized – he hadn’t realized the odd numbers were all top berths. He wasn’t too familiar with the details of this route. Usually, he works in China but the work there is seasonal. I was a bit put out that Intrepid hadn’t sent us a regional expert, as they had on our prior trip.

Malaysian music was blaring out of the speaker in the ceiling, just near our berths. I hoped that it wouldn’t go on all night, as it had on the sleeper train I took in Egypt.

About a half an hour after we’d settled in for the night, we suddenly discovered that we’d have to get off, take our bags, and go through Malaysian customs. We all grumbled, wishing we’d learned that before we’d settled in. Then an announcement came on instructing us to leave our bags on the train and just walk through Customs. Relieved, we all went to get our passports stamped. The Arrival Cards and Customs Declarations were all boldly printed with “DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS.”

They mean business in Malaysia. No wonder they didn’t need to check our bags. You’d have to be a complete lunatic to smuggle into Singapore or Malaysia.

We all settled back into our berths, pulled up the off-white semi-dirty sheets and closed the curtains that gave us the illusion of privacy. I stared out into the Malaysian night, unable to see anything in the blackness. At least the music had been turned off.

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