Continuing from where we left off in the last post. On the 7th of December 2024, we boarded a bus from Singapore to the border town of Johor Bahru in Malaysia. The bus stopped at the Singapore emigration for us to get off for the formalities.
The process was similar to the immigration at the Singapore airport. It was automatic, and we just had to scan our passports for the gates to open. Here also, we didn’t get Singapore stamps on our passports.
After we were done with the emigration, we had to find our bus. We remembered the name of the bus company and the number plate, which helped us recognize our bus. It wasn’t there already after we came out of the emigration, but it arrived soon enough, and we boarded it promptly.
From the Singapore emigration, the bus travelled a few kilometers and dropped us at Johor Bahru Sentral (JB Sentral) bus station, where we had to go through Malaysian immigration. The process was manual, unlike Singapore, and there was an immigration officer at the counter who stamped our passports (which I like) and recorded our fingerprints.
At the bus terminal, we exchanged rupees at an exchange shop to get Malaysian ringgits. We could not find any free drinking water sources on the bus terminal, so we had to buy water.
Badri later told me that Johor Bahru has a lot of data centers, leading to high water usage. When he read about it later, he immediately connected it with the fact that there was no free drinking water, and we had to buy water.
From JB Sentral, we took a bus to Larkin Terminal, as our hotel was nearby. It was 1.5 ringgits per person (30 rupees). In order to pay for the fare, we had to put cash in a box near the driver’s seat.
Around half-an-hour later, we reached our hotel. The time was 23:30 hours. The hotel room was hot as it didn’t have air-conditioning. The weather in Malaysia is on the hotter side throughout the year. It was a budget hotel, and we paid 70 ringgits for our room.
Badri slept soon after we checked-in. I went out during the midnight at around 00:30. I was hungry, so I entered a small scale restaurant nearby, which was quite lively for the midnight hours. At the restaurant, I ordered a coffee and an omelet. I also asked for drinking water. The unique thing about that was that they put ice in hot water to make its temperature normal.
My bill from the restaurant looked like the below-mentioned table, as the items’ names were in the local language Malay:
| Item | Price (Malaysian ringgits) | Conversion to Indian rupees | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nescafe Tarik | 2.50 | 50 | Coffee |
| Ais Kosong | 0.50 | 10 | Water |
| Telur Dadar | 2.00 | 40 | Omelet |
| SST Tax (6%) | 0.30 | 6 | |
| Total | 5.30 | 106 |
After checking out from the restaurant, I explored nearby shops. I also bought some water before going back to the hotel room.
The next day, we had a (pre-booked) bus to Kuala Lumpur. We checked out from the hotel 10 minutes after the check-out time (which was 14:00 hours). However, within those 10 minutes, the hotel staff already came up three times asking us to clear out (which we were doing as fast as possible). And finally on the third time they said our deposit was forfeit, even though it was supposed to be only for keys and towels.
The above-mentioned bus for Kuala Lumpur was from the nearby Larkin Bus Terminal. The bus terminal was right next to our hotel, so we walked till there.
Upon reaching there, we found out that the process of boarding a bus in Malaysia resembled with taking a flight. We needed to go to a counter to get our boarding passes, followed by reporting at our gate half-an-hour before the scheduled time. Furthermore, they had a separate waiting room and boarding gates. Also, there was a terminal listing buses with their arrival and departure signs. Finally, to top it off, the buses had seatbelts.
We got our boarding pass for 2 ringgits (40 rupees). After that, we proceeded to get something to eat as we were hungry. We went to a McDonald’s, but couldn’t order anything because of the long queue. We didn’t have a lot of time, so we proceeded towards our boarding gate without having anything.
The boarding gate was in a separate room, which had a vending machine. I tried to order something using my card, but the machine wasn’t working. In Malaysia, there is a custom of queueing up to board buses even before the bus has arrived. We saw it in Johor Bahru as well. The culture is so strong that they even did it in Singapore while waiting for the Johor Bahru bus!
Our bus departed at 15:30 as scheduled. The journey was around 5 hours. A couple of hours later, our bus stopped for a break. We got off the bus and went to the toilet. As we were starving (we didn’t have anything the whole day), we thought it was a good opportunity to get some snack. There was a stall selling some food. However, I had to determine which options were vegetarian. We finally settled on a cylindrical box of potato chips, labelled Mister Potato. They were 7 ringgits.
We didn’t know how long the bus is going to stop. Furthermore, eating inside buses in Malaysia is forbidden. When we went to get some coffee from the stall, our bus driver was standing there and made a face. We got an impression that he doesn’t want us to have coffee.
However, after we got into the bus, we had to wait for a long time for it to resume its journey as the driver was taking his sweet time to drink his coffee.
During the bus journey, we saw a lot of palm trees on the way. The landscape was beautiful, with good road infrastructure throughout the journey. Badri also helped me improve my blog post on obtaining Luxembourg visa in the bus.
The bus dropped us at the Terminal Bersepadu Selatan (TBS in short) in Kuala Lumpur at 21:30 hours.
Finally, we got something at the TBS. We also noticed that the TBS bus station had lockers. This gave us the idea of putting some of our luggage in the lockers later while we will be in Brunei. We had booked a cheap Air Asia ticket which doesn’t allow check-in luggage. Further, keeping the checked-in luggage in lockers for three days was cheaper than paying the excess luggage penalty for Air Asia.
We followed it up by taking a metro as our hotel was closer to a metro station. This was a bad day due to our deposit being forfeited unfairly, and got nothing to eat.
We took the metro to reach our hostel, which was located in the Bukit Bintang area. The name of this hostel was Manor by Mingle. I had stayed here earlier in February 2024 for two nights. Back then, I paid 1000 rupees per day for a dorm room. However, this time the same hostel was much cheaper. We got a private room for 800 rupees per day, with breakfast included. Earlier it might have been pricier due to my stay falling on weekends or maybe February has more tourists in Kuala Lumpur.
That’s it for this post. Stay tuned for our adventures in Malaysia!