Monday, June 13, 2005

the malacca sun-day trip company included lena, veron, charmaine, summer, hatta, small jason, daniel and kenny. we met at kranji mrt at 7+am. and for the first time i took a public bus into malaysia. bus 170. coincidentally, we bumped into keguang on the bus. he was on his way to pick miss chet up who wascoming back to singapore from penang. how sweet =) proceeded to clear the customs and continued the bus 170 journey to the bus terminal in johor. we thought we were going to miss the 8.30am bus to malacca, but fortunately there was a 9am bus. if we had missed any of the morning buses, we would've just hung around in johor and shop and eat.

caught the 9am bus with lousy seats. everyone had to sit with a stranger (cuz there's no fixed seats) for 3 hours of travel to the malacca bus central. arrived at about 12pm, and first thing jason did was to check out the return tickets. the only tickets we could get was for a 5.15pm bus back to johor. since we weren't planning to stay a night, we were left with no other choice but to take that bus back. so basically, we travelled 7 hours, to be in malacca for 5 hours. didn't have time to visit the church and fort. merely walked past the area in search for the really good peranakan food which we never did find.

(during the search for the peranakan food, kenny noticed a bee cheng hiang, the ba kwa shop, and he was shocked. he thought malaysia doesn't sell pork. *shrug*)

then magically a shopping centre appeared in front of us and naturally we went in for the air con cuz it was really sunny and we were walking quite a bit endangering our lives on the roads of malacca. they have a huge signboard which shows the number of accidents and deaths on the roads last year and the records for this year. i think i nearly helped increase the figure. anyway, shopping centre. we had the chicken rice balls for lunch at some chicken rice ball restaurant. the chicken rice balls were ok ok only. not as fantastic as i thought they would be. we were left with a short period of 4 hours to shop after lunch.

the factory outlet store rocks!! there were so many nice tops and low prices. i bought 2 tops for a grand total of 37 ringgit from there. if i had more money on me to spend, there would be much more things to buy. could've bought some tees for my brother. too bad for him lar. i also bought a straw bag for 15 ringgit (after much bargaining). and 4 melody pops for $1.10 each. MELODY POPS!! there's cola, strawberry and watermelon flavour! the money ran out fast cuz i only had about 100 ringgit to spend for this trip. but there was still 5 ringit left for A&W curly fries at the bus sentral before we leave malacca. woah... the curly fries... were really curly.. and nice!

by the time we arrived back in johor it was 8+pm and i have zero ringgit left on me except for all the coins that my mum gave me which were really useful when visiting the tandas. had to pay for dinner and cab fare in sing dollars. in fact, most of us ran out of ringgit by then. dinner was seafood stuff. and i learnt that crayfish is actually not a fish. it tasted good =)

and for the first time in my life, i walked on the causeway. the queue for the bus was very long and it was pretty late already. one would think tha there's nothing dangerous about walking on the causeway. but there're cars coming your direction at fast speed. and the path is not even as the tiles are quite messed up. and of course the most perilious thing on the causeway is the air con compressors that are right there for you to knock your head into. let's all hope kenny doesn't lose his gepness.

by the time we cleared the singapore customs, it was almost midnight. my legs were aching when i got home.

lessons to learn from the trip are to 1. bring more ringgit and 2. one day in malacca is not enough. it will be more worthwhile to stay for one night there. else it'll just be a rush to do this and visit that.

janet at 1:00 PM