Malaysia

Today started early.  We were going to Malaysia. Just over the border to Johor Bahru.  I got up and took a shower, and while I was there, an old man came to clean the apartment. He cleaned everything with a mop - the floors, the cabinets, the couch, the door... It was an interesting way of cleaning, but it now seems that everything is clean, which is nice.

We headed out and got breakfast at Toast Box - I got the butter and sugar again and Gabe got a delicious sweet bread roll thing with butter.  Shreyas met us at the MRT and we figured out how to get to Malaysia.

Getting to Malaysia was easier said than done. We got on one bus, went for ten minutes, stopped and had to go through immigration out of Singapore, then we had to get back on a different bus and go fifteen minutes, where we then got off to go through immigration to Malaysia, got back on the bus to take us to a local bus station, where we got put on the wrong bus, so we randomly changed buses again in the middle of the road when our bus passed the bus we were supposed to be on, and eventually we got to City Center, a mall in Johor Bahru, about an hour and a half or more from when we left.

Malaysia is like the ugly step-sibling to Singapore. It's dirty and cheap and just not a very nice place.  At least where we were.  We did see one or two cool things, most notably that there were houses built right into the middle of the river between Singapore and Malaysia.

We shopped, had food, and walked around for a bit. Gabe and Shreyas experienced strange foods and I stuck with what I knew.  Lunch was at a place in the mall that was delicious. I had chicken sepak, which was essentially baked/fried chicken with rice and curry sauce, Gabe had Pad Thai, and Shreyas had curry chicken, which was super spicy.  After lunch, I got new Crocs since my feet hurt, and we walked around the mall for a while. Gabe and Shreyas tried all of the food samples they were handing out - red bean nougat, yam nougat, barbecued dried chicken, and various other things. While we were walking around, we passed a door and it had suddenly started pouring. We could feel rain being swept inside by the rain 30 feet inside the doorway.  It was intense and then it was over within a few minutes.We found the food court and I got a soft pretzel for the equivalent of 75 cents (Auntie Anne's) and Gabe got an avocado donut that was actually really good and creamy and delicious.

After the mall, we walked around outside, and then caught a bus back to Singapore. This time, we got a proper tour bus instead of a city bus and we were the only three.  The driver was super nice and dropped us off at VivoCity, which is one of the newest, largest malls in Singapore.

Not only does it have a strange footprint (half of it is square and the other is weirdly wavy and asymmetrical), it's huge.  There were five floors, which is nothing new, but it was also a large area.  They had, however, filled it in sections, with certain things in certain places.  We hit up Toys R Us to see what was in common and what was not, and then we headed down to the main level (ground level) where they had set up a bit crafts-fair sort of Chinese market.  We saw so many cool things - there was a guy painting horses in the traditional style, someone who wrote Chinese figures with their fingers and hands, embroidery, sketches, burning art (burn paper to draw), paintings, carvings... So many amazing things.

The most amazing thing was a guy who painted the insides of jars.  He had special paintbrushes that were at angles so he could put it in the mouth of a jar, turn it, and paint a picture on the inside of the glass. We were all in awe. It was incredible.  Shreyas is going back, but I got one of the glass globes - it has sailboats and a sun on it and Chinese characters that are supposed to be in every student's room to give luck in studying and learning. It was a cool story.

We were exhausted by now, so we got dinner at the mall food court/hawker stand (delicious satay, Green Tea Rice - Gabe will have to explain, and an assortment of food from a buffet sort of thing), and then headed home. Now it's time for bed. Tomorrow we'll relax and school starts on Monday.

Goodnight-la.