Light traffic, no hills and cloud cover during almost half of the day. At one point, I was concerned about rain. This concerned distracted me at a critical point in the ride as I missed a turn.
Suddenly I saw a sign telling me that I was on highway 95. But wait, I was supposed to be on Highway 5. I kept going, thinking that maybe this stretch of road was both highways, which happens a lot in this country. I saw more signs for 95, but no mention of 5.
I stayed the course, thinking that even if I am on the wrong road, I should be able to correct it witha simple turn to the east. At the 16th kilometer, I decided to check the map. #%*&!!! Hwy 95 doesn't go to the border and it doesn't hook up with anything that does.
Here is a Muslim cemetary that I passed while going the wrong way.
I had to turn around and found out that the turnoff was the town where I had lunch. So what was supposed to be 150 km to Singapore just grew another 32 km. In other words, the ride just got an hour longer. That I didn't need.
I was able to shave maybe ten kilometers by taking the new, second bridge into Singapore. It was a risk, because my map showed that I would be on the expressway for a short spell before the bridge and I didn't know if bikes were even allowed on the bridge.
The expressway was not a problem. Traffic was so light, that even though it was a four lane highway, only one vehicle would pass me every minute or so.
The bridge was the same situation. The border cop at the Malaysian side let me on without any issue. She just stamped my passport and let me go in less than sixty seconds.
As I approached the Singapore border, a cop on foot was waiting for me. He informed me that bikes are not allowed on the bridge and gave me the safety speech despite the fact that traffic was very minimal. I suspect that since it was such a slow day, he didn't have anything better to do.
It was very official, he got on his walkie-talkie to inform the border patrol of the situation. He was very helpful and friendly and led me to the nicely air conditioned office to process my visa.
With everything taken care of, he escorted me to the customs agent. This was a very official stop, compared to crossing the borders in Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Burma. The cop actually rifled thru my bag and gave me the run down of what I intended to do in the country.
Finally, it was all over and I was free to roam Singapore. Maybe I should have purchased a map of the island before coming here. I just figured that it would be rather self-explanatory on finding the city. But that is if I took the freeway.
TheTiger Beer brewery greeted me upon my arrival into Singapore as I got off the freeway. Ahhhhh, the smell of barley and hops in the air...
It was rush hour traffic, and I learned my lesson in Kuala Lumpur. I found myself in the industrial zone of Singapore and was asking people waiting for the bus where the city was. As I got closer to the City, traffic started to get heavier. At this point, my fatigue was weighing down on me - it was six pm and I had been on the bike for almost eleven hours.
The worse part was that I wasn't seeing any hotels. For thirty minutes, nothing. When I finally got into the downtown area, I saw hotels, but four and five-star places.
I finally found Chinatown, usually a sure-fire area for cheap hotels. No such luck, but I had come to the end of my rope and just wanted to stop. I found a rather nice hotel at $60 (Singapore currency... roughly $35 US) and well, I guess I should splurge after successfully touring the Malasian country.
Singapore is definitely part of the Developed World. A sign of this is that everything is at American prices. Cheap food is at a couple bucks, but would normally cost less than a dollar in Thailand or Malaysia. Yuppies populate the bars and drink prices are through the roof. I might as well be back in San Francisco!
One of the delicacies that I have eaten so far is the Black Pepper Crab. All the travel brochures made it a point that this was a must-eat. It was really tasty seasoned with black pepper (of course) and soy sauce, almost the size of a dungeness crab. I had to choke on the price of $20 for a kilogram's portion. After this, it's street food for me otherwise I'll go broke!
