From Penang, Malaysia to Singapore

One evening I had an interesting dinner with two guys from my guest house. One was an 18 year old Belgian that had come all the way from home on his bike. He should have his website up within a week or so here. The other guy was in his mid seventies and for the last 15 years has split his time between Singapore and his VW bus on a friend's property in Sonoma county. Before he retired, he tought school in Singapore at various levels.

The view from the guest house that I stayed in on the island of Penang:



I ended up getting a cold and staying put for a few days - I'd much rather have a cold than some of the exotic tropical diseases that are spread by these (sorry lil' guy):



Once I felt better I took a ferry from Penang to the mainland just to look around for a few hours.







Eventually I made my way back South through Malaysia and approached Singapore. Arriving by bus at the border after nightfall, rain, thunder, and lightning set the scene for entering the no-man's-land between getting stamped out of Malaysia and getting stamped into Singapore.

Adding to the excitement, the Singaporean customs official decided to search my bag and seemed very interested in a CD that a fellow traveler had given me in Kuala Lumpur but that I had not opened. After filling out my immigration card and reading the warning that the punishment for drug trafficking under Singapore law is death, I was suddenly concerned that my fellow traveler might have slipped a sample of his substance of choice in with the CD... Eventually the customs guy let me go, though.

Upon entering Singapore it became apparent why the tiny city-state looms so large on the world economic stage. Right away the bus started passing through a dense industrial park of factories, followed by oil refining facilities, the massive commercial port, dense high-rise residential buildings, and finally the downtown area...





Here's a view from an escalator going down to a subway platform: