17th January 2011
Long day of travelling today, beginning with getting up at 5AM in order to get the first ferry back to the mainland, so we could collect our tickets for the 8AM train from Butterworth to Singapore. And it ended at 10:30PM when we checked into our Singapore hotel.
We would have been a little earlier, but our taxi driver’s GPS system failed him and took us twice around the same block and then off in the wrong direction before I finally spotted a road name I recognised from our research. There was then some inverse haggling, as the meter said $11 but our driver very sweetly wanted to charge only $6 due to the embarassing GPS; I drove him up to $8 because the delay hadn’t really been that long.
Taxis with GPS. Definitely back in civilisation.
I’m knackered, though, and have a headache from not drinking enough on the 13 hour train journey. Unlike jolly good Thai trains, no-one came along selling drinks and snacks on this Malaysian train; you have to pick your way along the coaches, stepping over clattering footplates, to get to the dining car which isn’t even open half the time and when it is only sells truly dismal boxes of cold fried rice and Pringles. So much more like a British train then. Now it’s 11PM and we’re having a late supper at a squeaky clean Singapore cafe ten minutes from the hotel.
Tomorrow may involve a lie-in.
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