Johor Bahru.

We caught a bus from the "Melaka Sentral" bus station to Johor Bahru, a city right on the border to Singapore. On the bus down there we decided to not spend the night on the Malaysian side of the border, but head into Singapore that same afternoon. This turned out to be very good decision-making. What we could see of Johor Bahru was not worth staying for.

When leaving Malaysia I was thinking about how much I liked the country, and that I really want to go to Borneo some day, since I only saw the Peninsular Malaysia this time.

The border crossing was very impressive, and we got very excited to see what Singapore was like. We had to get off the bus and walk through the Malaysian departure checkpoint. The building was very big, and modern as the newest airports in Europe. It was all shiny floors, doors and of course badges. The security was very strict, and it was not allowed to take pictures. But as we all know, those signs just make you take several. I even took a picture of one of those signs. When I came up to the counter, they gave me a little trouble since I did not have any departure card. Entering Malaysia from Thailand proved to be a little too easy. Since I never filled any documents entering the country, the lady behind the counter did not know what to do. After a while she gave me the stamp, wrote in my passport that I had no departure card, and let me go. When I caught up with Matt, he was talking to a Malay woman. It turned out to be a survey about what tourists does and how much money they spent in Malaysia. She could not believe we had slept at the rates we paid, and that we in general had used so little money. At the end of the survey she gave us a "Malaysia-pin".

When back on the bus, they took us across the bridge, and to the checkpoint at the Singapore side of the border. This building was just as nice as the one we had just passed through, but it took us a while get up to it. In the middle of no-mans-land the bus stopped. One of the hatches for accessing the tool case on the outside of the bus was broken and kept opening. The only thing the driver could find to tape it up was a single band-aid. Of course that would not hold, and we had to wait for the next bus.

To get entrance permission to Singapore is not hard at all. I filled in a small form, gave the border guide my passport, and seconds later it was stamped and back in my hand. During the security check, however, they checked me quite through. I had nothing to hide, so everything was fine. But they did not let me go before they had tested all my bags for trace of explosives.

Now we were ready to see the cleanest city in the world.