We got up pretty early and headed into City Hall, Singapore, on the bus. We were now trying to head to the Malaysian border to get the train to Kuala Lumpur. First there were a couple of things to do. I had a few postcards from Chennai that I'd tried to post, but had failed. It's been a constant thing on this trip. You can buy postcards easily enough but try buying stamps....it's another story. We managed to send some from Istanbul (which, I'm told, have only just arrived)..India was a different matter. In Chennai, I was told the post office was a 5 minute walk but had ended up in some slum...but even there they were helpful. Even the old boy who was defecating in a ditch had heard my plight and had piped up "It's just around the corner". I had thanked him as he continued squatting. Singapore was also causing me grief when it came to getting stamps. We had taken the MRT to Woodlands and got there at about 12 mid day, we needed to be at the Malaysian border 1 hour before the train left, so we had an hour to spare...we then went in search of the most northerly post office in Singapore...what a bind. Eventually we found it..I had 4 postcards to send and 1 in particular was important. Will Bishop is the gent who works in my local train station ticket office and had used to live in Singapore when he was in the Navy and I had promised to send him a postcard. The queue was unbelievable in this small post office and being the impatient westerner I was pulling my hair out. There was an officious woman walking about and I asked was there any way I could quickly get some stamps. She told me "Yes, you can continue standing in the queue you're in or join this other longer queue". It's nice to see the British have left some humour behind. It took 40 minutes to get those stamps and the postcards probably wont arrive until a couple of weeks after we get back home!

We then had to wait for ages for the connecting bus and got to the station at exactly 1pm. We could breathe easy as the immigration guys said they wouldnt open the gates until another 30 minutes. The train wasnt the dirtiest we've been on (see previous posts) but wasnt the cleanest. Grant said "well it's got electric doors", I said they wont work. And they didnt and they caused much mirth and frustration all along the journey. Seeing Malaysia by train was amazing. It's hard to describe but it's just endless jungle and goes on and on, we also got to see rubber plantations. Huge mountains loomed in the distance and massive lightning strikes with very loud bangs were happening all along the ride. Then the train broke down.