Today I wanted to go to the butterfly farm. We thought we’d try and walk to the bus stop then get the bus up the hill to where the butterfly farm was located. In the end it wasn’t too far so with a couple of rest stops and coca colas we walked the whole way. It was really odd to go into a butterfly farm that was just covered with net, it is so hot and humid in Malaysia that it doesn’t need to be enclosed and artificially heated, they just have lots of waterfalls and hose pipes going to increase the humidity and that’s it. As soon as we walked in we started to see amazing butterflies. I took hundreds of photos and even had several land on me and on the camera. The national symbol of Malaysia is a green butterfly with a red body, and they had loads of these. It had about a 6 inch wing span though so was quite like a toy airplane flying around the place. After we had relaxed and walked around for a good couple of hours we decided to get ice creams in the shop. While looking around the shop Vincent potted several things he wanted to buy and after much debating and bargaining (mostly with me as to whether we could carry the things or not!) we came away with several beautiful gifts that are most impractical to carry.
We spent the rest of the day walking back to the hotel in a round about fashion and buying up tat for Morn, who had specifically requested it, in the local tat shops. Then it was time to get on the train. We, once again, were so happy with the bags we found as we fitted almost everything we had into the big bags and had only the holdall and laptop rucksack extra. The rain wasn’t as good as the one in China – there wasn’t anywhere for our big bags so we just attached them using their clips to the ladders up to our top bunks. The beds were ok but you only got a sheet so we were once again glad of having the BA blankets, I had also repacked our bags so that jumpers were on hand near the top and we needed those too.
As the journey was through the night there wasn’t much to see so we were able to settle down and relax in our own little cabins with the curtains all drawn and velcroed to the edges so no light crept in. We were woken to get off the train and go through passport control as we entered Singapore, a bit of a palaver as usual and we got our stuff together and trekked past an uninterested passport booth man to then get back on the train again. We managed to look out and see the madness that is rush hour in Singapore through our little windows, there appears to only be one bridge onto the island so everyone who commutes in from Malaysia must go over it to get to work, it was a big jam so we were glad we finally got our train ride and weren’t on the bus.
Arriving in Singapore we stopped to rest then found a taxi outside and asked about getting to our hotel. The second one we asked seemed fine to find it and sure enough got us there 15 mins before check in. We relaxed in the lobby while the room was prepared then went up to what was the most squeezed in hotel room ever! The shower was literally just wide enough to get into, in a recessed bit of wall in the bathroom, it was impossible to reach up and wash your hair. But it was all clean and functioned enough for us.