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On Fri 5th Sept we made our way to Singapore central bus station where we would get the bus to Johor Bharu. As Johor Bharu is over the border into malaysia we had to endure our first land border crossing which surprisingly went quite smoothly. A bridge contects Singapore with mainland Malaysia, when we reach the Singapore side of the bridge we disembarked to go through customs with our luggage to get our departure from Singapore stamped in our passports. We proceeded through and thought it would be nice to have a picture taken then other side as we were officially in 'No mans land' until we cross the bridge. I was about to take a piture of Rach when a customs officer came over basically telling me off for taking a picture and proceeded to ask me for my passport whilst he started to radio for what I can only assume was back-up!! At which point I said Its ok its not a problem I will just delete the photo and showed him I was doing it, to which he seemed happy with and he us us go!! God knows what would have happened! we scuttled off and made our way to the bus to cross the bridge over into Malaysia. On the other side of the bridge we again disembarked and went through customs after filling out our entry documents. The customs officer this end grilled me for a good 15 minutes about where I was going, for how long, where have we come from,where we working in Malaysia, where we tourists, where in Borneo was I staying, what time do I land, what is my line of work back home. the whole bloody lot. It was not as intense as it sounds though it was all very informal but was worth it as it turned out he was from Borneo himself and he must have liked me as instead of giving me the standard 30 days visa I was given 90 days, the same with Rach too. This was a bonus as it left us longer to explor mainland Malaysia when we get back from Borneo.
We went down the stairs from the immigration building and jumped straight into a taxi to Johor Bharu airport. On the 45 minute drive from the Immigration building to the airport it was very noticable that there was a vast difference between singapore and Malaysia. singapore is a very clean, polite City and then over the bridge into Malaysia peoples attitues towards their country was very different with spitting, littering, different run down buildings etc. It was amazing how one bridge can provide such contrast.
On arrival at the airport we checked our things in and waited to board the Air Asia flight to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo.
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