Daddy and Nicola (my elder sister for those who didn't know) arrived in S'pore last Wednesday. After having shown them around the very centre of S'pore under the rain and having dinner at the son of my parents' neighbours in France on Thursday we decided to go to Malacca for the week-end, Nicola and Daddy then continuing the North towards KL, where they should right now. I had to be here today on Monday because I had a "quizz" in my Derivative Securities course, and I could not miss it, because studies should of course come before anything else, isn't it?

So we decided to meet at their hotel on Saturday around 9 so we would
have at least half of the day to spend in Malacca. Unsurprisingly, when I got to the Royal Newton Hotel, they were not ready, still having breakfast. So we left the hotel around 9.45.

We then took a taxi to the Woodlands checkpoint, located in the northern part of the island. We crossed the S'porean exit point, took the bus to cross the bridge to Johor Bahru, in Malaysia. As should be done, Nicola ad me entered the queue to go through Malaysian customs, and Dad went around because as a Chinese citizen, he needs a visa to enter the country. 10 minutes later he called to help him understand what the officer was explaining. He was actually saying that it was impossible to get a visa at this checkpoint and that we had to go through the second one to have it.

So we took a bus back over the bridge, to reenter S'pore. On the S'porean side, I crossed the border with no problem because of my student pass, but Nicola and Dad had a problem which made us waste another 30-45mins: the officers didn't quite understand the paper the Malaysian officer gave Dad saying he had been refused entry, and Nicola had the exit stamp from S'pore, but no entry stamp to another country, and the officers couldn't understand how it was possible...

We finally got through, took a taxi to the other checkpoint in the very Western side of S'pore, found out that it wasn't possible to cross it on foot, took a bus and MRT back towards the center, and took another bus which would allow us to cross the border...so tiring.

The final delay was getting the visa for Dad which took more than one hour, although they had told us 30 mins were enough. But I managed to arrange three places on a bus directly from the checkpoint to Malacca, saving the trip to Johor Bahru and then to Malacca. We arrived at the Mimosa Hotel at about 8.45 pm, more than 12hours after I had left the campus that morning. We went to get some food in the center and found Chinatown overcrowded because it was the evening open market and also a music festival in the streets that week end. Very enjoyable atmosphere, very joyful, but as usual, business is business. On Sunday we visited most of the town, which you can see on the photos, very small place Malacca, but very good for spending week ends in my opinion.

My final adventure this week end was getting back to the campus on a truck with locals who were glad to take for the ride, because I was unable to find the MRT station near the place where the bus from Malacca had dropped me.

That's what traveling is about, good and bad experiences. That's why i like it.





Children performing air guitar near the live music during the Malacca music festival






Malacca main square








Crowded streets on Saturday night