FROM MELAKA, MALAYSIA
The Courtyard @ Hereen arranged a coach service for us going to the Melaka Sentral bus station. I was surprised to see the roads deserted and it only took around 10 minutes for the coach to reach the bus station. The driver said there's no traffic during weekdays; only on weekends.
No traffic!
Anyway, we got a little early for our departure, in fact, an hour early, considering that there was no traffic. Probably, that is the reason why the very helpful staff at the Courtyard @ Hereen kept on insisting that we leave 30 minutes later. Oh well, next time, I should listen to the counsel of the locals.
The Melaka Sentral is quite huge and organized. Since it was a Monday, there was not much activity and the station was not packed as I expected it to be. There are a couple of restaurants/eateries serving local food and there are even some stalls selling treats like our very own dried goodies like kiamoy and preserved fruits and dried sweets. And, like in the Philippines, they sell in small quantities, or by "tingi." Yay! I bought my favorite, white kiamoy since I didn't want to have red-tinted fingers.
My mother and I searched for the correct terminal and the 707 Travel Group (Melaka-SG-Melaka) is quite easy to find. Speaking of 707 Melaka, no less than 2 strangers, first, our coach driver, and second, a passenger waiting for his bus at the Melaka Sentral, told me good things about 707 Melaka. Actually, they both gushed that I did the right thing booking my tickets with 707 Travel Group since it is highly reputable and that I can rest assured that I'll arrive in Singapore safe and sound. It made me a little happy and again, very thankful, to the staff at the Courtyard @ Hereen. As I've said several posts back, the staff booked our return trip tickets to Singapore.
So, feeling quite satisfied that I'll be in very good hands, after all, the drive from Melaka to Singapore is about 4 hours, I quickly realized the reason why I was told that I did right by choosing 707 Melaka. It appears that there are a lot of bus companies plying the route from Melaka to Singapore that you couldn't find on the internet, and they leave almost by the hour. Moreover, there are a lot of ticket touts loitering the station asking passengers if they want to buy tickets to Melaka, or to Kuala Lumpur or some other places in Malaysia for that matter. If you go to the station without any particular bus company in mind, you'll probably be confused which bus company to choose.
Finally, it was time for boarding, and the bus has comfortable seats and a wide aisle. There are no individual TVs though and no tour guide. But it was fast, didn't make any stops, and we left around 12:10 pm based on the bus' clock, and we arrived at the Malaysian immigration by 1:30 pm. Yes, you read it right. We only took 1 and 1/2 hours to reach the border. By the way, it was the other border, not the more popular one. It was my first time to pass through that border. And, we also passed by Johor Bahru going to the border immigration.
We reached our final stop in Singapore around 2 pm or so. We alighted at a bus station which I later on learned to be the Queen Street bus terminal (I asked people where the heck we were). And my gut told me that it was near Mustafa since one of the roads is called Arab Street and I was right (the place looked familiar to me). We were way too early for our check-in time and perhaps, we'd be better off if we shop some more to while away the time. But my mother told me we should just go straight to the airport instead. It was easy to hail a cab at the Queen Street bus terminal maybe because it was not rush hour when we got there.
AT THE CHANGI AIRPORT
We got to the airport with more than 3 hours to spare before our check-in time. Had I known that the bus ride will be around 2 hours or thereabouts, I would have ridden the 1:30 pm bus from Melaka to Singapore via the same bus company. Next time, I'll take that into account. However, on second thought, I'd rather be early at the airport than arrive there later than expected because of some unforeseen events. So, it's nonetheless a good thing even if we arrived way earlier than we should. The first time I went to Malaysia, we had almost no time to spare as we still needed to go to Singapore to catch our flight. It was what we termed as "one day, one outfit: three countries." Yup. We literally hopped from one country (Malaysia) to the other (Singapore) then back home (Philippines), in just one day. We didn't have the time to change clothes (we left Kuala Lumpur around lunch time and arrived in Singapore 6 hours later, and we landed in the Philippines before 12mn the same day).
It was a good thing that the Changi Airport has lots of activities to offer impatient people like me. They have gaming centers, a small movie theater (showing cable movies), lounges, computer terminals and even swimming pools and smoking areas (open areas).
It's fun to "people watch." I've seen two check-in counters for separate flights going to India while waiting for our counter to open.
Most of the passengers, if not all, had one tv each for check-in.
The first group all had the same model Sony Bravia, and the second group, this group, all had Samsung tvs. By God, I swear!
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