– ODO- 22311-22415km
– Location- Atlantis Pod Hotel Bugis, Singapore
– Weather- 28-34 showers
Before I left for this trip I’d rarely travelled beyond Europe and the US. I was worried about taking remote border crossings for the first time. Quickly though, I’d got used to the casual nature of most Asian borders. Several times I’ve ridden right through to a new country without being stopped or even glanced at by an official. It’s up to you to work your way back through the torrent of trucks or rickshaws or people on foot to hunt down a small office on with side to trade some USD for a stamp or sticker.
Crossing into Singapore was much more like Calais. I exited Malaysia in minutes, there were rows of manned booths, a guard stamped my passport and I followed a race of motorbikes across one of the two bridges into Singapore. On the other side, there were only two manned booths out of 45 lanes of gates. Motorbikes trailed back onto the sun-baked bridge. I queued with an Australian-German man on a big Honda bike. We got chatting as we waited for over an hour for the line to shift imperceptibly as the queue grew behind us. At the front, I was told I needed to fill out a form I’d never seen before. As the bikes waited I filled out the page, got the stamp and I was in.
