A Tale of Two Cities
Last weekend, I was down at Barcamp.jb. I had a couple of interesting chats, with a couple of projects now in the process of getting kicked off. It would be interesting to see where things go.
Come Saturday evening, it was time to hop over the Causeway to Singapore. I have not been to Singapore in many years, so I presumed it would be a good weekend getaway. Steven dropped me off at the Malaysian immigration checkpoint. Here was the start of an eye-opening journey.
The Malaysian immigration checkpoint was dirty, grimy and had disinterested immigration officials. I walked over the Causeway, noted the long jams, and wondered why the two countries couldn’t work out their differences. As things stand, trade between the two countries suffer and travellers are very inconvenienced. My reading of the situation at this point is that both governments are being asses. It was interesting to note that Malaysia’s railway network (KTM) extends directly into the heart of Singapore and the land is actually owned by the Malaysian government. Despite pleas from the Singaporean government, the Malaysian government has refused to sell the land.
The Singaporean immigration checkpoint was literally a breath of fresh air: that the air was cleaner was the first thing I noticed. The immigration building was air-conditioned and clean, and the immigration lanes were fast. Coming out of the immigration building, I was able to quickly find the feeder bus to get to the Kranji MRT station. Buses were correctly labelled, and they arrived/left on time. Similarly, using the MRT system, I was able to get to the destination without any hassle. The MRT system seems efficient, and from what little I have read, it looks like they are expanding it. I liked how they had labelled estimated time of arrival from the current departure point. Very nice touch.
Sunday was spent walking around Singapore. We headed down to the beach, and the beach was clean. Loads of people were camping out, fishing and barbequing. It was a mostly festive atmosphere, except for the random guy hunting for worms.
Serangoon is interesting at night. There are literally thousands of immigrant Bangladeshis and Indians, chilling and chatting and just hanging about. Apparently, there are a couple hundred thousand immigrants in Singaporeans who legally working as labourers, earning a minimum of SGD$800. They have Sundays off, and most can generally pull in SGD$1300 a month. Pretty decent, I must say. It looked like India, but unlike India, Serangoon was clean and safe.
And, of course, the Singapore city by night was lovely. Some buildings looked straight out of Gotham City (the refurbished Cathay, for instance). Orchard Road had amazing decorations. Mount Faber had an entire tower done up as a Christmas decoration. Very nice! (And BTW, Singaporeans are kidding themselves calling Mount Faber a Mount, its really more of a Hill).
The wired interwebs to home in Singapore were ridunculously fast compared to Malaysia: I was downloading at 3MB/s. However, DNS was fubared for some sites (blocking Twitter? why even bother?) so I had to tunnel DNS traffic to Malaysia. The contradictions are interesting: in Malaysia we have mostly Free but lousy interweb infrastructure and in Singapore, the situation is reversed. A case of choosing your poison, I suppose.
The travel back was interesting too. Generally I fly, but this time around, I decided to take a luxury bus back to KL. Now, while they don’t have the equivalent of a Pudu, their bus system is computerized, efficient and a delight to use. To ensure passengers are correctly accounted for, there is even a check in procedure. There was no jam, no cacophony of a million lost passengers, no grimy bus terminals, no touts, no confusion as to where to go. It was a very pleasant experience. Crossing over into Malaysia through the Second Link, the Malaysian immigration was far more efficient this time around (for obvious reasons).
Interesting aside: the bus stopped in a ${RANDOM} town in Johor for food, and at the cashier, I spotted the cashier using KC POS which had a prominent “Powered by MySQL” text and the Sakila logo. Very cool!
There was a long ass jam starting 60 KM south of Seremban. This is the bit where I start getting pissed off. A five hour journey became a nine hour journey, because people were trying to get into the Seremban rest house. Not a single traffic police personnel was around to direct the traffic. That 60 KM took two hours to traverse. Somebody told me the next day that their 3.5 hour journey became a 7 hour journey because of the jam. Is PLUS ever going to expand the capacity their roads can handle?
Arriving in KL at 11.15 PM, I take the Monorail to KL Sentral (bless them, the Monorail was working till midnight). Yet, in classic idiocy which we Malaysians are accepting without a fight, our government does not allow the Monorail to terminate in KL Sentral itself. It’s not a long walk, but Brickfields is not the safest place at night and that walk is not necessarily short for those who are slightly elderly.
So, I pretty much ran into KL Sentral to catch the LRT to Bangsar … except to find the Putra LRT station all boarded up. Closed at 11.30 PM? On a Monday night when many travellers are coming back to KL after a long weekend? Even the Monorail was working then! Why are the closing times different for both the stations? It makes travelling difficult for travellers! Again, classic idiocy.
But, but, there are cabs right? So I try to hail one and get quoted RM 25 for a 10 minute drive. I’m not kidding! Cursing and sighing, I walk over to the arrival hall for KLIA Express and attempt to get a cab there, only to be told that there would not be any cabs for half an hour (because rates go up by 50% after midnight, the cab drivers hold out).
I rarely take public transport in KL, but now I understand why fellow travellers curse the state of public transportation in Malaysia. The sheer operational inefficiency, the lack of coverage (LRT’s don’t cover much of KL), the lack of progress (after 10 years, the government decides to expand coverage?), the poor regulated taxi system … all of these lead to an extremely negative experience for travellers.
These thoughts went through my head as I walked back to Bangsar. It’s not a long walk and I actually enjoyed it, other then looking over my shoulder every couple of minutes (Brickfields is not safe, yo!). There are many differences between Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore has its shortcomings (someone told me that even the trees in Singapore don’t move out of sheer fear of the government) but its city is truly world class and something we Malaysians should be pushing our government to emulate.
It’s important we speak up, whenever we can, and get relevant people to hear us. There are decent and hardworking people within our federal and state governments who can help improve the current absymal state of being. Yet, they are hampered by the fact that, we the rakyat, don’t show our support for their cause. Remember that Elizabeth Wong was pushing for better hillside regulation before the tragedy happened, and she was ignored because nobody else spoke up. Remember that Zaid Ibrahim was helping improve the judiciary and race relations, and he was ignored because nobody else spoke up. There are thousands of cases such as this, where good initiatives don’t get anywhere because, we the rakyat, don’t take time to support the people who are working to make a change. Perhaps the time is nigh for that change to take place.
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