The Wheels on the Bus Just Keep Going!

Lewis and I did our homework-we knew that we could get to Singapore by bus or train, and we found the prices for private and gvt. busses, and different classes of plane tickets. Then we read the guide book and it said the train was way longer and slower and that we should take the bus. We verified this by reading online travel forums-and at this point were feeling pretty good about our choice to take a luxury bus for 30 ring its-about $10. The owner of our guest house reserved seats for us, and said to go to the "digi center" 30 minutes before our bus left to pick up tickets.

Digi Center-that sounds big, right? Maybe like a mall or a travel agent or something, so we take a taxi for$2.50 to the bus station this morning and start asking where this digi place is. No one really knows but one lady sort of waves down the street a bit, so off we go! Every 5 seconds someone is yelling to buy bus tickets from them (turns out they are basically all agents selling the same tickets-we think!) And as we fend off these hawkers, we feel like we have walked too far for not seeing any big signs that say Digi Center. I asked a street sweeper and he waved back where we had come from and now we were really confused-then he pointed to a little mini-mart that sold phones with the brand Digi. We were thinking-are you kidding me? We went in and the owner said this was the bus for the Cameron Highlands, and we needed to go back down the street to the Chinese guy with no hair in the KOK booth. Are you kidding me-do you know how many bald Chinese guys there are here? We found the booth and traded our receipt from the guest house for a ticket and went across the street to the insane train station.

We found our platform but decided to hit the bathroom first. I watched the bags while Lewis took his turn, and he came out saying it was absolutely disgusting. It takes a lot for a toilet to rank that low here! I had to pay to use the womens restroom, and also but my toilet paper-not a good sign. When I got inside I realized it was stalls with squat toilets-and there were no lines- the protocol was basically push through people till you are right in front of a stall door then block the doorway until the lady comes out and duck in really quickly. Needless to say-i was glad for the hand sanitizer I brought.

We headed down to the bus -there were about 40 busses all running with diesel fumes overwhelming everything. Of course our bus driver wasn't there, so we threw our packs under the bus and waited-dripping with sweat and knocking days off of our life expectancy due to the fumes. After about 20 minutes the driver arrived and we scrambled on to get closer to the AC, and soon realized that our "luxury" bus didn't have a toilet - and no stopovers are on the six hour itinary! We're trying to distract ourselves, but just knowing you can't go really brings on the urge! Singapore better be worth it!!
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