We caught a bus from Singapore to Johor Bahru. The trip was quick, less than an hour on a causeway crossing the Straits of Johor, connecting the island with the Malaysian mainland.
My initial response to the town was ‘dirty ol’ border town’, which in fact didn’t alter. I have come to this approximation of border towns over a lot of years of passing through them, and concluded that they all have a similar feeling of lawlessness and abandonment of colour…
I must add that I have no concrete evidence of these claims!
I’d obtained the address of a homestay so we eventually found a taxi to take us there….I say ‘eventually’ because the first two cabs we tried either didn’t know the address, or didn’t want to……
The house was simple, which was ok in itself, but on being shown our room, it all became far too ‘simple’! The bed was literally a board on a kind of divan base, in a tiny little outer room about the size of a bathroom. I enquired of the woman of the house whether there might be another room to choose from maybe, and she became somewhat panic-ed, and insisted that her husband would be home soon…..by this, I understood, inferring that her husband would sort out any questions or gripes I may have, or perhaps would just convince us that the room was, indeed, habitable!
We edged out of the house, me giving some inane excuse that we “would go for a walk and return in a while….”, this obviously being a lie as our bags were firmly ensconced on our backs!
Getting away from the house as quickly as was humanly possible, and having absolutely no idea where we were, we just ambled aimlessly for a time, while I considered our next step…..
Some time later, we came upon a main-looking road, so the decision was made to hail another cab and just get to some appropriate accommodation as soon as we could.
Standing on the side of the road, in a foreign, Muslim, country….a white woman and young white boy attempting to stop a taxi, I suppose doesn’t sound that intrepid, but believe me, there were moments when it felt EXTREMELY so!!
Johor Bahru, although just over the border from Singapore which is a progressive, western-influenced, capitalist city, is a predominantly Muslim city of relatively large size, round 500,000 people, which completely lacks the polish and sophistication of that other place, and from what I noticed, tourists! This fact, I’ve got to say, is in no way a bad thing, just an observation, and for me at that time, slightly unsettling.
Anyway, after some time and no luck flagging down a taxi, a middle-aged man who had been standing at the doorway of a mechanical work-shop holding the hand of a small child, walked out to us and asked whether he could help. After a short conversation detailing our predicament, in minutes he had hailed a cab, and in no uncertain terms, had admonished the driver to take us to a budget hotel near the railway station! This I understood implicitly even though no word of it was in English!
We were delivered to the JB Hotel and for 58 ringgit (about $20) appropriated a private room with a comfy bed, all of 3 minutes walk from the station!
Oh it is well to believe in the kindness of strangers!!
Travel Tales 