July 5th – We packed our bags and checked out of the hotel and headed towards Singapore, reached the bridge connecting Malaysia and Singapore. Again, while exiting Malaysia, I was enquired by the immigrations guy whether I was a devout Muslim. Not sure what in me triggered such inquisitiveness. Overall, the officers were curious about the journey and seemed a bit relaxed about paperwork. The officer didn’t ask for Vehicle Carnet or license. We got stamped on the passport and joined the traffic on the bridge connecting Malaysia and Singapore. The boredom caused the boys to strike conversation with the neighboring moving vehicles.
The story is about to change on the other side of the bridge. So far, our travel had been exactly as we had mapped the itinerary without missing any day. Singapore being the country of stickler to process and executions, it was not a straightforward stamping on the passport. We got pulled over and had to step into the office of customs officials. It became apparent that we were missing a couple of items and can’t enter until each one of them were addressed. The Carnet was not stamped in Malaysia. So technically the vehicle has been imported into Malaysia but not exported out of Malaysia. This problem could be corrected by making a round trip to Malaysia, enter Malaysia without stamping Carnet and immediately turn back for an exit and get the Carnet stamped in Malaysia.
The other bigger problem is that contrary to earlier misunderstanding, we couldn’t purchase vehicle insurance at the border crossing point. This being a Friday evening, we ran out of luck to purchase one, possibly not until Monday. We spent about a couple of hours to sort it out but became evident that we can’t take the vehicle into Singapore. Utmost respect for the officials in being considerate and yet very professional. Just 2000 meters apart, we would have figured out a way out in Malaysia with similar issues but couldn’t wiggle out of Singapore’s diligence and controls. The boys got the passports stamped and the officer dropped them at the nearby bus stop while I was turned back to Malaysia. I was denied the pleasure of dropping Faris at his home. The only badge of honor we could carry was to hold the traffic between Singapore and Malaysia. A couple of officers had to stop the outbound traffic from Singapore to Malaysia to open the gate for me to return back to Malaysia.
July 6th – 9th : The previous night, I found a hotel at the border town of Johor Bahru, Malaysia to crash. I woke up to a strange feeling of not having the boys around on this almost deserted hotel in this seeming ghost town of Johor Bahru. The Malaysian government has created special economic zone in Johor Bahru to open tourism with many theme parks, possibly trying to emulate Orlando. A queasy feeling in the middle of large hotels and theme parks with disproportionate low occupancy rate, and streets with hardly any traffic. Perhaps this gloomy read of the surrounding was accentuated by latent loneliness of not having the boys around.
I shopped around in the morning to procure vehicle insurance in vain due to week-end holiday. Hence, resorted to making an arrangement with the hotel to leave the car at the parking lot for a couple of days while I went to Singapore by bus. Joined sister’s family for late lunch. The adrenaline crashed, and no more had to mentally run through the fun part of charting an agenda for the upcoming days apart from the logistics of shipping the vehicle back to India. The rest of the week-end was spent on gourmandizing the variety of sumptuous food from the delicate hands of my sister Yasmin.
July 9th – The previous night I took a bus back to the hotel in Malaysia. On 9th, we boxed the vehicle into a shipping container and chartered for a delivery in Chennai. A strange feeling of departing with an inanimate object that had been very reliable and took us to parts of the world that would been difficult to explore otherwise. The vehicle was eventually collected after clearance and ‘facilitating payments’ on July 25th. After a bit of hustle, we finally sold the vehicle in Nov with the help of a dearest childhood friend Venkat who helped procure the very same vehicle.
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