Another Karaoke Journey ................

Yesterday, I went through another a bit crazy journey and full of challenge but we all felt happy :D. Even thought I was still sick, yes, I haven’t healed yet. Still have cough :(. Yesterday, I went to JB again .. for karaoke. :D But the journey was a bit crazy and adventurous. The journey started in Bugis at 9am. We supposed to meet at Bugis at 9am but because I had to find ATM to withdraw money, I arrived at 9.20. But, I was not the last person that arrived. My other friend (RK) arrived at 10 because he thought that we met at 10. (HD already called him the day before and told him to meet us at 9 but he simply forgot........... arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh).

After we all gathered at 10am, we went to buy something to eat first. So, we (me, RK and HD) went to Bugis Junction. I forgot to mention, there was only the three of us that went to JB for karaoke because the Karaoke room in JB only have 3 mic and all of us didn’t want to share the mic, so we decided not to ask other people to join us. So, the journey was only for three of us, two guys one girl. Back to Bugis Junction. We first decided to buy McChicken @ McD, but because it was still 10am McChicken had not been served yet. So, we bought BreadTalk instead.

Then, we went to the bus station to take bus to JB. But, not like what we expected, the queue in the bus station was very long. There are 3 kind of bus from Bugis bus station to JB, first SBS 170, Singapore JB Express (SJE) and CW 2. We thought we should just queue at the shortest one. So, we queued for SJE. But SJE busses were very few, arggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so we had to wait a very long time to finally get a bus (about 1 hour). The time was showed around 11.30 when we finally got on the bus. So, for the next time, don’t take SJE.... just queue for CW 2. I think its better. This was the first challenge in this crazy adventure. The journey in bus took about 30 minutes.

We arrived at Woodland checkpoint around 12. The checkpoint was not crowded, so it only took a few minutes to pass the checkpoint. Then, we went downstairs to continue our journey to JB immigration using SJE. The queue was so long and disordered. Arghhhhhhh, Yes, this was the second challenge. People queued in any direction. It was not like a queue but it was more like a bunch of people push each other around. Because the queue was already in mess, we decided to follow the mess and just cut the lines :D .... we were not a very discipline people. After 15 to 25 minutes, we managed to get bus..... yey........

The third challenge was on the bus. The bus took almost 45 minutes to reach JB immigration. :( It was a very long journey because the traffic was very crowded and jammed everywhere. The bus was very hot too; I thought the AC was not working properly. So, it was like “sauna” in the bus. All sweating, we arrived at JB immigration checkpoint where another challenge took place. The condition there was not that good also. The queue was very long and also disordered. We took the shortest line as always, but it turned out that the line was merged with another line, so it was also a very long line... and it took us almost an hour to pass the checkpoint. :(.... all my cloth was wet and sticky because of sweat. :( When we finally got through the checkpoint it was already 2pm and we all starved.

We went to have lunch at City Square, only a few minutes walked from JB checkpoint. We ate Sudanese food and after that went around shopping a little bit. I bought a new pair of shoes and several t-shirts.

After we finished shopping, we want to go to another shopping mall, Pelangi Plaza, to karaoke. I didn’t realize it was raining heavily outside. We tried to find a taxi to go to Pelangi Plaza. In the taxi stand, there was no queuing; everyone was tried to in to the taxi first. It was a bit chaotic there. I realized that HD and RK would never get a taxi because they not used to do that. Especially if they have to grab a taxi from other women. So, I had to find taxi for us. I tried not to go too far and too front from the taxi stand shelter because it was still raining. But if I not went to the front, I would not got a taxi. It was such a heavy job. Before all my cloth got wet, I finally managed to grab a taxi for us and up we went to Pelangi.

We arrived at Pelangi at 5.30. We went directly to Red Box, karaoke place. After asked the receptionist, we had to wait about one hour to get karaoke room. I went to the toilet to change my t-shirt. Did you know that to go to the toilet we had to pay 20 cent per person? In JB most of the place is like that. We had to pay to go to the toilet.

To spend one hour, we went around the Pelangi Plaza. But there were not a lot of things to see in there. At 6.30 we came back to Red Box and after a bit negotiation on the price and member card, we were ready to karaoke. We managed to get 1 student price and member card. We can use the member card next time to get a 1 free entree. We also had a dinner buffet. It was already included in the karaoke price. The food in the dinner buffet was delicious. I ate tepanyaki, the soup, the ice cream (even thought I was still cough :P), the fruit etc..... we spent more than 3 hour there. Even thought I still cough, I can sang ..... yey....

After karaoke, we came to the last challenge. The last challenge was how to get back to Singapore. It was already late... around 10.30 when we arrived at JB immigration checkpoint. Luckily, the queue in JB immigration was very short. But, that was not the problem here. The problem was how to get back to Singapore. We didn’t know which bus was still operated. The queue for the bus was also very long. So, we queued in two different lines. I queued in smrt 950 bus and RK queued in CW 2 bus, while HD tried to find some information about the buses. HD talked to several bus officers there to find out which buses still operated. They said that CW drivers and officers were no longer there so it was very likely that there were no more CW operated. Then, HD tried to look around and tried to find the shortest and the fastest bus that can take us back to Singapore while I and RK stayed at the queue. HD finally found SJE (Singapore JB Express) bus that already ready to go to Singapore and the queue was short. He called us to go to the queue and we all finally managed to get in to the bus, even thought there was no more seat, so we had to stand ..... but we were on our own way to go home to Singapore ... yey ..................

The bus stopped in Singapore checkpoint at almost 11.30pm. We started another queue in the Singapore Checkpoint. Because I cannot scan my passport like HD and RK, so I had to go in separated queue. As usual, I chose the shortest queue, but again, it was not a best one. My queue was moving very slow. The immigration officer was working very slowly. She only finished checking one person while the other officer in the other line finished checking five people. So, it was a very long queue.

At the time I passed the immigration it was already 12am. After immigration, we needed to find SJE bus again to continue our journey to Bugis. Luckily, there was one SJE bus waiting to go to Bugis. So we run the stair and followed the queue for that bus. We got in the bus and started 30 minutes journey to Bugis. I tried to sleep for a while. We arrived at Bugis at around 12.40. Because we wanted to go to the toilet, we walked to Raffles Hospital. From the hospital, I took a taxi to go home while the others walked to their home. I arrived about 10 minutes later and felt very tired.

That was my journey that day. A crazy and challenging Journey................