had a long day of travel, the keyboard sticks here at the hostel (its very nice, 5 computers with free internet for use) so excuse any spelling mistakes.
So a few more comments about the zoo, since I rushed out this morning: It was SO much nicer than China, for those of you who remember my posts about that sad depressing place. They even had a Borneo section full of animals you can see there and the list of animals the island has that nowhere else in the world does (this is where I'm spring-breaking with dad/max!!!) They also had this cool like walk-in (think big net with free ranging animals and you walk around in it) called fragile forest. It was a walk through the different levels of a rain forest. There were bats (biggest I've ever seen), little mini deer, bird, etc. There were two sloths, both were moving which was amazing. One of them was sitting on this little perch where you could have touched him from the walk way. He was holding onto the perch with hsi hands and feet, beltn over backward. There was a guy who was making kissy noises at him to get his attention to take the picture. The sloth would bend over backwards and stare at him with his big black eyes just amazing. Everytime he stopped and started again, the sloth would arch back, got pics, will post when I get back to Singapore.
Anyway, the bus ride was about 6 hours, with an house spent waiting for people to go through customs. Learned that you can get cheap booze/gas in Malaysia compared to singapore, so of course they've made rules: no brining booze across the border from malaysia, and if you drive over the border, you MUST have a 3/4 full tank of gas, there are huge signs everywhere. We rode on a new MRT line to get to the station which was in this Thai/Indian part of town which smelled like rotten cheese. We rode these really neat escelators that spead up when the motion sensor went off that someone was getting on, I kept playing with the sensors, it was really neat. We took the bus about 30 minutes to the border. Everyone got out and "departed" Singapore. We got back on the bus on the other side of the fence and drove over one of the (I believe) two bridges to get to Malaysia. The whole ocean-side of Singapore was fenced in, not in Malaysia. Soon after the bridge, the rest of the road was fenced in until you got to customs. There were photos of royality on the wall and customs was very easy. This is a place with no toilet paper, which isn't that uncommon and I always carry it with me. But they have their own version, hoses in the stalls that you "wash" yourself with...so all the bathrooms are dripping wet.
Prohibited Items to bring to Malaysia: Porn, gun-shaped lighters, any imprint/reproduction of the Quran phrases on any type of material, turtle eggs, drugs (penalty by death), piranah fish, lead, anything that could possibly hurt the image of teh country.
It was truley a foreign country, as I see Singapore as definalty more westernized. About 5-10% of the signs on the road/customs/rest stops had english translation, most was strictly in Malay. Not everyoe knows any English, and if they do, its very few. Since there is a huge population of Muslims here, there were prayer rooms at rest stops. It reminded me of Central America at first, we entered the country in a very rural part full of plantations and trees, with constant reminders that rural folk usually live in poverty. There are lots of posted laws like Singapore, such as no food here, no littering, etc. But here nobody seems to follow them. The streets are dirty, we got a little lost when we got off the monorail from the bus station to the hostel, and everything smelled like trash during our wander around. We saw huge rats coming out alot of the trash cans and stray cats everwhere. but this is the biggest city, the capital. I think maybe we aren't in the tourist part of town, but its okay.
The hostel is nice, its the first one I ever stayed at and my friends who are with me (US, India, and Mexico) said this is a pretty nice one. Anyways, its super late, we are getting up very early to go try and see animals during our hike to some waterfalls tomorrow!
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