The real holiday

So, the All Blacks won. Congratulations! Should be good for the NZ psychie and NZ'ers everywhere. But that is all the comment I can make as I didn't watch the game. I had a much more adventurous weekend.

Saturday was 'D' day for my root canal, and I had to go to a whole 'nother country to get it done. Well I didn't have to but chose to. I had spoken to two girlfriends about it here and they were most distressed that I was going over to Malaysia by myself to have this done. I put on a brave face and said that I was just going to catch a taxi over and then back again, easy! What I was astonished by, was the fact that neither of them knew that there was a taxi service which did this. And that it was only $10 SGD per person in a shared taxi or $40 SGD for the whole cab, one way of course.

And it was that easy.

I went to Queen Street, near Bugis, which is where all the local buses and Taxi's leave from for Malaysia. 10 mins wait and off I go. It took an hour from getting in the taxi to the taxi depot in Jahor Bahru (JB). Easy as. The best bit for me was not having to get out of the Taxi and go through customs, then get back in the Taxi drive across the causeway, get out and go through Malaysian customs and then get back in the taxi and head into town. Which is how it goes if you do the trip in the bus. Yes, it is cheaper, around $3.00 one way, but it adds about 40 mins to the trip, if not more depending on the time of day.

Upon arriving in JB, I was promptly ripped off. No international travel is complete without being conned. I hadn't been to JB for about 10 years and while trying to get my bearings a taxi tout got me. 10 MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) to a shopping mall. Well, hell why not, I had no idea where I was. Turns out the mall was around the corner. If he had been on the meter it would have cost about 3 MYR, and yes they do use their meter. Oh, he just got me at a weak moment.

Shop I did. Well I wandered around the mall and tried on many clothes and shoes. But no go. But McDonalds was good for lunch.

I then ventured out just in time for a tropical downpour. Actually it was good timing, not that I knew this. I needed to be at the dentist in 30mins and thought I may as well find a taxi since there was no point in walking. Turns out that the dentist is in JB, but greater JB. About a 30min ride from central where I was.

Yay, made it.

Other than the tradition of taking my shoes off at the door, the clinic was fine. Clean, modern and everything I needed or I should say the dentist needed.

As I lay back in the chair, with the drill whining in my ear, I realised that I felt like I was on holiday. I had had a whole day without my son. This is the first time in over 2 years. It was liberating.

Since when did going to the dentist become relaxing and not nearly as fearsome as I remembered it to be. Lucky, I get to go back another 2 times.

The return trip was equally easy. I did have to get the receptionist at the dental clinic to tell the taxi where I was headed. It is hard to talk when half your face is numb. I was home about 8pm.

All in all it wasn't nearly as traumatic as I expected.

It's time to travel

One of the bonuses of coming to live in Singapore is the access to south east Asia. We have been here 6 months, geesh time flies, and haven't dared leave the island. Well, hubby has been to Malaysia for bike rides, but that's not fun. Ok, not my type of fun.

When I was 9 years old I visited Singapore and Malaysia with my Mum and some of her friends. One of the places I remember visiting the most was Tioman Island. I think this was partly because I had to keep a daily journal and on Tioman I wrote a story about the Pumpkin eaters. What the? I know.

They were tiny jellyfish that had a dark spot in the middle. A bit like a seed. Yep, I still have no idea why they were called Pumpkin eaters or why this particular story stuck in my mind. But it has and it did.

As an aside, the person who corrected my journal daily (the point of the exercise was to keep my spelling and grammar up as we were travelling for an extensive period of time), was American. This has confused me no end as most of my schooling was conducted in Australia or New Zealand where they follow the Queen's own. I was always getting bad results from spelling tests and it wasn't until I was much older that I realised there was a difference, that it started to make sense for me.

So where was I?

Huh, that's right. It's time to go a hunting. Pumpkin eaters here I come. I have talked hubby and my son, the latter has very little choice, into going up to Tioman for the weekend. Ok, so I don't have anything booked and will be getting onto that after I have finished gossing to you, but I am excited. I love a good weekend away. And to the beach, lovely.

I wonder if the monkey is still there that bit me (true story) about 25 years ago? I'm sure I don't really need to re-visit that adventure.

Now, just to make sure you are feeling me, I have 'borrowed' a couple of photo's off the net. Well, I don't have my own as we haven't been yet!