Puteri lives in Malaysia and share her top tips for making this journey on a limited budget.

 

Let’s have some informative fun crossing borders into and out of Malaysia.

When we talk about travelling, the most prominent method to get from a country to another is via flying. Yes, by flight which will, undoubtedly save your time. Especially if you are hurrying up in order to catch yet another flight or meeting up with people or anything that requires you to rush. 

There are however, travellers that are not constrained to any time restriction; and these people (including me!), have all the time in the world to get ourselves from one place to another. So what’s the rush? So where am I heading to when I have a limited budget, a passport and a high spirit? Yes, I cross borders.

Let’s cross from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore and cross back into Malaysia at night just for fun shall we?

There are many possible routes that you can discover. A very simple straightforward way is to just take a train from KL Sentral up to Woodlands Checkpoint. That’s what I did. But…..since I am on a tight budget, coming back will be tricky, as the train tickets will now be charged in dollar denomination instead.

So I took a different route back home. 

Coming from the Orchard Rd, after having delicious ripple berry ice cream from the street vendor there, I took the MRT straight to the Kranji station. It’s about 14 stations in between from Orchard Rd. stop up to Kranji. When I reach there, I asked for the way to commute to the border checkpoint and back to Malaysia.

I was shown the hub to wait for the bus. And to my surprise, there was already super long queue of people waiting in order to board the bus to Johor Bahru Sentral. “Tough luck”, I whispered to myself. It was not so bad; the queue lasted no longer than half an hour to be honest. The buses keep coming every few minutes and I keep proceeding further to the front.

Long story short, I boarded the bus and find my way back to the very south of Malaysia, Johor Bahru. I had to spend a night at the station as it was too late for me to get a bus back to Kuala Lumpur. The next day I boarded a bus back and here I am.

This is just a very simple itinerary and you can always be creative about it. Once you are headed south why not explore the other states? I did that once:

  1. First jump from Kuala Lumpur to Seremban via KTM Intercity train
  2. Then spend a day going around, and jump to Johor Bahru by express bus
  3. Cross to Singapore if you want (very near, I highly recommend) by train or even bus
  4. Upon coming back, head to Malacca 
  5. And back to Kuala Lumpur!

 

Go ahead and try it, you’ll save more or at least spend equal money as you fly but get to play around with multiple stops. Have fun!

 

By Puteri Farhana Anis

 

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