Johor Bahru

I hopped on a bus and headed back to the causeway to go back into Malaysia. When clearing the Singapore immigrations they got a thumbprint of me. I sort of found it strange to have this done when exiting rather than entering but I did not seem to have any problems so made it back into Malaysia once again.

I found a hotel for one night and hurried to to the museum that I wanted to visit in Johor Bahru called the Royal Abu Bakar Museum. It was or may still be the house of the Sultan of this part of Malaysia. It was interesting to walk around in and see all of the expensive furnishings. In one section they had the crystal that was used on the sultan’s yacht and I was surprised to see wine glasses and brandy snifters. Malaysia is a very Muslim country and I think all of the sultans are Muslim so not sure why they would need glasses for alcohol. There was also a trophy room and it had a number of stuffed animals that the sultan had killed and this included about 6 tigers. I found it a real shame with so few tigers left in the world to have shot one for sport but the ones that were dated were from around 1910 so has been a bit in the past and the tigers would be dead now anyway. I was not able to take my camera in the museum but this is from the grounds around the palace.

The following morning I had some time to kill before my flight later that day so just walked a little bit around the city and tried to figure out where to catch the bus to the airport. I did walked past the large mosque and along the straits of Johor that separates Malaysia from Singapore.

I left for the airport really early since I was going to take public buses and need to first catch a bus to the bus station and then change buses to get to the airport. It was a good thing I left 3 hours prior to my flight since it took 2 hours to get to the airport. The bus to the bus station was really full and when I was trying to get on I felt an extra hand in my pocket. I sort of slapped my pocket and the hand disappeared and the guy that went along with the hand would not look me in the face and I felt better when he quit trying to get on the bus. I was not sure what to do about the thief but since I still had my wallet and I need to get to the airport I just let him go on his way.