How to leave a country and enter that same country without ever leaving the country.

Sounds like a Mensa riddle. My last 36 hours have been random, fun, funny, frustrating, exhausting, maddening, ridiculous, eerie, with a splash of deja vu.

Let's start from the beginning of March 18. Lazy morning at the hostel taking care of picture uploads and killing time. Pack my bags and leave them at the hostel so that I can pick them up at the end of the day when I set off for Malaysia.  I set off on my quest to find a good Singapore Sling to round out my culinary adventures in Singapore but the places recommended to me were closed since it was Sunday. Not that big of a deal because I am in a part of town with plenty of restaurants that will obviously be able to serve their version of the drink. So I end up having my drink in a restaurant that is the first of its kind in all of Asia. HOOTERS. I have now had 2 experiences in American eateries to date: a $7 veggie foot long at Subway and a Hooters Sling. Who knows if their version of the Singapore Sling is anywhere close to what the real thing is supposed to taste like, but it was tasty anyway. Not that impressed with the Hooters girls for those of you keeping score at home.

My drink followed a delicious lunch of fish head curry. A gigantic fish head in a spicy bowl of red curry soup with some okra thrown in. Actually had quite a bit of meat on him too and some gnarly teeth, which were all the more intimidating since his eyes were no longer present.  My desserts during the day were another yam ice cream sandwich followed up with a sweet corn ice cream sandwich. Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer my sweet corn with crabs or other BBQ fare and not in ice cream form.

Then the St Patty's Day 'parade.' More like a disorganized 1/4 mile stroll. I am told there are about 2000 Irish ex-pats that live in Singapore, of which, maybe 10 were in the parade. It was kind of strange to see Indian, Chinese, and Malaysian children playing the bagpipes, but they were quite good. There was a rugby team, girl scouts, a dragon boat racing team (which had all the Irish people), and our friends with Downs Syndrome. The parade coincided with World Down Syndrome Day. They were banging on their drums and just watching them interact with each other and everyone else always brings a smile to my face. The parade master was some Indian guy wearing a turban with a hooked staff held together with duct tape. Just flat out funny. Nothing says St Patty's Day like a turban wearing man leading a parade. The parade couldn't have lasted more than about 30min and I could walk from the back to the front of the parade in about 5 min. Lots of fun though. Topped off the experience with a DISCOUNTED $12 pint of Guinness.

Got back to the hostel and planned on just killing time the rest of the day, but I happened to be sitting on the couch next to guy who was reading a paper on PNF or proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation to those of us in the PT world. Turns out that he, along with like 13 other girls in the hostel were occupational therapy students in Singapore on holiday. So we got to talking and before long, one of the girls found an Ang Klung in the hostel which is a musical instrument made out of bamboo and in 7 sections for the notes A-G. Well 7 of us each took a section and she wrote out a traditional Thai song on a piece of paper and we played the song, shaking our portions of the instrument when our individual notes rolled around. That was good fun.

For dinner, I went back to the Hawker food center across the street and had some Chrysanthemum tea, a honeydew-mango drink, kaya toast, char siew pork with noodles and roast duck with rice. A very satisfying way to end my eating in Singapore.

Then my day just spiraled into disaster. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. For a trip that should have taken 90 min tops to get to the train station and buy my ticket, I allowed 3.5 hours just in case something went wrong. I should have allowed even more. Took the subway to the train station where I was to ride the overnight train to Kuala Lumpur (KL). After an uneventful 45min ride to the train station, I saw a sign that a train had been cancelled but from what I recalled in my reading, it didn't seem to be the number train that I was to take. So I walked for what must have been 10 min up and down stairs, across roads, over bridges just to get to where I thought I could buy my ticket. I arrived at customs, which I thought was a bit strange because I figured I would have had to buy my ticket before going through customs. But I proceeded through, except that I couldn't find a customs stub that I was supposed to have saved upon arriving into the country a few days ago. Of course, no one tells you that you need to save this stub. So I end up being taken upstairs to an office where they fill out a new card for and stamp my passport with a stamp that says I have now departed Singapore. Fine. Still no train ticket, but I figure once I got back downstairs and continued walking, I would come upon the ticket counter. The officer who escorted me to and from the office tells me to just go straight, down a flight of steps and then you can get your ticket. However, the next place I come to is customs, AGAIN. Except this time, it is the customs counter to get back into Singapore. But because I just left Singapore and didn't want to come back in, I had to have another officer take me back upstairs to the same type of office where my previous stamp was voided and they gave me a new re-entry stamp. Great, I just left Singapore for like 2min, now I am back, and I need to leave again, and still no train ticket. Turns out, that the train that was cancelled was the one that I wanted to take. So my only other option at this point is to take an overnight bus to Kuala Lumpur. So I go back through customs to leave Singapore and then through customs to enter Malaysia. Way more stamps than I anticipated at the start of the day. Well it is now 10:30pm and all that time I allowed myself has now turned to me running in the bus terminals to get on the last buses of the night that will take me to a bus station, that will take me to another bus station, that will take me to another bus station so that I can finally get on the bus to KL. Mind you, you need exact change to get your bus tickets. I had exact change for the first $1.10 bus ride. Got off that bus and onto the next where the fare was the same, but all I had was $10. So I paid 1000% more for that 2nd bus ride than was necessary. If you're confused reading this, imagine living through it.

So I finally get to Larkin, where I am to get on a bus to KL. But I have no money. Just spent all of my Singapore dollars and haven't had a chance to get to an ATM to get some Malaysian Ringgits (RM). This bus station is just filled with people trying to sell you a seat on their bus. The second I stepped of my bus, there was a guy in my face telling me for 30RM I can get on a bus to KL. I tell him I need to find an ATM and he leads me back to where there are 3 ATM machines. The first 2 I try don't work. Buttons and screens are broken. The 3rd one, Bank Islam, works just fine. It takes my card, and then for a moment it spits it halfway out telling me it is analyzing my card. For a brief moment, I thought to myself, "Just grab the card and take it out." But I figured the electronic grip would be stronger than my pull, so I just let it be. Well, that is last I will ever see of that ATM card. Bank Islam in Larkin, Malaysia is now the proud owner of Baltimore County Savings Bank debit card. So after a few vicious love taps to the machine, I repeatedly tell this guy that I have no money and that I won't be able to ride his bus. He didn't give a damn about me but I could tell he was horribly disappointed that he lost my business. Now, I don't know what to do. I sit in a McDonald's at the station to gather my thoughts in air conditioning and the employees at this place were straight out of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cross dressing flamboyance was apparently a pre-requisite on the employee application form. I tried talking to a gentleman at the table with me as he was eating his fries and coffee. All he kept telling me to do was file a police report. So that conversation went nowhere. So I continued to wander this bus station which is just filled with little shops selling foods and goods during the day but is a ghost town with lizards, stray cats, and strange odors at night. Wouldn't you know it, there is a place on site that exchanges foreign currency. That would have been fantastic information to have about 30 min and 1 ATM card ago. I exchange 20 USD and now have enough money to buy a bus ticket to KL, except that I want my ATM card back. The exchange teller suggests I find the phone number on the machine and call to see if there is anything that can be done. I call Bank Islam and there are options for English. NOTE TO BANK ISLAM: If you are going to have operators that speak English, make sure they understand the English language. I called 5-6 different times, speaking to a different operator each time trying to find out if someone would be coming out in the morning to service the ATM so that maybe I could convince him to just give me card back. One person told me at 10AM someone would be there. Others just said to call my bank. Others told me my card would be destroyed. Thankfully my cell phone was charged because the Ipod touch I bought just before the trip had a dead battery. I thought it was turned off, turns out it was just sleeping the past 4 days draining its' battery. I have an app on there that will translate foreign languages, and now when the time came to actually use it, battery was dead. So I decided to just stay the night at the train station in the 24hr KFC and wait until 10am in the off chance that someone from the bank will actually show up to the ATM machine at 10am. That was a long night and slightly reminiscent of the time I slept in a 24hr bank ATM in Germany. At least there were people and bathrooms here.

You can probably figure out how the story ends. After spending the early morning hours at the KFC, my last 4 hours were spent staring at the ATM machine in case a technician showed. I also had my whistle in hand in case I got attacked. I knew deep down that no one from the bank was going to show and once 11am rolled around, I gave up hope and got a ticket for KL. Bus ride took alot longer than it should have and for a moment there it seemed as if the bus broke down. Both of the drivers got off the bus and looked at the engine. Their solution was just to turn off the AC for the last half of the trip. Carrying heavy bags through train stations and now the bus. If it is possible for there to be greater than 100% humidity, than these last few days have done it. I wasn't really sweating profusely today, like I was last night, but I was just watching my pants get wetter and wetter from condensation and placing my arms on armrests were cool and damp as well. Finally made it to my hostel. I have had no food or drink today, am physically and mentally fatigued and am quite ripe to say the least. The only good thing about having my ATM card taken from me is that I have lightened my load. Maybe without the weight of that card in my wallet, I won't sweat so much when walking around town.