How to Go by Car in Southeast Asia 

We were all packed up and ready to go. After breakfast we met our driver for our first "My Day Trip" experience. We had no worries about the luggage weights for two reasons: 

1. We had packed to meet the most stringent limits on any of our planned airline flight, and
2. The driver and car were set to meet our luggage mix of 2 large bags, 2 standard carry on bags, and added personal items.

Our day’s itinerary included two sight-seeing stops on our way to Singapore. The first stop was the Putra Mosque in southern Kuala Lumpur. Yesterday, we had hoped to see the Putrajaya Bridge on our trip but our driver informed us that, the hour drive was too far for our package. So we left it for today, hoping it was on our way. In our incomplete, background research, we missed that the Putra Mosque and the Putrajaya Bridge could be seen from each other across a small bay.

The mosque is rather new, having been built in 1997, and very picturesque with the pink and white, geometric, patterns in its granite façade against the blue tropical sky and clouds. I had forgotten about the clothing requirements of this holy space and had worn shorts today. Most of the time, I either appropriate top with long pants or below the knee, pedal pushers or just bring my own coverings. Many shrines provide suitable coverings, but these are often in poor shape and not always at no cost. Here the long robes were clean, well maintained, conspicuously labeled, and at no cost.

Our driver “broke” a traffic law restriction by making a U-turn at the traffic circle at the bridge entrance to avoid making the roundtrip across the bridge to reach the nearby park area. As we have learned through travels in dozens of foreign countries, if the policeman is not in sight, then the "Rules of the Road" become "Safety Suggestions." Don had as much time as he wanted to walk along the sidewalk between the park and the roadway to develop his artistic vision of this architecturally modern structure at a closer vantage point than from the mosque. He applied his Combat Engineering training in bridge reconnaissance, for either road serviceability or demolition, his photographic experience for a satisfactory added stop.

We next drove almost two hours to Malacca, formerly called Melaka, an old Malay port city, which established in 1403 and conquered by the Portuguese in 1511. This had been a major seaport in the Malacca Strait along the silk, tea, and spice trade routes between India and China. The Dutch made several conquest attempts and finally captured the port  in 1641 to end the Portuguese domination. The Dutch ceded control to the English in 1824. Malaysia finally brought Malacca under its sovereignty and became an independent country in 1957. Minor remnants of the Portuguese fort are still standing. We walked past a still standing gate and an attached part of the defensive wall. We climbed the hill to St. Paul’s Church, the oldest church building in Southeast Asia, which was constructed in 1521 and St Francis Xavier visited the Catholic church in 1548. After the Dutch conquest, the church was reconsecrated as a Dutch Protestant Church. Now an inactive church, the ornately engraved Dutch, stone, grave covers, which were part of the chapel floor, have been removed to prevent loss of the carved details. The burial sites of the Dutch occupiers have been identified and recorded.

After our sightseeing jaunt, we ate lunch in the Malaccan Chinatown, where I had an excellent bowl of fish ball soup and Don had a bowl of wonton soup. I also “HAD” to support the local economy by shopping inside the restaurant’s souvenir food store. I made several interesting snack purchases, including a crunchy, snow pea mix, durian candies, chicken biscuits, and a brittle with sunflower seeds and nuts. We met our driver at the Victorian clock tower in the middle of town and headed to Singapore.

About 45 kilometers away from Singapore, our driver learned of the normal weekend traffic jam, which extended about 40 KM from the main Singapore entry point. Fortunately, his hometown was in the area, so he took us by backroads to bypass the congestion. We enjoyed seeing the local area from ground level rather than from the major highway. We arrived in Singapore slightly later than planned but well before his buddy, who was still stuck among the commercial traffic bound for and the private cars returning to Singapore.

We sailed through immigration and customs with little more than a wave of our open passports and arrived at our hotel, well after dark. All we wanted was dinner and bed. We went to the food court across the street, where we split an individual-sized, flat bread, Hawaiian pizza, which was just enough for our third meal of the day. With the typical megacity issues, Singapore was planned to be our most expensive hotel in Southeast Asia. The room was half the size of the one in Kuala Lumpur and cost three times more. We felt as if we were being shoehorned into an undersized, single, college dorm room and were being charged Ritz-Carlton rates.