KUALALUMPURA – JOHOR BAHRU

The day is successful: we don’t know whether it was the ministry recommendation that worked or someone has called from Stockholm but our visas were already waiting for us. Yay! We can leave for Singapore. At 5PM, wet through and through, we are at the Johor Straight and the big bridge that joins Malaysia and Singapore. There are only border guards at Malaysian side, no single custom clerk, so we don’t close our ATA carnet in hope that Singaporeans wouldn’t notice. There is another border control point right before the bridge which we take for Singaporean one and congratulate each other. Too early, as we later found out. On the other side of the bridge there is a vast terminal, full of cameras and warnings of no pictures or filming. Rangers dressed in black with green hats and machine guns are walking around, and we realize that we’ve been mistaken: now this is the border control point of Singapore. Latvian passports are okay, however, they ask for ATA carnet. The clerk is wondering how come it wasn’t closed in Malaysia. We explain that there was no person to it. He accepts it, too, just saying that we should definitely close it when leaving Singapore. We also fill in the immigration card and sign up the notification about the death penalty for importing drugs. This is when all of a sudden one of the clerks asks for a weird document called „international circulation permit”. No, we don’t have it. The situation changes in a moment: there are deportation seals are there in our passports instead of entry permissions and two officers are ready to convoy us back to Malaysia. It’s all done in a very decent way; however, there is no slightest chance for us to interrupt. In three hours we are back at the bridge, on our way back. Nice. What we decide to do is to take a nap and probably in the morning we will find a solution.