Day 6 July 17th we Visit Johor.

Day 6 July 17th we Visit Johor.
We were up early to make an early start on the trip. Our bus picked us up at 7:30am. After about a half hour drive through the beautiful high rise buildings and tree shrouded highways we suddenly came to a stop. We had joined a queue of traffic moving at a speed that I could have beaten by four times by walking. We had arrived at a customs checkpoint! There were hundreds of cars and busses in the queue. There were hundreds of riders on scooters speeding down the kerbside of the cars. That was definitely the way to go. We were given arrival cards for Johor to fill in while we waited. When we arrived in Singapore we were given a small card to surrender to customs when we left the country which we did at this checkpoint. We had to leave the bus and stand in a queue for over half an hour in order to do so. Then we boarded the bus again and drove over the 750 meter long (my estimate) manmade causeway in a slow moving queue once again before we reached the Johor checkpoint. We did not have to wait so long this time as there were more customs employees working. We received our little departure card and we started our tour it had taken about two and a half hours to reach Johor which is a state of Malaysia.
We first visited a small handmade fabric manufacturing enterprise and were given a demonstration of a laborious method of applying a colour design on fabric. They first treated the fabric with heated beeswax before they applied the colour. The fabric was then left overnight to cure before it underwent treatment to remove the wax.
We next visited a demonstration garden plot we were shown a pepper plant with its berries, a tapioca tree and more. I could not hear properly so I missed a lot. The making of (sorry I cannot remember its name but it is silver and three other metals) was also demonstrated.
Next we visited a massive Muslim Temple. We were not allowed in. While we were there, loud speakers sited on the top of the temple poured forth a Muslim chants. They sounded like they were more than one hundred decibels.
The part of Johor we saw looked very untidy when compared with Singapore. The buildings were unattractive and some were in a poor state of repair.
Apparently Singapore was a state of Malaysia but broke away in the 1950’s.and has prospered ever since.
We had to go through the same customs procedure again on the return trip. It was not so onerous so we reached our hotel in good time; about 1¼hours. It seems we chose the wrong day (Saturday) to travel to Johor as a lot of Malaysians who are working in Singapore during the week are returning home for the weekend. It was not one of the best of tours but it was an experience.
Arriving back at the hotel we said our goodbyes to other tour members as they were catching the 9:10pm flight back to NZ. We had another day before travelling to Copenhagen.