A Drive Around the World vehicle peers at the city of Singapore. Freeing the vehicles from customs was an all-day event.

Journal and photo by Neil Dana

Today is a day that reminded me of Central America a bit, only in the sense of dealing with major border hassles. Singapore is a place that has more controlling laws than living organisms! We awoke today at 7AM and were out of the hotel at 8AM to head to our first of 4 stops in order to get our vehicles out of the Singapore port and onto the roads. Nick, Justin, Nancy and I were involved in today's activities since we are all the "drivers" on paper. Our vehicles have been stuck in port since yesterday. Apparently, we needed some other paperwork, an International Circulation Permit, that we did not have upon arrival, and the place to obtain it was closed yesterday, Sunday.

So at 8AM this morning, a representative from Wallenius picked us up at our hotel, which is an amazing hotel by the way. You will hear about it in later logs throughout this week. So, when he arrived, we were planning on going straight to the AAS, which is like the AAA of the USA. However, our buddy took us to another guy first in some other building that was supposed to have the correct paperwork for us. When we walked in, the man there spoke to us in pretty decent English, as most of Singapore speaks English. We told him what we needed, and he looked at us and said that there is no way we could get that paperwork, and our carnet wouldn't work. "Oh no, you cannot drive in Singapore, we can tow your cars to the Malaysia border though." What? Nick quickly maneuvered around this and explained to the man that we needed to go the AAS and figure out a solution. It was obvious this guy couldn't help us out.

So we went outside and got in a taxi towards the AAS. Our rep had left, so we just took taxis the rest of the day. All the taxis here have different colors and themes, so it is always interesting to see them all. There was one from Brasil, painted as the national flag. After 20 minutes, we arrived at the office. We were a bit nervous, since we were not sure what the outcome would be here. Well, after I ate breakfast and lunch while waiting for Nick and Justin to handle all the discussions and paperwork, it was 3 hours later. The women at the desk were extremely helpful and went out of their way to make sure we could get the proper paperwork.

At first, they wanted to charge us $30 a day per vehicle to drive on their roads! We told them we would not drive on the roads, and we would be taking the subway everywhere. When all was said and done, this was reasonable for both parties and was agreed upon. We did have to purchase insurance for the vehicles though, another $500!

So after this, we had to go the customs office. We took another taxi there, and met a man who was recommended to us from the previous office. He told us that we had to go the Land Transit Authority, so we thanked him, "Tera Makasi" and caught another taxi. Once we got there, we had to fill out some more paperwork with information from our vehicles. This took about another hour. We were all getting pretty tired by this point. Finally, when we finished up there, we headed to the actual port where our Land Rovers were parked.

At the port, we had to take some pictures that they put on a piece of paper, which was a temporary driving license for Singapore. And then we finally got our vehicles! We also got the lowdown on the ERP. The ERP is a system to control the amount of traffic in the city. There are certain roads, like the whole entire middle of Singapore, and others that you have to pay for to use. They install a small electrical device in your car that keeps track of your driving on the ERP. Whenever you enter an ERP area, there is a monitor that picks it up and registers it. You pay later, or beforehand, for the amount of time you use. We didn't have the ERP, which is what the $30/day would have given us. To get to our hotel, we didn't need it though, so we were in good shape.

So finally, at about 6PM, we arrived back out our hotel, Goodwood Park. Our work was not done yet, though; we still had to wash the vehicles for our guests' arrival tomorrow. Adam and Colin and a few others wiped down the vehicles and gave them a sparkle. Then we went out to eat some delicious food, mmmnn. There are food courts here that have Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian, you name it, any kind of food, for anywhere between $1.50-$4.00. We ate some Thai food, and it was what I have been waiting for. I am so excited to be able to eat all these different Asian foods for the next few months. Every meal is a fantastic treat.

Well, those of you who are planning to bring a car to Singapore, I have some advice for you......Don't. Leave it at home and bring a big appetite for great food.

Selamat Tingal,

Neil

Logbook for May 24th, Day 206
Start: Singapore, Singapore
Time: 8:30 a.m.
N: 01* 16.695
E: 103* 46.855
Finish Singapore, Singapore
Time: 6:30 p.m.
N: 01* 16.695
E: 103* 46.855
Mileage: 010
Notes: Team collected vehicles from port, finally, at about 6 p.m., after having spent the entire day running around the city to visit the customs office, the port offices, the transportation office, and some other important offices. An education visit was held at the American School in Singapore.
(N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.