I must admit, reading all the horror stories about people who travelled from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus or vice versa, scared the bejeezus out of us. The stories were not filling us with confidence that we would make it to Kuala Lumpur.

That’s probably why you’re here, as you’ve likely read the same reviews and are currently weighing up your options. Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus or by flight? Lets weigh it up.

A flight is more straightforward but double the cost (on a good day), and then there’s the queuing system. Whereas the bus will take you from the Singapore centre to that of Kuala Lumpur’s BUT, will you make it past immigration within twenty minutes? If not, will you be abandoned on one side of the border, with the bus leaving you in the dust? Hoping and praying for another bus to take pity on you, one that you will likely have to pay for. This negates the flight’s cost factor but doesn’t overwhelm you with the anxiety of the unknown. Or does it because the flight is MUCH MORE expensive than the SGD 35 we paid for our journey from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus. So maybe, just maybe the Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus journey will be fine. Yeah, it’ll be fine…

Let us tell you how our bus journey went. Spoiler alert; we made it, but it was touch and go, as our Singapore to Kuala Lumpur bus youtube video shows.

After spending hours looking at youtube videos and reading online reviews for all the bus companies, we were overwhelmed and kept second-guessing our choices. We asked our good friend Danny, and he wasn’t best pleased with any of the online reviews, but he suggested just going for it, so that’s what we did. Our plan was to opt for the closest pick-up point to our hotel, and we would select that company to take us from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus! We purchased the tickets online via easybus.com and were nervous about what the travel day would bring.

We awoke, packed our bags and said goodbye to our budget hotel. At £60 per night, there certainly wasn’t anything budget about the price. Still, we’re so glad we found a Singapore budget hack to combat expensive Singapore the night before.
We pulled our suitcases across Singapore, nearly broke at this point and didn’t want to surrender what little pennies we had remaining to the Singapore bus system.

I’m being dramatic, but I’m certainly not the first to achingly yell every time we had our credit card over to pay for something in Singapore, except at the hawker centres. Great food there!

We navigated to the bus pick-up point within a hotel’s parking lot. Was this a warning sign? From what we could understand, the parking lot was on the other side of the building, and the only way to that spot was through the building itself. We had to hope. We went up escalators and then down escalators and suddenly saw the exit. There was no sign, but we asked a security guard, and she confirmed this was the starting point for our Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus journey.

The clock hit 9.30 am, and we saw our bus whizz around the corner, talk about timekeeping! The bus stopped, and the driver raced out. Everyone was waiting with their belongings and eagerly put them away after the driver had checked the tickets and raised the luggage stowing hatch.

Our driver was called Boi, he spoke little English, but he seemed friendly enough. I tried to banter with him and ask him to wait for us to cross immigration and not to leave us at the border, to which he nodded and repeatedly said, ok, ok. Bus. Bus.
I don’t think he understood, but his manner was overwhelmingly friendly. We felt safe and were relieved to have such a friendly individual take us on our journey from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus. Perhaps we made the right choice after all?

As we navigated to our pre-selected seats, we noticed that the seats reclined significantly. This was illustrated to us by the adorable family sitting in front of us; as soon as they realised their intrusion, they set their seats straighter so that we could sit down. No going back now; we were seated and ready to start our Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus adventure. We hoped it would be uneventful; after all, these seats were damn comfy! We could gladly spend the next five hours in them, but seat comfort was the least of our anxiety. It was all about the border crossing that we repeatedly fretted about. We should have played the worst-case scenario game.

We set off and captured our thoughts and concerns in the video over on your Youtube channel.

After an hour, we arrived at the first hurdle, stamping out of Singapore! Time to put our bus driver, Boi’s word, to the test. Would he wait if we were to surpass the maximum 20-minute allocated time? Or would he breeze by if we were to fail to achieve that timeframe? We certainly were no Usain Bolt!

Turns out, we need have panicked; stamping out of Singapore was a breeze. I mentioned the process in further detail in our youtube video, but it was pretty effortless. We felt relieved as we shuffled back onto the bus, only for dread to set back in not soon after it left.

We had stayed still for two hours. This is what we get to trying to cross borders on a Saturday, which, as it turns out, isn’t a day you want to be undertaking any journey, let alone the Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus journey, but we had yet to learn this. Plus, did we mention Singapore was expensive? Due to this undeniable fact, we were in a hurry to leave as soon as possible, which coincided with Saturday. You can’t win them all.

It was our bus’s chance to go through Malaysian immigration, Boi stopped the bus, and everyone jumped off. We had to be quick. It would also have been great had the queue not started at the bus’s door, but like I said before, you can only win some of them.

Being British, we are used to queuing but what always digs at me is, what if we’re in the wrong queue? I’m sure you know the feeling when you’re in a queue, and then you see the other line move faster, you think about switching, and all sorts of possible outcomes race through your brain. It is utterly unhelpful!

We reached the front of the queue with 18 minutes on the stopwatch; we were running out of time and what made it worse was that I forgot to bring the proof of exit flight out of Malaysia! That’s a piece of essential information the immigration officials need, and we didn’t have it.

19 minutes. Tick Tock.

I opened up the airline app and showed another flight from another country to another country. To our relief, the immigration officer accepted it. Congratulations, you made it to Malaysia. We then rounded the corner and saw a bag check service which we were waved through., That has never happened to me before!

Bang! We made it onto the bus. Watch our Youtube video covering the Singapore to Kuala Lumpur by bus story for the full timings.

We had been on this journey for over three hours as we crossed into Malaysia. A quick lunch pit stop where I sampled a ramly burger (a burger with a fried egg), to then continue the drive into Kuala Lumpur!

Upon entering Kuala Lumpur and seeing the Petronas towers in the background, we became flooded with memories of our previous trip to Malaysia nine years ago, back in 2013. Oh, how we missed Malaysia.

A new adventure was about to begin. We’re back baby!

Toodles