Thursday, January 26, 2017

Going to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore by bus? Try "The One Travel & Tour"

A couple of years back, I travelled alone to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore several times. I tried overnight train ride twice, one was “seater class” and the other was “sleeper class.” One time, with my colleague, we did a round-trip bus ride from Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur and used Singapore’s city bus in going to Larkin Bus Station, JB.

Currently, train trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur is not as convenient like before. You have to transfer twice before reaching KL. Hence, while in Singapore, the family and I opted to travel by bus on our side trip to Kuala Lumpur.

I booked 5 tickets online at “The One Travel & Tour” for an overnight bus trip from Singapore to KL. Yes, direct trip, no need to transfer at Larkin Bus Station though you have to undergo the usual immigration process at both borders. It means disembarking and embarking at the same bus twice. After booking, I received through email a reservation sheet with an instruction to present that sheet at least 30 minutes before the trip to the bus office at Golden Mile Complex.


To save travel time, we booked SVIP class bus for an 11PM trip costing 36.5 SGD per passenger. The pickup point is Golden Mile Complex and drop off point is Berjaya Time Square in Kuala Lumpur.

We arrived at The One Travel office at Golden Mile Complex at around 10:15PM and showed my booking to their staff. I was told to return at 10:30PM to collect my ticket. Returned back 15 minutes later, the staff simply wrote on our booking sheet our seat numbers and the bus plate number. From time to time, my son would check those buses arriving in front of Golden Mile. At exactly 11PM, I returned back to the bus office and inquired why our bus hasn’t arrived yet. There was a delay according to the staff.

We left Golden Mile at almost 12 midnight. Due to few passengers, I assumed that the bus company decided to combine both 11 PM and 12AM trips since instead of having a single drop off point some passengers stayed in the bus after we disembarked at Berjaya Times Square. No worries about the delay anyway since the whole trip would take 5 hours; the one hour delay would adjust our arrival from 4AM to 5AM which was preferable.

Fortunately our assigned seats were in the upper level of the double decker bus. You can bring your small luggage with you to your seat while the bigger ones should be stored inside the baggage compartment. There are two drivers as well. The one who drove from KL to SG would be relieved by the other driver on their way back to KL. So an overnight bus travel between these two places is quite safe, if I may say so.

At Singapore border, you have to disembark for immigration procedure; no need to bring all your luggage. At the Malaysian border, we followed the same procedure though we brought all our luggage and bags expecting that they would be subject for inspection and x-ray. However, probably due to less passengers, neither manual inspection nor x-ray was conducted to our bags.

After passing both immigration it was a flawless trip to Kuala Lumpur. We reached Berjaya Times Square at around 5AM. The driver shouted something in their local language obviously to inform us that we have reached our destination. To sum it all, aside from the delay, our experience with The One Travel & Tour bus company was fairly good and convenient.

In case you want to save time, transport and hotel fares during your trip to Kuala Lumpur, I suggest that you take an overnight bus trip. Though you’ll lose a few hours of sleep it will be compensated by fast immigration procedure at both sides. Moreover, there’ll be less traffic along the way. Finally, before choosing the bus company, try to read their reviews on the net. We almost book our tickets with a bus company with countless complain and bad feedback.

1 comment:

  1. Hi may i know where to take the overnight train ride from singapore to KL?

    ReplyDelete