Our final day of the study tour was spent travelling to Johor Bahru in Malaysia. Hitherto, we had only seen Malaysia (apart from Kuala Lumpur) through the windows of our moving trains. Today’s tour took us by bus across Singapore Island, across the causeway into Malaysia, and through the city of Johor Bahru to the agricultural areas to the north. Being a Muslim state, it was business as usual in Johor Bahru (Friday being the Islamic rest day), and we inspected a rubber plantation and smallholder’s processing works, an oil palm plantation, and a pottery factory.
We returned to Singapore where our final activity, a reflection session, was held at our accommodation, the Metropolitan YMCA in Stevens Road. Everyone in the group expressed their appreciation for the incredible times they had shared, noting especially the clear inverse relationship they had experienced between people’s wealth and their happiness over the past few weeks.
Our aircraft (a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-300, flight SQ21A) was scheduled to leave at 9:00pm, so after a few hours rest at the YMCA, the group loaded up for the airport (the words “loaded up” being deliberate as some members of the group had really embraced shopping once again after the austerity of Burma).
The return flight was smooth and comfortable, although the three hours of disturbed sleep we managed to get on the six-and-a-half hour flight was probably less than sufficient. There were many happy and relieved faces on students and parents alike as the group emerged at Sydney Airport early on Monday morning, 14th May.
