I had the most interesting custom clearance at the Malaysia Immigration last night. The kid and I were on our way back to Singapore from KL, thru the Second Link.

We left our belongings on the coach as they weren’t needed for clearance, bringing only our passports and immigration cards with us. It wasn’t a busy night, not much queue at the counters. So I happily approached one for the lady officer and dutifully handed over our passports to her.

First, that lady asked to see my train ticket. I told her I arrived by coach, though I took a train to KL earlier on. She insisted that I present to her my ticket. Thinking that she wants to inspect my bus ticket, I inform her I left it was on the bus. She insisted that I go get it for her inspection. Maybe she wants to make sure I didn’t walked all the way from the wilderness, pretend to have taken a coach, and then try to cross the Second link on foot, or even cleverer, swim across the straits to Singapore. I might have been a potential suspect wanting to smuggle myself out of Malaysia back to my own country.

To applaud her vigilance, I told her I left it on her bus and will make my way to the bus to retrieve it. So I requested to have our passports returned to us too while I make my way back. I thought it was just too much a risk to leave my passport with a stranger, though she is an immigration officer. As expected, she refused. Oh well, I thought the risk of arguing with an officer seem to be even greater, thus I went back to get my tickets without them.

I promptly showed my invaluable ticket to her, thinking that I can finally get that precious clearance. Now what, she said she wanted to see the train ticket, not the bus ticket. What? She wanted to see the ticket I had with me 5 days ago when I took a train from Tanjong Pagar to KL Sentral? Which crazy person on earth will keep a used ticket unless it is for some sentimental purpose? If that is so, I would have it pasted on my scrape book or photo album. But wait, I happened to be that idiot and remembered I still have that lottery ticket in my pocket.

That should satisfy her now, I guess! And yes, it does. She finally stamped on our passports! Yeah. But before I left, I decided to clear my doubts. I need to find out if I need to keep all my future tickets. She said yes, I need to keep my future tickets. Then I decided to be stupid and asked her a dumb question. Do I have to keep the ticket and show it to her if I enter Malaysia and leave the country a year later? YES, she said yes!

I can fully understand the reason to check for a return ticket upon entering a foreign country, but I still can’t understand why she would want to check on a ticket that is rather irrelevant to my exit from Malaysia. Maybe someone could enlightened my on that. I was wondering what would happened if I couldn’t produce that ticket. Would I be detained? Perhaps I would get a stern warning for my negligence?

After the little adventure, I was thinking hard if I should keep my future used tickets. Probably yes, just in case I happened to be picked on again. But most probably not. It is just too ridiculous to me and I want to see what is going to happen if I failed to do so. Maybe I could make it to the headlines: Singaporean Women Detained - If You Can’t Prove How You Enter, You Don’t Leave.