Food fight resumes: excitement and eye rolling as Malaysia, Singapore reopen Asia’s busiest land crossing from April 1

News of unrestricted land travel for vaccinated people unleashed a torrent of memes and excited messages

Singaporeans can’t wait to return to their favourite day trip destination for cheap food and shopping. But not everyone is pleased about the noisy neighbours returning

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People in Singapore board a bus under the vaccinated travel lane for cross-border passengers to Malaysia’s Johor state in November 2021. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:00pm, 26 Mar 2022Updated: 12:07pm, 26 Mar 2022

Since last year, tens of thousands of Singapore residents have resumed their passion for international travel via the city state’s vaccinated travel lanes, after putting their globetrotting ways on pause for nearly two years.

Many went as far afield as Britain and the United States during last year’s holiday season.

Yet, news on Thursday of a fuller reopening of the land border with Malaysia, unleashed an explosion of memes and excited messages across social media and WhatsApp groups.

To an outsider, the exuberance over unrestricted daily commutes for vaccinated people from April 1 might seem incongruous with what is essentially a less-than-a-mile journey across a narrow strait to Malaysia’s Johor Bahru.

But the two land crossings – known as the Causeway and Second Link – have for decades been a vital commercial and social link between neighbours entwined by history and geography.

In the pre-pandemic era, the land border was one of the world’s busiest international crossings – with some 400,000 people using both bridges daily, putting them on par with the San Ysidro Port of Entry between San Diego in California and Mexico’s Tijuana.