On the night of 6th Aug 2010, Friday, 6 of us (Ah Mok, Vincent, Jen, gthui, Yehlin and I) gathered and headed for Golden Mile Complex.

11:50pm: Reached Alisan Express office. Long queues outside office. I went in and saw an impatient crowd in front of an empty counter. Probably the receptionist went for a long toilet break?

12:00am~12:30am: There was really a big group of affected people, all with baggages. The number of people could easily fit into 6 to 7 buses. People were starting to whip out cameras to snap at the signboard. Some went in and flipped at the booking records which were still on the reception table. I saw my name inside. There were people who tried to find their booking records on the receptionist's computer. But so what if there were records of your bookings, when there were totally no buses outside?

12:40am~1:20am: Police came. And more police came. And then more again. They flipped through records in the office. People were snapping photos away. After some time, the police gave us a Case Reference number, with which we would quote when making the police report. Crowds started to scatter. The security came to pull down the shutters. We decided to cam-whore. Then went to a neighbouring agency to check tickets availability. But 100+ people were already on the waiting list. We cancelled our hotel bookings. And thought of back-up plans.

After 1:30am: We took cab home. And arranged to meet later in the morning to lodge police report.

10:00am~11:15am: Made police report. Heard that even more people were affected from the morning buses after ours.

12:00pm ~ 11:00pm: Our back-up plan--took a bus up to JB instead.

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It's a lucky thing that this trip was supposed to be a 'travel-via-train' trip, and so the coach was only booked one-way. The damage amounted to about $50 for each person. What we got was an experience that was quite unforgettable. We've seen reports on private educational institutions, for example, defaulting on customer's money. Little did we expect that a similar case would befall on us. It was also a first-time experience to lodge a police report in Singapore for some of us. And I guess the same would be said about making a report to CASE soon.

We took the issue very lightly and laughed it all off. Memories of this 'trip' would probably last a lifetime!

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News on omy: HERE
News on CNA: HERE