Customs officer tells Singapore woman with Malaysian boyfriend she can’t enter JB daily, must have 1-week interval between visits

SINGAPORE — A Singaporean woman took to Reddit with questions after a customs officer in Johor Bahru asked her to wait one week before returning to Malaysia. The Reddit user Odd_Impression_254 wrote on r/SingaporeRaw on Tuesday (Dec 27) that she had just arrived from JB that morning.

“After he (customs officer) stamp my passport, he made sure I said yes to his question, ‘Wait 1 week later then come again okay?’ before he returned my passport. Is there such regulation whereby Singaporean can’t enter JB on a daily basis?” she asked.

She was questioned by the officer who was stamping her passport why she was going back and forth every day. “Told him I was visiting my boyfriend house and he asked if my boyfriend is Malaysian. I said yes and he told me to ask my boyfriend to stay in Singapore instead,” the Reddit user wrote. She added that the customs officer told her that she can’t enter JB every day and needed to have a one-week gap between her visits.

Since her boyfriend is Malaysian, she goes with him to JB every Sunday and returns to Singapore the following Tuesday. But last weekend, she entered JB on Saturday and returned to Singapore on Sunday to see Christmas Wonderland. They then returned to JB on Sunday night but went back to Singapore by Tuesday morning.

One Redditor told her that this is also imposed in Singapore to prevent instances of abuse.

Another told her the custom officer’s questions had been “legit” and that she had been given a “NTL (Not-To-Land) notice”.

Another advised her to just follow what the customs officer told her. “One thing I learned is when the immigration officer said A you better do it or you gonna learn it the hard way.”