But instead they kindly pointed out the toilet to me. The dog, however, was far less welcoming. It barked at me incessantly and I was forced to walk in a big arc to avoid it and get to my temporary refuge. I locked the toilet door but it had those slats at the bottom for ventilation and I could clearly see the dog sitting just a couple of metres away. It was waiting for me. That much was obvious. I had no idea what its plans were, but I had no problem relieving myself, I can assure you. The two uncles made half-hearted attempts to calm their mad dog but were far more enthusiastic discussing their supper plans. I had already spent five minutes locked inside the cubicle and it is generally not a good idea to hang out in a men’s toilet in an empty garage in a deserted industrial estate at 11pm. The loneliness of the long-distance lorry driver is well-known. But the prospect of being dragged past the petrol pumps by a mongrel of dubious origin did not really appeal either.
In the end, the compassionate uncles came to my rescue. They whistled and Frankenstein’s monster returned to its masters and sat by their feet. When I saw through the door slats that they had grabbed its collar, I took my cue. Red faced and perspiring heavily, I flung the toilet door open, dashed across the forecourt and hared off down Jalan Buroh.
Almost five hours after arriving at Pandan Reservoir, I reached my final destination for the day—the lookout tower at the top of Jurong Hill Park. Just 100 metres from Jurong BirdPark, the observation tower and its accompanying restaurant provided cracking views of the private Jurong Island nearby. Opened in 1970 for residents living in the increasingly cluttered industrial area, the tower was built at the top of a 60-metre hill and resembled one of those circular car park ramps, with extremely wide walkways. Having struggled along from one end of Jalan Buroh to the other, it was a bit of an effort to get to the top, but I could hardly quibble with its wheelchair-friendly design. Despite its size and prominence, I actually had trouble finding the damned thing initially and walked aimlessly down Bird Park Drive for several minutes. Then I realised a few cars and vans with young couples inside were driving up a hill on my left. They were either going to the tower or heading to a mass orgy. Either way, their destination was well worth a peek.
Sure enough, the summit presented me with a view of a dozen canoodling couples. There was a middle-aged Chinese chap beside me pecking at the neck of an extremely young, attractive Chinese woman. They took a breather, probably to allow his pacemaker to recover, and had an animated discussion that lasted quite a while. Although they may have been ruminating about the hypnotic lights of the oil refineries twinkling under the starry sky, I suspect they were haggling over the price.
I took off my steaming shoes and sat on the concrete floor, staring out at the bright lights of the big city. Midnight was approaching, but the entire west corner of Singapore appeared to be lit up and blinking back at me. It really was beautiful and I no longer cared that my entire body ached. The walk through Jurong had been interminable at times, but one that was thoroughly rewarding in the end.
My old mum had been right after all.
CHAPTER 14
She will probably never speak to me again, but I must tell you this story. My mother visited Singapore for the first time in 2004 and, as a 50th birthday present, we also took her to Perth to look up some old friends and relatives. Knowing that mobs of kangaroos had overrun most of Australia, I was eager to see the marsupials in their natural habitat. We were told to visit Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park, a cemetery famous for its kangaroo population. The place was big, grassy and secluded; the only visitors being those who came to pay their respects or to watch the kangaroos grazing. For a week, I had stubbornly insisted that we were not flying back to Singapore until I had been to “kangaroo cemetery”, as it is known locally. My wife and younger brother were also keen, but my mum was a little uncertain.
“So you really want to go to this kangaroo cemetery, then?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’ll be great. It must be amazing to see.”
“I suppose so,” she said, clearly not convinced. “I’m not sure they’ll be that much to see and it sounds a bit morbid to me.”
“It’s only a cemetery, mum. Think of all those kangaroos we’ll see running around.”
“Running around? What are you going on about? They’ll all be dead.”
“No they won’t. Who told you that?”
“You did. You said it was a kangaroo cemetery.” Apparently, she had thought it was a pet cemetery for kangaroos! She insisted that “kangaroo cemetery” must be a place where Aussies gathered to bury their beloved, bounding friends. Fifty thousand graves, all filled with dead kangaroos. The headstones would certainly make for interesting reading: Here lies Joey. Son of Joey. He leaves behind a wife and a dozen children. All called Joey.
My mother’s kangaroo cemetery came back to me as I respectfully observed a stray dog enjoying some shade. It was sleeping beside a grave near the back of Choa Chu Kang Chinese Cemetery. I had no plans to visit the cemetery. I was heading to Old Lim Chu Kang Road but the startling image of hundreds of graves, spread out in almost identical rows across the grassy hillside, had caught me off guard. It is not a common sight in Singapore, but it is if you grow up in Dagenham. Churches all over the parishes of Dagenham and Barking have gravestones going back hundreds of years. Dogs pee on them, vandals desecrate them and drug addicts leave their needles among the flowers. Even in death, peace is not always guaranteed.
But cemeteries are difficult to find in Singapore—they are not a popular place with the many superstitious folk. Coffee shop cynics will whisper that the gahmen, the affectionate colloquial term for the government, does not advocate burials and insists that the dead are cremated. This is not quite an urban myth but it is not entirely untrue either. In 2001, it was announced that the 26-hectare Bidadari Cemetery had to go to make way for housing projects. Well, naturally. The graves (around 58,000 Christian and 68,000 Muslim) were to be exhumed so 12,000 new high-rise homes could house 40,000 residents at the junction of Upper Serangoon Road and Upper Aljunied Road in central Singapore, not too far from my home in Toa Payoh. Most of the remains were eventually relocated here at the Choa Chu Kang cemeteries. But their descendants were not amused. The cemetery, one of the oldest in Singapore, opened in 1907 and 5,000 graves belonged to foreigners, including Australian and British servicemen who had died during World War II. Furious relatives from all over the world sent letters to the media, asking for the men who had once defended the country to be left in peace. But obstacles to economic progress are easily sidestepped, so a few silent corpses did not pose too many problems. The exhumation project went ahead and was completed in 2006. Even in death, peace is not always guaranteed.
I know that land is scarce in Singapore. It is a mantra that is drummed into Singaporeans from their first history lesson at primary school. But again, I do wonder, and I always will wonder, how many apartments and shopping centres does a country actually need?
Contrary to popular belief, however, Singaporeans can still be buried in Choa Chu Kang Cemetery if they are willing to pay the price ($940 per adult, according to staff at the Chinese Cemetery). Behind the rows and rows of circular gravestones, often adorned with stone lions and pagodas, new plots had been freshly dug. Like the graves, most of the plots were dug in rows that sloped slightly along the hillsides off Lim Chu Kang Road. I was told this was to accommodate drainage during heavy downpours. Even in death, the authorities are stunningly practical.
The smell of incense was everywhere and charred paper money blew all over the place. Several graves were covered in burnt litter. They looked dreadful. Making sure dead relatives have cars, houses and money in the afterlife is most commendable, but some visitors neglect to consider the impact it has on the living.
I reached the end of Path 19 of the Chinese Cemetery. Had I ventured any further, I could have been shot. The reservoirs of both Poyan and Murai in the northwestern corner of the country are live firing areas for the Singapore Armed Forces. I noticed a coup
le of young Chinese guys digging plots while an older chap, possibly their boss, sat on the back of his van calculating sums on a notepad.
“Excuse me, do you work here?” I asked cautiously. He viewed me with the kind of suspicion reserved for tall, strange Caucasians carrying notepads around graveyards in the middle of the day.
“Yah, what you want?” Time for another story. And I am going straight to hell for this one.
“Er, a distant relative is sick and she wants to be buried here.”
“Can, can. Still got plots. Look, can see. But not cheap. Each plot costs $940.”
“But someone told me it’s better to go for a cremation.”
“You know why or not? The gahmen don’t want burial. Cremation better. Where got space for so many burials? But if you know where to go, can still bury. No problem.”
I thanked him for the advice and left but he called me back. He smelt a sale.
“Hey, you need burial or not? You got a contractor? Need a contractor to make the stone?”
He was the Phua Chu Kang of the graveyard industry.
“No, it’s okay. But rest assured if anyone dies, I’ll certainly come to you first.”
He smiled broadly at the prospect of a death in my family. I had clearly made his day.
I had a quick stroll around the Muslim Cemetery which, if truth be told, did not suffer from the littering problems of the Chinese Cemetery. The graves were more pristine and far less cluttered. Then I crossed the near-deserted Lim Chu Kang Road, took a side turning called Lorong Rusuk and headed into the rustic solitude of Old Lim Chu Kang Road.
When I decided to embark upon a farewell tour of Singapore, I was keen to examine its underbelly and its darkest corners: I wanted to see the ulu bits. Ulu means “remote” in Malay. In Singlish, ulu refers to the distant four corners of the country where taxi drivers will not respond to calls and will not take a passenger there without moaning for the entire journey about how he will never pick up a fare on the way back.
Old Lim Chu Kang Road was lovely. Full of vegetable farms and undisturbed forest, the street had a timeless, old world feel to it. Singapore has evolved from a kampong community to a global city, but this rural estate has stood firm against rampant redevelopment. Wearing those wide-brimmed straw hats, workers still picked the vegetables by hand, just as they did 50 years ago. This was not just another time; it was almost another country, bearing closer similarity to the neighbouring Malaysian state of Johor than to the nearby HDB estates in Choa Chu Kang. Backpackers who still insist that Singapore is all stylish shopping centres and has no substance should come here. Now I know I do not want to sound overly whimsical and naive. It is backbreaking work in harsh, humid conditions for the farmers, whose efforts are largely overlooked in a city-state focused on rapid urban growth. But it is an alternative lifestyle and that is a rarity here. If you are lucky enough to come across anything that might be deemed alternative in Singapore, cherish it.
The right side of Old Lim Chu Kang Road was largely devoted to Singapore’s military forces. Nothing particularly alternative about that. I ambled past Lim Chu Kang Camp I and noticed a Coke machine just inside the entrance. I asked the guard on duty if I could buy one.
“Sure, man,” he replied. “That’s what it’s there for.” Bless his little camouflaged cotton socks. I hurried out of the army camp as soon as possible though. The guard was politeness personified, but five pairs of eyes still followed my every move.
As I crossed Lorong Serambi, a middle-aged Chinese farmhand walked towards me. He worked at the sizeable vegetable farm I had just passed. It looked impressive, but they could have been growing marijuana for all I knew. He stopped for what my mother’s generation calls a “crafty fag”.
“What do you grow here?” I asked curiously as he blew smoke in my face.
“Everything really. Lettuce, spinach, kailan and cai xin. Got most kinds of local vegetable here.”
But the kindly uncle was more interested in my welfare. It was getting dark and Old Lim Chu Kang Road was hardly a kaleidoscope of bright lights.
“Hey, where you going, ah?” he asked, genuinely concerned. “Getting dark, no taxis here. Only one bus. Nothing else to see, just got army camp.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to get that bus before the ghosts come and get me.”
I laughed. He did not. He just looked up at the moon and nodded thoughtfully. They still look up at the moon in Old Lim Chu Kang Road.
But the stargazer was right about one thing. Time was getting on and I was hungry. According to my street directory, there was a bus terminus at the end of Lim Chu Kang Road, with a jetty overlooking the Johor Straits. That sounded most inviting. I was just a short bus journey from a food court, maybe a respectable cluster of shops and some lookout points (signposted, of course) around the jetty.
Do you know what the Lim Chu Kang Bus Terminus consisted of? A lay-by. That was it. The buses pulled in, dropped you off, turned around and went on their merry way. There was more life at the cemeteries. I barely had time to step off the bus before the manic driver swung the steering wheel around and floored the accelerator. Until another bus pulled into the “terminus”, I was stranded. And the place stank of rotting fish. I had a perfunctory peek at the so-called jetty. It was nothing more than a dozen wonky planks nailed together. They were also rotting away. I stood on them and they creaked loudly, threatening to give way at any moment. There was a locked gate at the end of the jetty. A sign ordered me not to proceed any further. It was hardly surprising as it was the end of the jetty. The government does like to state the bloody obvious at times. Had I proceeded any further, I would have fallen arse over tit into the sea. What next? A sign at the edge of the Bukit Timah summit ordering me not to take another step?
I did not linger on the jetty. There was nothing to see and I was under surveillance the entire time. The Lim Chu Kang Base of the Police Coast Guard was on my left and a policeman in a watchtower was observing my uncertain movements. I understood why. No one comes this way. Unless you are a fisherman, there is no reason to be here, particularly after dark. Then a beep went off and I almost dived onto the jetty with my hands behind my head. It was not a police sniper’s rifle, but my phone welcoming me to Malaysia.
“I’m still bloody here,” I screamed at the stupid contraption as it cheerfully informed me of the various cheap rates I could enjoy if I called friends and loved ones back in Singapore. My moaning caught the attention of the policeman on guard outside the Coast Guard Base.
“Is everything okay, sir?” he asked warily. There really was no reason for me to be in such a remote coastal area so late at night. And my fractious mood did me no favours.
“Not really, mate. No. I got off at the bus terminus for some makan and there’s nothing here. Bloody nothing,” I groaned. “I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bus and my crap phone is using a Malaysian network. I might as well be an illegal immigrant from over there.”
I pointed over at Johor Bahru. He laughed nervously.
“And another thing,” I continued crankily. “What the hell is that rancid smell?”
“It comes from the fish farms near by. We can’t stand it either. Luckily for us, we eat all our meals inside.”
The policeman was a lovely guy really. He kindly showed me how to switch my phone back to a Singaporean network manually (I already knew how to do it, but he had a gun). Then he suggested some eateries back in Choa Chu Kang and we talked Premiership football. When all other forms of communication fail in Southeast Asia, you can always fall back on the universal language of the English Premiership. Then things took a surreal turn. There was a concrete slab in front of the police post for visitors to stand on. While building up Liverpool’s Champions League chances (the man with the gun was a Reds fan), I stepped onto the slab. A stray dog had been sleeping there. It did not appreciate being woken up. And it really did not like a white-skinned stranger intruding upon its territory.
As I flew off down
the country lane like a firecracker, I reached the conclusion that Singaporean dogs do not like me. Every dog I had when I grew up in England treated me benignly. They wrestled on the floor with me and occasionally farted in my face when the chance presented itself. But they were generally harmless. Around the quiet coastal towns of Singapore, however, myopic stray dogs appear to confuse me with a 6-foot bone. It is a tribute to the bravery of the Liverpool-supporting police officer that I did not end up in hospital. I sincerely mean that. He shielded my canine assailant from my tender calves for a good 10 minutes. But the dog refused to heel. It barked at me continuously and forced me to hide behind a policeman half my size. I only had to poke a little toe around either side of my human shield and the dog pounced.
We settled on a temporary uneasy truce. The black brute paced up and down in front of us. It never took its eyes off me and it never stopped barking. Between us stood the copper, about 5 metres from both of us. If the dog tried to sneak around him, the boy in blue raised a boot to cut it off. On one or two occasions, he had to physically push the snapping stray back and could have lost a couple of fingers in the process. Yes, it was that serious.
Then the bus arrived. The driver pulled into the lay-by and swung the vehicle around 90 degrees so it stretched across the road. Its inviting, open doors faced us in the distance. I screamed at the driver to wait. It was going to come down to a sprint—man against monster. With the bus on our right side, the copper shooed the dog away to our left. That was my cue. But the dog was not easily fooled. It moved before I did. There was no policeman between us now. The pursuing beast, and this is absolutely true, started snapping its jaws at my ankles. My justifiable terror got the better of my social etiquette.
Final Notes From a Great Island Page 12
