Final Notes From a Great Island

by Neil Humphreys

  I stopped at a kampong where a homeowner sold cold drinks to day trippers. I already had a bottle of water in my bag, but I loved his hand-painted sign which read “Oh yeh, oh yeh, y u so like that? Buy a drink lah!”, so I did. Remembering my manners, I stood at the door and called out to the guy. He appeared, but was clearly none too pleased that I had called him out to the front door. He ushered me into his kitchen and left me to pick out a drink from a cool box while he turned his back on me and returned to his washing up. He was not being rude. He trusted me. They still do not feel the need to lock their doors on Pulau Ubin.

  I pedalled past the new Marina Country Club, which I must say has been blended in with its rural environment rather well. Partially covered by trees, the simple wooden chalets with their mock thatched roofs were not ostentatious. No one hankers for another concrete jungle on Pulau Ubin, but the sports and adventure retreat actually matches its habitat. If the Urban Redevelopment Authority insists that further construction is required on the island, let’s have more of this please.

  I was heading towards Jalan Wat Siam and Kekek Quarry when a small sign caught my attention. The sign caught my eye because it was written in English, German and Chinese; a linguistic combination you do not expect to find on Pulau Ubin. The sign said “German Girl Shrine” and an arrow pointed towards a narrow gravel path. Now I do not know about you but I will always make time to visit the shrine of a dead German girl at the end of a country lane in a remote corner of a tiny Asian island. I raced off down the track and soon found myself bouncing over ragged rocks, chipped stones and fallen branches. I puffed my way up a steady incline and found myself in an open field surrounded by lalang grass. The gravel track was uneven and slippery. It was like taking part in a motocross race. I swerved down a sharp left slope and stumbled upon a striking yellow hut. It was shaded beneath two trees; other than that, the area was deserted. I peered through the window of the hut and jumped back. There was a lavishly decorated altar at the far end of the room with a large white urn in the centre. This was the dead German girl’s shrine. I turned the handle of the bright yellow door and, to my utter disbelief, it opened. The smell of joss sticks was overwhelming and there were half a dozen lit candles scattered around the room. Someone had been here before me. On the altar were a number of pitiful offerings to a teenage girl, including cheap perfumes, soaps and make-up mirrors. There was also a newspaper clipping about the German girl that some kind soul had nailed to the timber.

  Her tale was undeniably fascinating. According to local folklore, the dead girl was the daughter of a coffee plantation owner on the island. After World War I, British soldiers did not take too kindly to having Germans making a good living on one of their crown colonies so they marched in to intern the parents. The young girl apparently escaped through the back door, lost her footing at the edge of the quarry and plummeted to her death. Chinese workers carried her remains to the crest of a quarry hill and gave her a proper burial. Then, of course, devotees began turning up to pay their respects and pray for good fortune. One or two must have hit the jackpot because devotees are known to come from as far as Myanmar and Thailand to pray for wealth and happiness. According to folklore, quarry excavation meant that the grave was exhumed in 1974 and the girl’s remains were rehoused here. At weekends, devotees still light a candle for the girl, leave a small present and pray for a little something in return.

  It is a great story. But there must be an easier way to strike 4D and get rich.

  I spent no more than five minutes at the northern beaches of Noordin and Maman. Unlike the packed beaches around Sentosa and the East Coast, the sand was untouched, the sea was reasonably clean and there was not a single tanker on the uncluttered horizon. But all of that was academic, thanks to the bloody awful fences that have been erected just past the water’s edge to keep out illegal immigrants. I cannot begin to express how depressing and unsightly it all looked. The immigrants may not be able to get in but snorkelling Singaporeans cannot get out either and heaven knows what detrimental effect the bamboo barricades have had on Ubin’s indigenous wildlife.

  At the point where Jalan Maman and Jalan Sam Heng meet, I had stopped for a drink when I heard an intense, high-pitched squeal echo through the trees. I nearly fell off my bike. Being the shameless coward that I am, I waddled from side to side and pulled back from the edge of the forest. Although the foliage was thick, I spotted a short, stubby hairy tail wagging through a narrow clearing. It was a wild boar. Satisfied that it was a safe distance away and the road was downhill if I needed a quick getaway, I crept towards the animal. Wild boars are generally harmless, but they will attack with their tusks if they feel cornered. A deep snort followed by a quick rustling through the undergrowth stopped me dead in my tracks. I crouched and peered through the trees again. There were two of them. Grey, heavy and over a metre in length, the boars snorted in my general direction and continued to sniff the ground. As it was getting dark, the nocturnal creatures were foraging for food. It was a priceless moment. But I was not going to test my good fortune by venturing any closer, even if I had paid my respects to the dead German girl. The burly boars continued on their merry way through the forest, grunting at each other in a dismissive fashion that was uncannily reminiscent of my grandparents.

  I love Pulau Ubin and I know I will dearly miss its traditional, rustic simplicity when I leave Singapore. Around 300,000 people visit the 1,020-hectare island every year. Of that figure, a substantial number are tourists and there are over four million people living in Singapore. The figure could be much higher and the residents would almost certainly welcome the additional revenue. So go to Pulau Ubin. Find $2 for the bumboat and go this weekend. I cannot promise you anything but peace and quiet, the shrine of a dead German girl and, if you are lucky, the odd glimpse of a wild boar. But the island does provide a temporary escape from that jungle on the other side of Serangoon Harbour.

  CHAPTER 25

  And so to Singapore’s biggest and most popular park. East Coast Park stretches across some 20 kilometres of reclaimed land in the southeast of the country. Boasting just about every outdoor and indoor pursuit imaginable, the park’s theme is one of “Recreation For All” and I do not disagree. At weekends, families enjoy barbecues on the beach under breezy coconut trees while fitness enthusiasts cycle, skate, bowl, swim or smack a few golf balls around a driving range. The only slight problem I have with the East Coast is that it has a higher proportion of wankers than elsewhere.

  On any given Sunday, the cycling and skating paths are undeniably swamped with idiots. After gathering at the nearby Idiot Club, these skaters don their wraparound sunglasses and knee and elbow pads and spend the afternoon irritating as many people as possible. The Idiot Club generally accepts two classes of skater: Beginner and Expert.

  The beginner’s task is simple: totter along the skating path for three steps, then fall over in front of half a dozen cyclists and pedestrians. Repeat. All bloody day long. The expert skater’s job, on the other hand, is to define coolness with every effortless stride. With their aviator shades, Lycra shorts, bare chests and hands behind their stooped backs, these guys are so cool it hurts. To everyone else, they look like silly sods with lumbago. But when the two groups come together, as they frequently do at East Coast Park, they form a congested traffic jam of Rollerblades, such that the casual walker cannot cross the path without being poleaxed by a giggling beginner or knocked into a bird sanctuary by a speeding extra from Starlight Express.

  Taking refuge from a heavy downpour, I stood under a shelter beside the old Big Splash water slide park and waited for my clothes to dry. When the rain stopped, members of the Idiot Club quickly resumed their weekend’s activities. A French couple pulled up at a barbecue pit beside me to allow the woman to adjust her skates while her partner perfected his spins. With his slicked back hair and enormous aviator glasses, he had clearly gone for the Alain Delon look. But his appearance suggested that he had just escaped from the early 1980s. Do you reme
mber the TV series Magnum, P.I.? Well, this guy looked like the butler. With legs apart and hands on his hips, he performed numerous spins, much to the admiration of his sophisticated companion. Now I know the French believe their European neighbours across the English Channel are an uncouth lot. The Brits might lack fashion sense and stubbornly insist that leggings go with anything. We might drink more beer, swear at football referees and eat chips with everything. But I am proud to say that if an Englishman wore anything Lycra and pirouetted on a pair of roller skates in a public park, his embarrassed partner would say he looked a prat.

  I arrived at the Big Splash end of the East Coast because that is where Scott and I first went 10 years ago. Singaporeans had told us that the Big Splash swimming pool was a popular hang-out (times change so quickly, don’t they?) and we decided to pay it a visit for no other reason than the name of the water slide park sounded like “dick splash”, which is a childish vulgarity in Britain. I wandered along the path near Big Splash for a bit. There was a persistent drizzle in the air but that did not stop a middle-aged Malay couple from insisting that they could defy science and get a barbecue going in the rain. The husband fussed over the satay sticks while his wife held an umbrella over both their heads. Every few seconds, the husband made a futile attempt to light the wet charcoal and the wife shouted at him when the charcoal predictably failed to ignite. This went on for several minutes. It was better than Punch and Judy.

  Then I made an impetuous decision. I noticed a sign that offered kayaks for rental and impulsively decided that what I craved in my life at that moment was to sit in a plastic hammock, in damp clothes, in the drizzle, on the sea. I collected my bright yellow kayak from the shop inside Big Splash and felt entirely satisfied with the $6 rental fee. I had to pick up the kayak and, through a combination of lifting and dragging, carry the thing out of Big Splash, across the skating and cycling paths, around the excitable members of the Idiot Club, down the beach and drop it into the sea. By the time I had finished, I was ready to take the kayak back. But I must say it was worth it. The rain took a breather, the heavy clouds parted and the sun peeked through for the first time that day. I felt quite the mariner, rowing along the shoreline, waving at fishermen and disturbing their fish, narrowly missing children’s heads with my paddle and generally making a decent stab at joining the Idiot Club. Exhausted after 10 minutes of, quite frankly, ineffective rowing, I decided to lie back for a bit and go wherever the sea took me. Five minutes later, I looked around to find a thick film of oil floating on the surface of the sea around the kayak. It was black, gritty and extremely unpleasant. Just 20 metres away, children splashed around in the sea. The East Coast is a fine place to go kayaking but I am not sure that I would want to swim in it.

  After I had dragged the kayak back to the shop, I jumped straight onto a hired bicycle. Big Splash is at the far western end of East Coast Park. Knowing that it is 20 kilometres long, I had plenty of ground to cover and set off for the National Sailing Centre at the opposite end. The number of extended Malay families I passed was remarkable. Children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were gathered around various barbecue pits, cooking, eating, drinking, pitching a tent, listening to music, reading newspapers, kicking a ball or playing board games. I hold the deepest respect and admiration for the Malay community’s ability to still appreciate and enjoy the simpler things in life despite living in a frenetic, urban metropolis. Watching the happy children mess around on the beach while their parents prepared their picnic lunch brought back memories of my family’s unostentatious beach holidays when I was growing up in Essex. It made me smile.

  East Coast Park has always been a curious place because it has not always been there. It is an underwater world brought to the surface. Built on reclaimed land after 1966, East Coast and the Marine Parade estate behind it arose from the seabed. In just over 20 years, over 1,000 hectares of land was reclaimed for recreational and residential development. But there is always a cost. Just past the underpass at Amber Road, I noticed the by-product of rapid land reclamation—erosion. A sizeable area along the coastline had been roped off because it appeared on the verge of collapsing. Huge chunks of the shoreline, riddled with plant and tree roots, lay on the empty beach and, if the unstable ground I stepped on was any indication, more will follow. The very land that was extended, over a period of many years, is receding quite quickly. Apparently, the stone and concrete structures built to protect the new coastline from excessive erosion, known as breakwaters, might not be up to the task. Originally, the sea went between them, which lessened the impact of the waves and explains why you see C-shaped beaches along the East Coast. But stronger, more aggressive waves are now going over the breakwaters and smacking into the reclaimed land. Coastline erosion is a natural phenomenon, of course, but not a popular one here I would have thought. East Coast Park is barely 40 years old, but the number of areas cordoned off is clearly increasing. The next time you visit the East Coast, count the number of benches inside those roped-off zones. There are a lot. And yet Singapore marches towards higher population targets (eight million has been mentioned more than once) by investing billions in land reclamation to eventually house everyone. But the sea is gradually taking the land back, free of charge.

  I cycled past the bustling Marina Cove; a football clinic, where two mini-Hitlers barked orders at terrified seven-year-olds; a sandcastle corner; and four teenage boys performing handstands and cartwheels on the beach together. It was certainly an eclectic mix. At the bird sanctuary, I spotted my favourite sign to date. In a swampy area covered with long grass was a sign that read “Long Grass Area”. Whatever next? Signs that say “A Really Big Tree” or “An Empty Muddy Field”? I assumed the sign served as a public safety notice. If it were not there, perhaps the sanctuary would be littered with fallen cyclists shouting, “Who forgot to put a bloody sign here? Why didn’t someone tell me there was long grass in here? I cycled right into it, couldn’t see anything and tumbled over a bird’s nest.”

  The extensive makeover at East Coast Lagoon was amazing. The venue had recently been converted into Singapore’s first cable ski park in which wakeboarders are pulled along by cables suspended overhead from pylons in one loop around the lagoon. I watched several skiers somersault and backflip off ramps with begrudging admiration. I cannot even skateboard. A young couple joined me at the lagoon to marvel at the East Coast’s latest and, I have to say, most impressive attraction.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” I said cheerily. “But it looks like they’ve lost their speedboat, eh?”

  The guy stared at me with the utmost seriousness. “No, no, they don’t use a speedboat here. No need.”

  “I know that. It’s just as well because that guy’s obviously lost his.”

  “No, he hasn’t. He doesn’t need one. Look. The cables pull him around.”

  The couple gave me a blank look. I suspect they give many people blank looks. I reminded them to look both ways when they crossed the road and pedalled off.

  It was getting late and I still planned to get over to Katong Park so I upped the pace a bit. As I passed yet another bird sanctuary, one of our feathered friends, and I swear this is true, defecated on my exposed shoulder. That had never happened to me before and I fancy myself as a bit of an amateur ornithologist. But here I was in a public park, travelling downhill on a mountain bike and yet somehow a bird managed to smother my shoulder with something that bore a remarkable similarity to pork rib soup. Optimistic types will intercede at this moment and insist it is lucky to be covered in the excrement of another animal. And do you know something? They are completely wrong.

  No more than two minutes later, I cycled purposefully towards Bedok Jetty. Cycling towards me was a chubby Chinese girl who decided at that very millisecond that she fancied a breezy ride down the jetty. Being a junior member of the Idiot Club, she waited until she was certain it was a kinetic impossibility for me to avoid a collision before turning right. As the oblivious girl manoeuvred her bike
to ensure maximum impact, I hit the brakes and they squealed like a traumatised pig. Performing a melodramatic emergency stop, my bike skidded in a straight line for an impressive 10 metres. I almost retained my balance but my momentum forced the back wheel to swerve 180 degrees to my right and I landed on that side of my body. For several, not uninteresting, seconds, I continued to slide along the ground, removing much of my skin’s outer layer in the process, while still sitting on the bike. It was quite a feat. I eventually came to a halt in front of Bedok Jetty. Eager to milk the sympathy from bystanders, I remained prostrate for a bit with the bike on top of me, nursing my cuts and complaining loudly about “these bloody kids today”. The back wheel was still turning slowly, adding a theatrical touch to the scene. One cyclist offered to help me to my feet and another shouted at the girl to stay in her lane. The girl was fine, of course. My sensational emergency stop had permitted her just enough time to move out of the way before I tumbled over. She peered down at me, muttered a brief “sorry” and pedalled off into the sunset.

  “Well, at least you’re all right,” I shouted after her. But the moment had passed. Public sympathy was no longer forthcoming and devoted members of the Idiot Club were hurtling towards me. So I returned the bike to the rental shop, washed my cuts, took the underpass beneath the ECP and found myself at Singapore’s original park by the sea.

  Before the East Coast, there was Katong Park. In the 1950s, when land reclamation was still a pipe dream, Singaporeans flocked to the park that boasted a coastal swimming bay. Built in the 1930s, Katong Park is one of the oldest parks in the country. Famous for its coconut plantations, the place began life as a fort, protecting what is now Keppel Harbour, then became a Japanese war factory during the Occupation before ending up being the place to be seen by the sea. At weekends, Malays held popular dances and the Peranakans, Eurasians, Jews, Arabs, Ceylonese, Punjabis and the seriously wealthy flocked to Katong Park (the condos and swanky houses around Meyer Road are their legacy). They came for the swimming bay. It is interesting to note that the bay was enclosed by a fence to protect paddlers from the strong currents and the odd stray shark. Similar fences are used around Pulau Ubin’s beaches today to keep out illegal immigrants.