In Singapore, I can walk along any street, lorong, country lane or forest trail at any time, day or night, without fearing for my personal security. Having been mugged twice in England, I have never taken my safety for granted here. Nor should you. Cherish it. In Singapore, it is possible to have a politician’s son, a lawyer’s son, a doctor’s son, a hawker seller’s son, a bus driver’s son and a cleaner’s son sitting together in the same classroom. I know. I have taught them. In Singapore, aunties and uncles are still revered and treated with respect, quite rightfully, even when they jab a bony elbow in your kidneys to get on a bus. And they still look over their shoulder and speak in hushed tones when discussing the PAP at coffee shops, convinced that Lee Hsien Loong is sitting at the next table.
I know that I will never again live in a country where I can get a decent meal 24 hours a day. Or in a country where food courts, shopping centres, cinemas, hotels, massage parlours, surgeries, schools, train stations, bus stops, taxi stands, libraries, community centres, public swimming pools, parks, reservoirs, primary rainforest, a treetop trail, monitor lizards and wild monkeys are all within walking distance of my apartment. There is even a gynaecologist at the end of my street. I have never needed one, but it was always reassuring to know that there was one on my doorstep.
And to thoroughly dispel that persistent myth, Singapore is a charming, beautiful, green country where I can walk continuously for over eight hours and never leave a forest or park trail. I started my trek at 8am and by the time I had reached the end of the MacRitchie Nature Trail, it was almost 6pm. In total, I had covered approximately 27 kilometres on foot. My hike had included MacRitchie, Rifle Range Road, Bukit Timah, Upper Peirce and the fringes of Upper Seletar, Lower Peirce and Upper Thomson Road before returning to MacRitchie and Toa Payoh. And exotic flora and fauna surrounded me the entire day. The Central Catchment Nature Reserve boasts 1,190 recorded species of plants, 207 birds, 44 mammals and 72 reptiles. I saw a monitor lizard, two squirrels, some monkeys and a dead snake. It was a great day.
I reached home just before dark. I was exhausted. My wife opened the door, curtly informed me that I stank and ordered me to remove my shoes and most of my clothes outside. So I stood in the public corridor in my sweaty boxer shorts and looked out at Toa Payoh. As I craned my neck, I could just about make out my first apartment in Lorong 8, where Scott and I had mistaken a void-deck funeral for a coffee shop the night we arrived in Singapore. It was not that far really. If I walked briskly, I could probably cover the distance in just over 10 minutes. But the journey had taken me almost a decade to complete and I was extremely sad that it was coming to an end. I knew I was not just leaving a great island. It was much more than that. I was saying goodbye to the best 10 years of my life.
EPILOGUE
And it was indeed the best 10 years of my life. Several years on, I still look back at my Singapore decade with nothing but fond memories. Balmy evenings spent strolling around a pasar malam in Toa Payoh have long erased the images of snaking queues around a shopping mall as people wait in line for a doughnut.
The tour of the island itself, which took three months, was easily the happiest three months of my life. I woke up every morning ready to set off for yet another ulu part of the country—on foot where possible—with only crickets and the occasional cockatoo for company.
Final Notes From a Great Island is the grand result of that three-month jaunt. But there was one memorable incident that wasn’t penned, but which quickly became one of the most discussed stories because it had a frisson of anti-establishment, a dash of controversy and more than a little terror. The upshot is that I was almost shot.
OK, I concede that’s a considerable leap. I could have been shot. I had inadvertently, and completely innocently, trespassed onto private land—land that was marked off for the exclusive use of the Singapore military. There were popping noises in the distance and I could see soldiers running through the trees. The bullets may have been blanks, but I had no intention of taking one in the chest in the interest of verisimilitude to create an explosive finale for the book. Besides, I hadn’t covered the East Coast or the CBD yet; my tour hadn’t ended and it was the wrong time to be fatally wounded.
It wasn’t my fault. It was the street directory’s fault. On a page that was breathtaking in its lack of topographical detail, there was a picturesque portrayal of what appeared to be a most inviting reservoir. The weather was particularly muggy, even by Singapore’s standards, and the tacky perspiration meant I later required a welding kit to separate my rucksack from my back. It had been a long day and a dusky wander around a tranquil reservoir, with probably a sunset thrown in, seemed like a good idea at the time. It really wasn’t my fault.
I also knew that Singapore’s reservoirs are generally open to the public. Since Final Notes was published, almost every reservoir has been developed into a hub for water sports and outdoor pursuits for the family; this is another remarkable example of the country’s efforts to maximise every square inch of the island’s miniscule land mass.
I took a shortcut. Or what appeared to be a shortcut in my dreadful directory. I cut through a field marked “vacant land” in the book (has there ever been a more misleading and less informative sign than “vacant land”?), and headed down a narrow footpath bordered by tall, unkempt grasses. Now I’m no fool. I was aware that this was not a public footpath created by National Parks Singapore. There were no boardwalks and information panels for a start. And the frenzied, bloodsucking mosquitoes suggested warmblooded humans seldom trekked this path. But it was a well-worn path nonetheless.
By the time I found myself crossing a stream on a narrow, rotting, timber plank that almost cracked into two as I stepped gingerly across it, I realised that this was not really a shortcut to the reservoir. It was not a shortcut to anywhere. I was surrounded by trees and dense foliage. To borrow that great movie line of ironic understatement, there was nothing to see here. I turned around to retrace my steps, and that was when I heard the first barrage of gunfire. I looked back and noticed several tiny, green beings in the distance running through the trees. I had unwittingly encroached upon a Singapore military zone.
I have no military training whatsoever. I have never held a gun. I had no idea whether the guns were firing live ammo or blanks and I reacted accordingly. I shit myself. Suitably alarmed but not yet in a state of panic, I walked briskly along a gravel road desperately trying to find the crumbling timber plank. And then I heard the rumbling sound. I started to panic.
Have you ever wandered into a military camp, looked over your shoulder only to see an army jeep trundling towards you, complete with a horrified driver’s expression which suggested you broke into his house on New Year’s Eve and slept with his wife? There is no laxative quite like it. For a fleeting, foolish moment, I contemplated doing a runner. I actually considered the merits of trying to lose an army jeep on foot. I very quickly realised there weren’t any and so I slowly headed towards the jeep.
Strangely enough, the bloke at the wheel was not particularly welcoming at first.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, as he stepped down from his jeep.
I’ll call him “Joe”. Joe spotted my street directory in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. At that moment, I castigated myself for never getting round to drawing up a will. I had to think of something quickly to explain my presence—something foolproof, something that sounded plausible.
“I’m a birdwatcher,” I blurted out.
That didn’t sound convincing. The truth was I really do fancy myself as something of an amateur ornithologist (I’ve alluded to this in all of my Singapore books). And reservoirs are usually the best places to spot fish-hunting eagles and the like.
“I’m calling my boss,” Joe said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I don’t know where he thought I could go. I was lost in a military camp and he had a gun. I was hardly going to nip off and order a pizza.
Joe looked nervo
us and I empathised with his predicament. After all, I had trespassed into a military camp. It was unintentional; I had no ulterior motive other than to find a reservoir. But I had trespassed. It was not looking good for me.
Joe’s superior arrived, and I immediately went from mild discomfort to all-encompassing terror. He jumped down from his jeep and stormed towards me. He made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that I was in real trouble.
“You can’t be here,” he said firmly. “Do you know where you are?”
“No, I really don’t,” I stuttered truthfully. “I was just trying to find the reservoir.”
“You can’t be here. This is a very serious offence, you know. You understand or not? Take him to the base.”
And with that, he jumped back into the jeep and disappeared into the trees.
For the first—and still—the only time in my life, I clambered into a military vehicle and sat beside Joe as he took me to heaven knows where. Joe, a warm-hearted, courteous chap who just wanted to fulfill his reservist obligations to the best of his abilities and go back to his family, made every effort to allay my obvious fears.
“Relax, it’ll be fine,” he said. “They’ll just want to have a chat with you and then they’ll let you go.”
“What if they don’t believe me?” I pondered.
“Ah, er, should be OK, lah. But you’re not meant to be here, you know? Hard to say.”
In that short trip, Joe shared his love of football (Manchester United), told me what he did for a living, and pointed out the sad irony that his wife and children lived less than five kilometres from the camp, and yet he couldn’t see them. He missed his wife terribly. At that moment, I too missed my wife terribly.
We pulled up beside a hut that sat just behind the security gate at the edge of the camp. Through the gate, I could see the streetlights on the other side. Freedom! I could see it. I could practically touch it. I was just a dozen steps away from my familiar world of civvies. Joe helped me down from the jeep and guided me into the hut.
“Good luck with West Ham this season,” he said as he introduced me to a guy sitting at a desk.
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for everything,” I gushed.
I watched his jeep disappear into the increasing darkness. I felt so alone.
The man asked for my story. I told him. He asked for some identification. I handed over my green card. He asked me what I did for a living. I gave him my business card. He asked me if I ever wrote any football articles. I said that I did. He said he supported Liverpool. I said I had always loved Liverpool. He said West Ham were a lousy team. I agreed.
“OK, you can go now,” he said.
Just like that.
“Really? I can go home?” I croaked.
“Of course. Just don’t do it again, yah?”
“No, no, I won’t. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
I skipped quickly through the security gate before he changed his mind. The HDB apartments had never looked more attractive. I loved the taxis, the longkangs, the traffic lights, the mini-marts, the void decks, everything. I called my wife and recounted my minitale of terror, and was shocked to hear my own voice cracking. Therapists often say that a tense, fearful episode leads to euphoria and relief, swiftly followed by an adrenal dump. Well, I had the biggest adrenal dump all over the pavement. My legs shook. I had trouble focusing and ended up flopping down on a small, concrete wall beside a longkang. I don’t often find myself lost in a forest with soldiers spraying bullets in all directions. It’s not something I would recommend.
And so it was in the interest of national security—and my employment pass—that I left this story out of Final Notes and the book went to print in 2006. And it went slightly nuts.
The book went straight to No. 1 and had to be reprinted within a week. It stayed there for over a month (it’s the only book of mine to do this in Singapore) and had tremendous word of mouth. At book talks and signings, people would tell me they had followed my tour around the island—and that was barely a fortnight after Final Notes had reached the shelves.
The book continues to move steadily even though it depicts an island that may only bear a passing resemblance to today’s Singapore. As I had anticipated when I decided to embark on a farewell tour of the city-state in 2005, that island will increasingly disappear. Chunks have since been knocked down, rebuilt, upgraded, renovated or landscaped. I can no longer stand on the edge of Clifford Pier and admire the view of Marina Bay as I once could. Clifford Pier is now a posh restaurant. My eyes would now be greeted by the Singapore Flyer and dozens of building cranes that work feverishly to revamp the bay area into a hotel, casino and conference centre complex.
As for Sentosa, it is less of a building site now and more of Southeast Asia’s answer to Disneyland. When the isle of tourism is complete, I will take my daughter there and I know we’ll have a blast. But it was the leisurely pace of Sentosa that always attracted me to the island and I’ll just have to concede that there can be nothing leisurely about the island’s economic growth.
The glorious black and white colonial bungalows that lined the streets with the quaint Monopoly board names in Seletar mostly remain, thankfully. But the area is being transformed into the Seletar Aerospace Park, serving the aerospace industries and creating thousands of jobs. Leases for some bungalows have not been renewed and long-term residents have moved out. Seletar, like other parts of Singapore, has changed since the publication of Final Notes, but the core issue remains—maintaining the delicate balance between economic development and the preservation of heritage. The former can always be generated, but you cannot resuscitate the latter.
So Final Notes represents a time and a place. It was Singapore in 2006. And yet the book still resonates—people still want to hear the old stories. We all remember this Singapore and we always want to remember it this way. I was reminded of this some 18 months later, in 2008, when I was invited back to Singapore to talk about the book at the Singapore Sun Festival. I was sceptical. Surely no one will pay to listen to me talk about a book that’s over a year old, I said. On the night itself, I was humbled to see it was standing room only.
That night, we shared most of the stories in the book—the irritating, prancing skaters at the East Coast, the elephants at Buangkok, the Kranji crocodile and the naked ice-cream seller at Sembawang. They were so familiar that the audience easily recalled incidents and anecdotes that I had forgotten. For good measure— and also because I was running out of things to say—I threw in the trespassing story. The audience loved it and said it should have been included in the book.
In 2008, Be My Baby was released. I gave a short talk at the National Library, and the guests again demanded to know why ‘that army camp story’ was not in Final Notes. Maybe I had been too sensitive at the time. But I’m happy to be able to share it now. If nothing else, it gives me a chance to thank “Joe” and his colleague in the security hut for putting common sense before kiasuism. I must also thank their camp buddies for not shooting me.
In return, I kept my promise. I’ve not gone anywhere near their military camp since that fateful Friday night in early 2006.
And I never did find that reservoir.
Neil Humphreys
January 2010
Geelong, Australia
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In 1996, Neil Humphreys turned down a lucrative offer to train as a London stockbroker and travelled to Singapore instead. Armed with an arts degree, he initially felt about as useful as air-conditioning on a motorbike.
By 2001, he was one of Singapore’s best-selling authors. His first book, Notes From an Even Smaller Island, became an immediate best-seller and travelled across Southeast Asia, Australia and Britain. The book appeared on the Singapore best-seller list for over three years. In 2003, his second book, Scribbles From the Same Island—a compilation of his popular humour columns in WEEKEND TODAY, was launched in Singapore and Malaysia. In 2006, Neil completed the island trilogy with Final Notes From a G
reat Island. It went straight to No. 1 and decided to stay there for over a month.
Having run out of ways to squeeze ‘island’ into a book title, Neil moved to Geelong, Australia. The omnibus Complete Notes From Singapore was published in 2007 just as he was settling into a comfortable life in the big land Down Under. In 2008, he chronicled his journey into fatherhood in Be My Baby.
Neil’s sixth book, Match Fixer, debuted in January 2010. He continues to write for several magazines and newspapers in Singapore, Australia and the UK.
Final Notes From a Great Island Page 27
