Singapore
I woke at five-thirty in the morning. The train rolled to a stop and immigration police walked through the carriages, checking passports and ripping out a piece of a sticker from the Malay visa—the extent of their immigration. With everyone still dazed from sleep and perched on the edge of their berths again, the resemblance to an army bunk check was uncanny.
Another twenty minutes down the track and we arrived at Woodlands. Here, I had to pass through passport control on the Singapore side, and with my emergency passport, this caused some confusion. They had never seen anything like it and the immigration officer directed me through to the customs and immigration office. I waited a while before they called me into an interrogation room where they questioned me about my lost passport. I was sent back to the waiting room again before they took my fingerprints and asked about my intended address in Singapore as well as intended leaving date.
After watching several others pass through the interview process and head out onto Singaporean soil, an immigration office called me forward and handed me back my passport, stamps and visa in place…
Outside the sky bubbled with mottled white cloud highlighted in orange, opal blue sky filling the cracks between. The cover hung low and glowed with effervescence. I had assumed the international train station to be near central Singapore, but no high-rise buildings were in sight. I headed for a nearby shopping precinct, hoping for a travel or tourist agency to help me out.The shops ranged from fruit markets to one-dollar junk shops, but there were no tourist-friendly institutions here. I followed a boulevard left, from the other side of the shopping district, which curved back to the station. A map showed the routes of the RMT trains, also showing me to be on the wrong side of the island. With a destination in mind, I hopped in a taxi and then caught the RMT sky train to Changi airport. The route took me through relative countryside dotted with low housing estates and warehouses. Crossed many small rivers and canals, banked by perfect green lawns backed up to ten-storey apartment complexes that grew in height as we moved along. Changed to a different line, I headed away from the city again and made my way to terminal 2 of Changi airport where my flight would depart in thirteen hours.
Dumped my bag with luggage holding and researched a few places to head towards in Singapore. An itinerary now in mind, I was back on the RMT line, headed for Orchard, the closest station to the Botanic Gardens of Singapore. I immediately had no idea where to go and wandered down the streets in my hoped direction. A crude map of the bus services running along the surrounding streets gave me an idea of the route but still it took another twenty minutes before the streets began to show signs of increased vegetation. Plant beds and thick-leafed trees separated the footpath from the road and pedestrian crossovers had ivy crawling over the pillars and walls.
I rounded a corner to a T-junction and to my right, elaborate white, iron gates announced the entrance to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. With a Red Bull from a drinks stand outside, I all but skipped along the walkways amidst tall and small trees, bushes, shrubs, and plots of flowers. Glad for the escape from the sun, I circled ‘swan lake’ and entered into an area separated off as ‘jungle.’ Thick vines and bush-palms encroached on the thin pathway as it treaded and split amongst the undergrowth.
Singapore is famous for its orchid collection, something that it prises above all else in the Botanic Gardens. They have cultivated a huge variety of orchids and, with many VIP visitors from around the world, have taken to naming each new genus after their honoured guests. The Dendrobium Elizabeth named after Queen Elizabeth II after her visit to the Botanic Gardens in 1972. Others named in memory of Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher, and many more. The variations ranged from broad leafed to thin spiralling leafs, with patches of purple, faun, yellow and orange, or speckled with white and black on a cream or violet petal.
I ate lunch in Palm Valley; a dip of green leading down to an empty stage with palms growing in bunches across the lawn. Whilst looking for the Botanic Gardens on Google Maps back at the airport, I recognised a road name and had half-memorised its location relative to the gardens. I headed south, hoping to run into the road. The road I followed curved away from where I hoped it would lead, and took me past residential areas dotted with schools and fields. Twenty minutes into the walk, I began to doubt my bearing and searched for a map or familiar road name. I found only a bus stop with a list of subsequent stops down the line.
My destination road name was on there, four or five stops away, and with my confidence boosted, I set off again. A further twenty minutes’ walk and the heat had sapped my morale. I made a pit stop for water, and passed a plot of state land. ‘This land is for casual community and recreational use. Please exercise caution and be responsible for your own safety.’ The sign read like a disclaimer for any injuries obtained whilst on the state’s land, a sign from a safety-conscious or safety-crazy civilization, allowing only ‘cautioned fun’ and ‘responsible recreation’.
Singapore is infamous for its many rules and regulations pertaining to a cleaner, safer, controlled metropolis. Littering is a serious and carefully monitored crime, along with bringing any food or drink of any kind onto any public transport, chewing gum anywhere, jay-walking, and entering the country looking like a homeless hippie with long, unwashed hair and a scruffy beard. For all the nuances and ridiculous pettiness, it works. Walking around the streets and using the public transport, there is an air of efficient professionalism, clean and safe, advanced. These laws are one of many reasons behind Singapore’s status as the most expensive nation in South-East Asia. Not just expensive, it is also successful, with plenty of business opportunities and a good foothold in international trading.
I moved on, the road now leading towards an area built up with luxury high-rise apartment blocks. I saw road signs pointing to the one I sought and I crossed a canal by the same name. Finally, at an intersection with banks and offices on its corners, I saw a road name: Alexandra Road–my road in England.
It was far more built up here than in Reading, with lush lawns and pricy apartments lining both sides. Where number 10 would have stood, three fields lay between the road and Alexandra Canal. With half a success behind me, I followed the canal towards what I thought to be downtown Singapore. The water level reduced the canal to a series of small trickles threading from one stagnant pool of mud to another. Signs all along it promoted clean water initiatives and the ‘re-vegetation’ of Alexandra Canal. Although the attempt was there, nothing could hid the ugly concrete walls of the canal that dropped, covered in mould, to the dirty water held below.
I walked mostly in shadow from the rows of apartment and condominium buildings on both sides. Architecture varied from building to building, some with modern curves and glass; others pre-fabricated concrete blocks with plain façades.
My next destination, The Ritz-Carlton hotel, lay on Ruffles Avenue, near Ruffles Square, alongside Ruffles Quay. From the outside, it seemed like any other concrete tower block, with sand coloured walls and little variation from one level to the next. Inside, the spaces were magnificent and grand. I was here for the collection of modern art including Kandinsky and works by the same artist as some elaborate glass sculptures I had seen before at the V&A museum in London. Without having a gallery dedicated to the exhibits, the pieces spread through the reception area and three restaurant-bars. Commissioned by the hotel, the sculptures fill and dominate the spaces, becoming the only item on the walls but needing no other.
I felt very out of place in this up-class hotel. The staff wore smart black suits and waistcoats, the patrons wore designer clothing and rolled up to the front entrance in expensive cars or chauffeur driven limos. I avoided the guests and admired a grand piano in the lower reception area before shying away from the grand rooms and expensive people.
On the bus to Ruffles Road, I had seen a peculiar set of three skyscrapers in the distance with what looked like a giant cruise liner made of metal and glass balanced across the top. I was closer now, and walked in their direction, entering into the Bayside area which looked back over the skyline of Singapore from a twisting wormhole of a pedestrian bridge.
The bridge led to a cultural centre and a science museum, the latter housed in an ambitious building that looked somewhat like a hand with four fingers of building curving up out of the central cylinder. I went inside the cultural centre, which turned out to be nothing but a shopping centre with a huge open space bordered with everything from designer clothes shops and watch outlets to chocolatiers and a casino.
I retreated to Changi airport to wait out the last few hours away from shops that cost too much and architecture that defies physics. I tried to check in early but the counter assistant, not an air host with Emirates, refused to accept that my emergency passport would let me on the plane as I didn’t have a connecting flight from Australia to the UK the next day. He advised me to wait for the airline staff to arrive.
I found it strange that in a large international airport such as Changi, Singapore, they wouldn’t be able to deal with an emergency passport. Crossing the border into Malaysia, there had been only a minor delay. Still, half an hour later I returned to the check in desk and spoke with the airline staff themselves. They accepted that I could fly to Australia without a connecting flight on to the UK, but they claimed that without a paper Australian visa, I couldn’t be let in. I assured them that I had spoken to the Australian Embassy, who had transferred my electronic visa over for me.
The staff called the embassy as well and, though I only heard one side of it, I’m pretty sure the conversation went something like this:
‘Hello, we have a passenger with an emergency passport who wants to board a flight into Australia.’
‘Emergency passport? Sure, no worries, let them in,’ comes the reply in a friendly Aussie drawl.
‘I’ve had a look and it appears they don’t have a paper visa for Australia. If I give you the passport number could you check their visa status?’
‘Absolutely, shout it over.’ A few seconds pause. ‘Too easy. That’s no worries, let them on.’
‘So they don’t need a paper visa?’
‘Nah no worries, they can come in.’ Gotta’ love the Aussies.
The flight, normally fit for around seven hundred passengers, had just two hundred, leaving more than half the seats unoccupied. I had the aisle, window and middle seat to myself. As the flight attendants came past, some of them offering drinks and food in an Australian accent, I began to get excited for the next adventure, to begin in Melbourne.