If I wasn’t stumbling, falling and swearing my way through tree roots, my feet were sinking into monstrous mud lobster mounds. The fear of the sludge sucking off one of my trainers only to find a nonplussed mud lobster hanging off a toe didn’t leave me. Nor did the smell of Ashley Johnston. She was my constant companion. On the plus side, I was not short of flotation device options. If any critics remain regarding Singapore’s anti-litter laws, get a tetanus shot, don a pair of surgical gloves and pick a stream in the Lim Chu Kang swamp. Bottles, buckets, chairs, clothes, slippers, crockery, cutlery, cans, tins, food cartons, oil drums, toilet seats, planks of woods, boat parts and actual boats, tyres and wheels, paint tins, fishing rods, car seats and shopping baskets were only some of the items I recognised washed up, trapped or half buried among the tree roots. If Hannibal turned up with the rest of the A-Team, a spanner and a monkey wrench, he could knock up enough flotation devices to battle the Spanish Armada. The mangroves are actually less polluted now, thanks to the heroic voluntary efforts of coastal clean-up groups. Sadly, there is still much to do. Instead of chasing pretend targets at the nearby Sungei Gedong Camp, national servicemen might spend their time more productively cleaning up their country’s coastlines. At least, they’d be more familiar with the terrain when the time came to hunt down a real target.
If Mas Selamat did navigate his way through the island’s northern fringes—accounts of his escape vary considerably— then he has the makings of a proficient outward bounds camp instructor. The most accomplished of eco-warriors would struggle with the hazardous tree roots, mudflats, piles of junk and mudskipper mounds under the cloak of nightfall, with or without a limp. I tried to step on the roots, using them collectively as an elevated boardwalk, but their instability had my ankles wobbling like a drunken bride in stilettos. After one particularly awkward sideways tumble, I noticed a plastic board protruding from the sludge. I pulled it from the mudflat, releasing a malodorous blast that melted my eyebrows. Crabs underneath the battered rectangular board scurried off into muddy holes, not amused that I had removed the roof from their latest seafront property. The slimy board, similar to a picnic hamper lid, was as long as my chest and marginally wider. Having gone through a few ad-hoc body-boarding lessons with an Australian mate who, between waves, had pointed out all the recent shark sightings in the area, I figured I had my improvised flotation device. Through the trees, the buildings of Johor Bahru filled the horizon. The distance seemed doable and the Straits were still. I fancied my chances, if only to flee the whiff of Ashley Johnston.
And then, unexpectedly and dramatically, my Mas Selamat expedition ended where his had started—at a toilet. I had the unstoppable urge. If only I had literally followed in the terror suspect’s footsteps and set off with a packet of toilet rolls. Fortunately, I found an oval-shaped “toilet” in front of a trunk. Like an intricately woven wicker basket, the dozens of criss-crossing tree roots had created an appropriately-sized box seat about 30 centimetres above the ground. I was back on the Aussie long drop. Surrounded by leaves for the subsequent clean-up operation and a panoramic sea view to boot, the opulence almost matched Mount Faber’s Jewel Box. And before anyone tuts disparagingly, my contribution to the mangrove was quickly appreciated by its resident population. I was proud to be one of the few human visitors to leave something behind in Lim Chu Kang that was actually biodegradable. I may not have followed Mas Selamat across the Causeway, but I did improvise in a toilet. Besides, when I ask Singaporeans to sum up the way authorities addressed, publicised and managed Mas Selamat’s audacious escape and manhunt, the response is usually the same.
Shit.
At least now I was suitably emptied to venture further into the mangrove to find an old house that hopefully has a role to play in new Singapore.
When considering remote northern coastal locations to hunt down an improvised flotation device, the name Howard Cashin crops up. Born in Haig Road, the late lawyer was one of the colourful Cashins, an Irish family that was one of the oldest to have settled in Singapore. The Cashins went on to own 400 shophouses and several fancy homes in Grange Road, Matilda House in Punggol and the seafront villa hidden here in the Sarimbun mangroves, off Lim Chu Kang. The Cashins’ grandfather made much of his money in opium farming and wisely diversified into real estate. Howard Cashin enjoyed life with his family at The Pier, his Sarimbun structure built over the mudflats to take full advantage of the breezy climes of the Johor Straits. In February 1942, the Japanese landings took place there, with the invaders engaging in a sustained battle within the grounds. After World War II, the Cashins repeatedly welcomed the late sultan of Johor, who reportedly liked to pop over for a cup of tea when time and tide were with him. Since Cashin’s death in 2009, the property has remained vacant and I was eager to take a gander for a couple of reasons. First, The Pier must be one of the few remaining colonial beachfront properties in Singapore, if not the only one. And second, I admired the online dedication of the island’s heritage gatekeepers, those industrious volunteers eager to sustain new Singapore’s soul by infusing it with a little of the old.
However, I had to cross a stream to get there. Having snagged every tree root from the Lim Chu Kang fishing jetty, I stood beneath the obscured coastal property, which was mostly shielded by trees and fencing, presumably erected by the SLA, its new landlord. All that stopped me from savouring a rare slice of history was a litter-filled stream. I squelched along its banks, searching for an opening, a natural break, some elevated ground or a muddy path, but there were none. All I discovered was a very large, and very dead, horseshoe crab which I unintentionally flicked into the air, then screamed and performed a spontaneous Native American jig in the mud.
Finally, I found a toppled tree trunk, which erosion had kindly upended and dropped across the stream. I clambered nervously to the top, using the surrounding tree roots as the flimsiest of step ladders, adjusted my rucksack to improve balance, stretched out my arms and thought of Man on Wire, the Oscar-winning documentary about that French lunatic’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. I was reaching for inspiration, to distract my focus away from my muddy, slimy trainers, the narrowness of the trunk and the very real possibility that one slip would send my testicles through my throat.
Despite a couple of anguished moments when I might have plummeted, ooh, at least 1.5 metres into ankle-deep water, I cleared the trunk, splashed along the riverbank, retrieved my trainer after the mudflats finally pulled it from my sock, chopped my way through some trees, pushed aside lalang grass taller than me and reached the fenced perimeter of one of the most stunning properties in Singapore.
And quite possibly the spookiest.
Built behind gardens bigger than my apartment, the house was situated at the end of a long, narrow pier, its tiled floor protected by a red-slate roof. The whitewashed villa stood majestically above the sea, atop girders planted deep into the mudflats. I ventured along the edge of the grounds, fighting constantly with the lalang grass, and picked out a balcony through the windows. The late sultan of Johor could have sipped a cup of Lipton’s there before an expansive outline of his entire kingdom. No wonder he was always popping over to the Cashins to borrow a cup of sugar. There can be no other property on Singapore’s mainland with a superior location, view or environment. I’d like to think that Mas Selamat agreed but there is nothing to corroborate that particular online rumour, sadly. He didn’t stop by while he was on the run. Quite clearly, no one has.
The house was empty, run-down and decaying rapidly in the merciless swamp. New Singapore must restore The Pier. Whether the villa is turned into a museum to document the area’s farming history and the Japanese landings or becomes an educational extension of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve to inform visiting schoolchildren about Lim Chu Kang’s ecological value, this fragile link to old Singapore cannot be broken. Like Bukit Brown Cemetery, The Pier has online support from engaged citizens expecting a more reciprocal relationship with their gov
ernment. They need to feel anchored to the country and connected to its history. That comes about when the foundations of sites such as The Pier are literally preserved and protected.
And from the oldest to the newest, I dragged myself towards D’Kranji Farm Resort. When I suddenly appeared in Lim Chu Kang Lane 9, from the dead-end side of a one-way street, with my feet and ankles caked in mud and my arms decorated in scratches, an agricultural farmer eyed me and my bulging rucksack suspiciously, probably assuming it was filled with my wife’s body parts. But after a two-hour trek that included a quick stand-up wash and a sit-down curry at Bollywood Veggies, the restaurant still boasts the best location in Singapore, I slumped over the reception counter of D’Kranji Farm Resort.
When I last lived in Singapore, this farm resort did not exist. Indeed the mere mention of such a business concept might have generated exaggerated hilarity. More often than not from the very Singaporeans who drag their unwitting children over to a working farm on the outskirts of Perth and pay the landowner for the privilege of cleaning up cowpats. I’m referring of course to the inimitable Australian farm stay, the holidaying rites of passage that many young Singaporeans are compelled to go through when their parents wake up one morning and decide that a 20-minute break from the assessment books spent at the downstairs playground does not constitute a trip to the Great Outdoors. Consequently, an all-inclusive farm stay is booked for the extended family in Western Australia on the strict proviso that Burswood Casino is no more than a taxi ride away.
And then, some bright spark adopted the casino principle of “if they’re going to spend it anyway, they might as well spend it here” and established Singapore’s first farm stay in 2008. Spread across a distance of six football fields, D’Kranji Farm Resort is Singapore’s first $10 million gamble on agri-entertainment. Apart from the ubiquitous karaoke nights, the resort was a risky proposition because it essentially offers nothing other than silence and solitude. With villas backing onto a fruit plantation, the hideaway has more in common with the kampongs of Singapore’s regional neighbours. There’s really nothing to see here.
The receptionist kindly allowed me to drag my fetid, filthy frame past some of the villas, all of which appeared to have balconies backing onto herb gardens. There was a restaurant using ingredients grown on the premises, with family farm tours offered. The resort, like so many of the Kranji farms reinventing themselves as day-trip destinations, offered a temporary respite from sitting in expressway traffic, standing on buses and suffering the incessant rumbling of encroaching concrete.
The D’Kranji Farm Resort receptionist told me that most visitors are Singaporean. Perhaps it’s the inexpensive convenience of a taxi ride to the country and a brief return to a treasured childhood memory. Perhaps Singaporeans want to sample agricultural life without an Aussie farmer complaining that “my sheep are about as useful as tits on a bull”. (A Victorian farmer actually said this to me once at a country fair and the imagery just blew my mind.)
Either way, it’s sexy. It’s about as sexy as Singapore gets and I, for one, cannot get enough of it. I’m talking about Kranji Countryside repositioning itself as a green getaway destination of course, not the tits on a bull.
Eighteen
HOW suspicious do you have to look on the MRT to trigger an alarm? The question piques my curiosity every time I hear the least politically-correct message of this century. As I travelled towards Woodlands, that recorded, slightly monotone but disturbingly erotic, female voice echoed through the carriage. In clipped tones, she said, “If you should see any suspicious-looking person ... kick him in the balls and hit the alarm.”
I have no idea what she actually says at the end of the message. I never hear it. I’m too busy scanning the MRT carriage, joining my fellow kaypoh commuters in hunting down “any suspicious-looking person”. The warning is a hysterical generalisation. If a “suspicious-looking person” is someone perspiring heavily and struggling to sustain a regular breathing pattern, then that’s half the carriage. These commuters will have just run up the escalators to leap through the closing doors before they sliced through one of their buttocks. I defy anyone to satisfactorily define “suspicious”. Should we wrestle anyone to the ground who has a ticking sound emanating from their person? They might just be hard of hearing and in possession of a very loud watch.
Besides, I have always been a “suspicious-looking person” on trains. From the age of 11, I travelled to and from my grandad’s East London cafe every Saturday morning, knowing that I was going five stops beyond the limit of my school travel pass. From East Ham to Bromley-by-Bow on the District Line, I broke the law every Saturday morning. There was no laxative like it. I would scrutinise every passenger, looking for telltale signs that they might be undercover ticket inspectors. On the rare occasions that a ticket inspector did step into my carriage, I jumped out with all the theatricality of Indiana Jones clearing a canyon.
By the time I reached Bromley-by-Bow station, I was eligible for a “suspicious-looking person” poster campaign. My palms would be clammy and beads of sweat trickled past my ears. Back then, there were no ticket barriers, only a rotund chap squeezed into a glass booth and expected to examine the validity of dozens of train passes flashed at him simultaneously. My travel pass was always a blur. I flashed it with all the speed of David Blaine doing a card trick. But I became a victim of my own agility. I was too fast.
“Oi, hang on, mate,” a more alert than usual ticket booth guy once shouted at me as I passed. “I didn’t get to see that one properly.”
I retreated slowly, a condemned man keeping a date with Albert Pierrepoint. I stared at the tiled floor, checking to see if I had peed on it. I raised my travel pass.
“That’s not enough zones, mate,” he said. “That only gets you as far as Barking. Where have you come from?”
“Dagenham Heathway,” I muttered.
“You’ve come too far, mate. You need to give me another 30p.”
That’s the amount I was saving every Saturday, playing the suspicious-looking person routine at 7 a.m. But I was poor. I was cheap. I was desperate. And I could talk. Even at the age of 11, I could concoct quite a cocktail of bullshit when I combined all four.
“Well, I didn’t know that. I’m only 11,” I cried. “I use this pass to get to school every day. And I’m helping my old grandad in his shop, and I asked the guy at Dagenham Heathway and he said it was OK. He said my train pass was valid. I don’t have any money. Look in my wallet. It’s empty.”
All that was missing was a string quartet.
“Ah, sounds to me like you’ve been led astray,” replied the sympathetic ticket booth guy. “I’ll let you off this time. I’ve a good mind to call that ticket guy. What station was it again?”
“Er, Becontree,” I lied, waving my thanks, before sidestepping the drug addicts in the dimly-lit underpass and skipping off to my grandad’s cafe, all at the age of 11.
As we chugged along towards Woodlands, I thought about being the most suspicious-looking person on the London Underground tube and smiled. I wiped the sweat from my brow, fiddled with my omnipresent rucksack and studied my fellow travellers carefully. Now I look like the most suspicious-looking person on the MRT.
I had certainly come a long way from those crime-ravaged adolescent years, all the way to Woodlands Waterfront Park. A train and a bendy bus took me to the northern tip of the country, where Sungei Cina meets the sea. Off Admiralty Road West, this ulu, or remote, spot used to be known for the old Khalsa Crescent Prison (not one for the postcards), the Senoko Power Station a little further east, a haven for heavy industry and that was about it. But the sea views and adjacent land always hinted at the area’s potential. The Woodlands Waterfront Park is a step towards fulfilling it.
In May 2010, the sleepy industrial corner woke from its slumber to find a renovated 400-metre-long jetty (one of the longest in the country), landscaped gardens and a new children’s playground built around a two-storey sky walk. A promenade
and nature trails were added later, linking the Woodlands Waterfront to the park connectors that stretch 19 kilometres across the northern region. The jetty once served dilapidated warehouses. Now it welcomes nature trekkers, skaters, cyclists, picnickers, sky walk climbers, eco-warriors, fishermen and anyone who wants to peer across the Johor Straits and shout “referee kayu” (Singapore returned to the Malaysian Super League the very weekend I visited).
I scurried across the boardwalk in a futile effort to escape the cloudless coastal sunshine, nodded to a father and son fishing tag team and reached the end of the jetty. Positioned to the right of the Causeway, the jetty was built in the 1920s at one of the narrowest points along the Straits. Hotels, building and road signs, cars waiting at traffic lights and people walking along the Johor Bahru coastline were easily visible from the jetty. So close and yet so unnecessarily far, but, hey, that’s Singapore and Malaysia.
I wandered around the picturesque promenade but was fighting a losing battle with sunburn so I retreated to a shaded shelter in the spiffy new playground. I admired the children clambering up the rope ladders of the sky walk, hauling themselves onto platforms some 10 metres in the air before dashing along the swaying rope bridges. I got jealous. I looked around. The insufferable heat had kept most sane families away. Just a sprinkling of kids and teenagers were hanging out, on or off the sky walk. I knew what was coming.
Seconds later, I thought I was Jack Sparrow, dragging my 37-year-old gangly frame up a wriggling rope bridge. The sky walk was open to all. At least, I think it was. I had noticed earlier on the Internet that Sembawang GRC MP Hawazi Daipi had been keen on the place when he opened the park. If MPs can climb the sky walk, it must be for grown-ups.
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