Thursday night and once again we are the guests of Ronald McDonald. Shivering in the Arctic air conditioning, we tucked into a Big Mac with fries and coffee. The day had started with the whine of my alarm clock at 06:30 hrs. The noise was continuous and thus distinguishable from the intermittent drone that had awoken us on two occasions during the night.
Our next destination was Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, which is a sovereign island city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude (137 kilometres or 85 miles) north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Straits of Malacca to the west, the Riau Islands to the south, and the South China Sea to the east.
Although its history stretches back millennia, modern Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles as a trading post of the British Empire. In 1867, the colonies in East Asia were reorganised and Singapore came under the direct control of Britain as part of the Straits Settlements. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan in 1942, but returned to British control as a separate crown colony following Japan's surrender in 1945.
Singapore gained self-governance in 1959, and in 1963 became part of the new federation of Malaysia, alongside Malaya, North Borneo, and Sarawak. Ideological differences led to Singapore being expelled from the federation two years later, thereby becoming an independent country. Since then, Singapore is considered the only fully sovereign city-state in the world, with its own currency and technologically advanced military forces.
We were on our way to Kuala Lumpar Railway Station within 10 minutes and just after 07:00 hrs. we were in our luxurious seats (compared to Indian Railways) on the Singapore Express. According to Malaysia Traveller (https://www.malaysia-traveller.com) “Taking the Kuala Lumpur to Singapore train can be an adventurous experience for rail travel enthusiasts and a cheap way to travel from KL to Singapore”. However, there are some drawbacks:
* The journey is very long and slow: over 7 hours and, depending on which train you catch, much of it at night.
* The trip across the Causeway from Johor Bahru to Woodlands Singapore together with the two customs and immigration stops adds to the journey time and can be frustratingly slow and tedious.
* The train itself is fiercely air-conditioned and uncomfortably cold.
* Facilities on the train are basic.
“A metre-gauge railway with daily scheduled trains and cheap fares links Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, the ideal way for independent travellers. It's safe, comfortable way to go and unlike flying, it's a real experience, and relaxing on a train is far more civilised than a cramped bus on an ugly motorway”, says The Man in Seat 61 (https://www.seat61.com).
We had modern conveniences such as leg room, reclining seats and intact windows! Due to a hiccup in the seat allocation system, I was half a carriage away from George and had a double seat to myself. I read “The Plot” and dozed as we rumbled through the undulating heavily wooded countryside.
The trees were mainly deciduous, but there were trees with trunks like elongated pineapples with a thatch of shredded palm-like leaves or fronds. Research today reveals: The oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis jacq.) originates from West Africa where it grows in the wild and later was developed into an agricultural crop. It was introduced to Malaysia, then Malaya, by the British in early 1870’s as an ornamental plant.
In 1917, the first commercial planting took place in Tennamaran Estate in Selangor, laying the foundations for the vast oil palm plantations and the palm oil industry in Malaysia. The cultivation of oil palm increased at a fast pace in early 1960s under the government’s agricultural diversification programme, which was introduced to reduce the country’s economic dependence on rubber and tin.
Later in the 1960s, the government introduced land settlement schemes for planting oil palm as a means to eradicate poverty for the landless farmers and smallholders. The oil palm plantations in Malaysia are largely based on the estate management system and smallholder scheme.
It’s hard to find anything on the shelves that doesn’t contain palm oil – it’s in about half of all supermarket products. Palm oil is amazingly versatile, which is why it’s become so popular. It’s an ingredient in food like biscuits and chocolate, as well as shampoo, lipstick, soaps, toothpaste, detergents and even ice cream.
To meet this demand, a huge industry has developed. Oil palms are grown in many tropical countries, including Malaysia. But today palm oil has been and continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world's most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already endangered species like the Orangutan, pygmy elephant and Sumatran rhino.
Wooden huts with corrugated iron roofs lined the track like farmstead buildings of old America. We breezed through Malaysian Immigration on the train and were given forms to fill in for Singapore. This proved to be a challenging task on the jostling train.
We crossed the bridge (The Johor–Singapore Causeway (Malay: Tambak Johor–Singapura) is a 1,056-metre causeway that links the city of Johor Bahru in Malaysia across the Straits of Johor to the town of Woodlands in Singapore. It serves as a road and rail link, as well as a water pipeline between the two countries.) onto Singapore and reached the city bang on schedule at 14:00 hrs.
We quickly cleared Customs and Immigration and went to the Money Changer Booth. We were appalled to find that the rate was 2.95 Singapore Dollars to £1 Sterling. When George was last here it was over S$4.
The Railway Station restaurant had just closed so we had lunch in a covered collection of food stalls next door. Our next destination was the Singapore YMCA which we had used as a Post Restante address for mail from home. We slogged across to the bus stand and were redirected to a bus stop down the road where we caught the number 10 bus to Katong Park.
Katong Park is neighbourhood park located in Katong, Singapore at the junction of Meyer Road and Fort Road. Built in the 1930s above the buried remains of Fort Tanjong Katong, it was one of Singapore’s oldest parks with the first public bathing pagar (sea swimming enclosure) and was highly popular with families during the weekends.
Here we got our first shock, like a bucket of cold water thrown over a copulating couple! The YMCA at 3 Meyer Place was now an empty plot of grass with only a few rusty posts to indicate where the building had been torn from the face of the earth.
We enlisted the aid of a cheeky young Singapore girl in a nearby hotel to locate YMCA Headquarters and boarded another bus back into the city centre. We weaved between the towering building sites and cranes and located the site destined to be the new YMCA Headquarters.
They had a temporary office in a school up the road, so we lugged our bags there in an effort to track down our redirected mail. Two giggling lads rang around the other Singapore YMCAs while an elderly clown assured us that the last he’d heard the Katong YMCA was still intact and fully functioning. This must have been in 1960! No luck however and we left without our anticipated morale boost with the hope that the General Post Office could be more enlightening tomorrow.
Next on the agenda was accommodation so we set off along Bencoolen Street. Bencoolen Street is a street in Central, Singapore that starts at the junction of Rochor Road, Rochor Canal Road and Jalan Besar and ends at the junction of Fort Canning Road, Stamford Road and Orchard Road.
The street houses several landmarks including Sim Lim Square, Bencoolen Mosque and Albert Complex. A number of hotels and serviced apartments exist there. It is accessible via Bencoolen MRT station which is located under Bencoolen Street itself.
We were quickly picked up by a hotelier who assured us that if we had a S$28 double room tonight then we could move into the S$5 dormitory tomorrow. We took up his offer and moved in. We gladly dumped our bags and shed our “respectable” clothes in favour of shorts and thongs (flip flops).
We went out and browsed in a mammoth bookshop and I bought a copy of the British fashion magazine “The Face” (S$4.50) to catch up on what the latest trends were in music, clothes and the cinema at home were.
We went to another covered café collective and had mutton and rice. Building work was still in full swing as if the constantly changing face of Singapore had to be maintained at all costs. It is said that you can tell the wealth of a nation and the state of development by the number of cranes working. Singapore must have had nearly all of the world’s cranes beavering away.
A few delicious pineapple juices later we drifted down to the waterfront for a coffee. We had to share a table with a moon-eyed couple who were gazing lovingly at each other as the ate from the same dish, so we left them to it and sought out the local McDonalds branch.
In here there was a bit more privacy and familiar disco records piped into the background. The local youth posed in their Western clothes and behaviour. I found Singapore disappointing, very different from my romantic pre-conceived notions of an exotic oriental destination, with all it’s modern shopping malls and sterile skyscrapers. They say that you could eat your dinner off the platform in Singapore’s MRT (mass rapid transit) system as it was so clean (but this is a good thing). There were also hefty fines for littering, and you could get arrested for it.
It was all so modern with only a few scruffy old local shops remaining. All the character of the old city had been swept away by the broom of progress. We slept the night on a huge spongy mattress on loosely sprung beds, so it was like sleeping in a hammock!
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