A collection of 51 photographs taken at sunrise that show that the north may have some of the best spots in Singapore to greet the new day.
The sun rises in Singapore’s north
9 08 2016Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Colours of the Morning, Dawn, Lower Seletar Reservoir, Mandai, Nature, Northern Singapore, Photography, Photography Spots, Sembawang, Singapore, Straits of Johor, Sungei Seletar, Sunrise, Tebrau Strait, Upper Seletar Reservoir, Where to Catch the Sunrise, Yishun
Categories : Forgotten Places, Mandai, Nature, Parks and Gardens, Photography, Photography Series, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises, Yishun
Worshiping the sun in a place on which the sun has set
23 06 2014The view across the Tebrau Strait at 7 am on 21 June 2014, as seen from the seawall at Kampong Wak Hassan, an area that hosted a village by the sea , on which the sun has long set.
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Tags: Dawn, Kampong Wak Hassan, Photography, Sembawang, Singapore, Sun, Sunrise, The Rising Sun, The Song of the Morning, Wak Hassan Sunrise
Categories : Forgotten Places, Nature, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises
At the end of the storm, there’s a golden sky …
19 06 20147.01 am, 18 June 2014. The new National Stadium at Kallang, set to host its first event this weekend, is seen against the colours of the new day breaking through on a storm tossed morning.
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Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Kallang, Kallang Basin, National Stadium, Photography, Singapore, Singapore Sports Hub, Sunrise
Categories : Architecture, Architecture, Kallang, Photography Series, Singapore, Sunrises
Dawn of the new Kallang
10 06 2014A view of the soon to be opened new National Stadium from across the Kallang River at dawn – the dawn perhaps of a new “Kallang Roar”. The stadium, part of the newly redeveloped Singapore Sports Hub, is a long overdue replacement for the much-loved old National Stadium, which came down in 2010. The old stadium, was where the much feared “Kallang Roar” was born in, the collective noise that was heard from the cheers, chants and stamping of feet when as much as 70,000 packed the stadium during the days of the Malaysia Cup. The stadium, which features a retractable roof, will open its doors on the weekend of 21/22 June when it hosts its first event, the World Cup 10s Rugby.
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Tags: Dawn, Kallang, Kallang River, Malaysia Cup, Merdeka Bridge, National Stadium, National Stadium Demolition, Photography, Singapore, Singapore Sports Hub, Sunrise
Categories : Architecture, Changing Landscapes, Kallang, Photography Series, Singapore, Singapore Architecture
Early light over the strait
8 06 2014Another long exposure. This time to capture the early light over the Straits of Johor through another rain coloured morning, at 6.22 am on 7 June 2014.
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Tags: Clouds, Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Early Light, Johor Strait, Kampong Wak Hassan, Nature, Northern Singapore, Photography, Rain, Reflections, Sea, Sembawang, Singapore, Sky, Straits of Johor, Sunrise, Tebrau Strait
Categories : Forgotten Places, Nature, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises
Strange Horizons: Snake Island at dawn through the darkness of the storm
2 06 2014The eastward view from a location off Terumbu Pempang Laut, a patch reef between Pulau Bukom and Pulau Sudong in the Straits of Singapore, at 6.45 am on the first of June. The view sees the silhouettes of Shell’s Ethylene cracker plant at its Bukom petrochemical complex in the band of the light coloured by the sun’s rising under the shadow of the storm darkened sky. The plant, an addition to Shell’s Bukom petrochemical complex in 2010, sits on what is actually the expanded island of Pulau Ular (which translates as Snake Island), southwest of Pulau Bukom Besar. The island is now joined by reclamation to Pulau Bukom Kechil to its east and Pulau Busing to its west and is connected to Pulau Bukom Besar by bridge.
Shell’s association with Pulau Bukom (Besar), goes back to the 1890s when kerosene storage facilities were first established on the island. A refinery, which was to herald the start of Singapore’s thrust into the the oil refining business – Singapore is now among the world’s top three export refining centres, was completed in 1961.
Shell’s expansion into Pulau Bukom Kechil began in the 1970s and displaced the 200o or so inhabitants who were on the island at the end of the 1960s. In both instances, the development required land to be reclaimed from coastal reefs and mangroves as well as the islands’ hilly terrains to be flattened.
Pulau Bukom was the location of a failed terrorist attack in 1974. Mounted by a team of four from the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian intending to blow up oil storage facilities on the island, the aim of what has come to be known as the Laju Incident (the Laju was the ferry that the terrorists hijacked in an attempt to escape), was to disrupt supplies to U.S. supported forces in South Vietnam. More on the incident can be found at the National Library’s Singapore Infopedia page: Laju Hijacking.
Shell’s complex at Pulau Bukom, which incidentally is the Anglo-Dutch company’s largest refinery complex, was in more recent times the scene of a massive fire. The fire burned for some 32 hours on 28 and 29 September 2011 before it was extinguished. The fire, although confined to a small area, caused a huge disruption to the complex’s operations and resulted in a huge financial loss to the company.
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Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Darkness and Light, Dawn, Islands, Offshore, Patch Reef, Photography, Pulau Bukom, Pulau Bukom Besar, Pulau Bukom Kechil, Pulau Busing, Pulau Ular, Sea, Seascape, Singapore, Singapore Strait, Southern Islands, Storm, Storm Clouds, Straits of Singapore, Sunrise, Terumbu Pempang Laut, Unseen Singapore
Categories : Forgotten Places, Islands, New Singapore, Photography Series, Singapore, Strange Horizons
Colours of dawn 31 May 2014
31 05 2014Colours of dawn, 6.31 am, 31 May 2014, as seen at the unmanicured beach of Kampong Wak Hassan.
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Tags: Beach, Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Kampong Wak Hassan, Northern Singapore, Photography, Quiet Moments, Seaside, Sembawang, Shoreline, Singapore, Straits of Johor, Sunrise, Tebrau Strait
Categories : Nature, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises
Singapore Landscapes: the tortoise in the early light of day
5 05 2014It was in the soft light of a storm washed morning on the first of May that I found myself taking in the quiet beauty of less visited part of Singapore, an island, Kusu Island, just 15 minutes away by boat from mainland Singapore. The island is one I have not set eyes on since the days of my youth, the last I did see of it would have been some three decades ago, when reclamation had already expanded it.
The island has been one that has been the subject of many tales from the past. Taking on the shape of a tortoise or turtle when the tide came in – it had been a pair of rocky outcrops set on a reef that were separated at high tide, with the smaller of the two outcrops resembling a head, and the larger mound, the body; legend does have it as having been a turtle that turned into an island in the act of rescuing shipwrecked sailors from the sea.
The legend is one connected with a annual pilgrimage that the island hosts during the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar when the sleepy island sees hundreds of thousands of Taoist devotees from the mainland who visit to pay homage at the island’s Tua Peh Kong temple (set on the smaller outcrop) and also the island’s three keramats (on the mound). The tradition is thought to go back to the days before Raffles arrived (see: “Before the Days of Raffles” – article on The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884-1942), 19 October 1932, Page 7) and draws some 100,000 to 200,000 visitors over the pilgrimage month.

A postcard of Kusu Island at low tide, showing the smaller rocky outcrop on which the Tua Peh Kong Temple is, from the larger side (posted by Yun Xin on the Facebook Group ‘On a little street in Singapore’).

A view of the temple seen today with Lazarus Island across the channel.
The sight of Kusu during the pilgrimage must certainly be an amazing one – especially in days before the reclamation of the early 1970s provided more room for the mass of visitors – the reclamation saw some 270,000 cubic metres of sand filled into the sea and provided Kusu with an additional 7.3 ha. of land area (on top of the original 1.2 ha.) with swimming (two lagoons) and picnicking facilities added.

Conservationists at work.
That sight was, however, not the same one that I did get of Kusu in the early light. I had gone over with a group of Marine Conservationists, who were kind enough to allow Juria and me (we are both attempting to document memories of the coastline and the islands as part of a IrememberSG project, Points of Departure) to tag along. The timing of the journey, which had us embarking a boat at Marina South Pier at 5 in the morning, had been timed to bring the group led by Ria Tan (many will be familiar with her Wild Shores of Singapore site) to the island at low tide. As I was experimenting with capturing sounds of the shoreline after the brief Sumatra squall had passed, the group was threading through the flats and reefs exposed by the shallow water of the western lagoon and beyond the rock bund to document marine life in and around what is a regenerated reef that I never realised was there. You can see what the group did manage to find on Ria’s post “How is Kusu Island doing?“.

Another view of the northern lagoon at dawn.
Sitting on the bund, I did, for a brief moment, find myself transported faraway in time, to a Singapore I once was familiar with. It didn’t take long however, before the sounds of the sea were punctured by the drone of jets flying above and I noticed the illuminated wheel and adjacent to it the unmistakable paraphernalia of the modern city looming on the horizon. It was then that I heard the chatter of my companions for the morning, busy at work, bringing me back to where I was in time and space.
I have for long, longed to be transported to a childhood sea. And while I do know that sea is one I will never again see, I do at least have moments such as these to look forward to and be thankful for; moments, that in a world I can not longer feel for, is able to bring a sense of peace that might otherwise elude me.
Information on Kusu Island, including newspaper articles with illustrations of what it did once look like can be found in the following links:
- Kusu Island (infopedia)
- The Straits Times, 30 October 1950, Page 7 (showing the temple at high tide) during the annual pilgrimage
- The Straits Times, 10 January 1980, Page 8 (showing the temple and swimming lagoon)
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Tags: Dawn, Kusu Island, Landscapes, Morning, Photographs, Photography, Points of Departure, Singapore, Singapore Landscapes, Singapore Landscapes to Celebrate, Southern Islands
Categories : Islands, Photography Series, Reminders of Yesterday, Singapore, Singapore Landscapes
Sunrise over a crossroad
21 09 20136.51am 9 September 2013. Rays of the rising sun stream over a part of Singapore which will very soon change. The area at the crossroads of Sembawang Road and Canberra Link will see new Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats coming up, their completion estimated around late 2016, early 2017.
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Tags: Changing Landscapes, Colors of Sunrise, Dawn, Photography, Singapore, Sun Rays, Sunrise
Categories : Nature, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises
Singapore’s northern lights
27 07 20136.42 am 27 July 2013. The lightening sky at dawn is coloured by the bright lights cast from Sembawang Shipyard at which ship repair work goes on through the night. The two rows of ships and floating docks which can be seen are tied-up along a finger pier which is probably the northern most extension from Singapore. The shipyard, and previously the naval dockyard of the former British naval base which was turned over to Singapore in 1968, has been a feature in the area since 1938. Under a Land Use Plan released early this year, the yard will be moving out to free the land it now occupies for future development, cutting one of the last links the area has with its past.
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Tags: Dawn, Finger Pier, Lights, Low Light Photography, Northernmost Point, Photograph, Photography, Sembawang, Sembawang Shipyard, Shipyard, Singapore, Straits of Johor, Sunrise, Tebrau Strait
Categories : Forgotten Places, Reminders of Yesterday, Sembawang, Singapore
Dawn in the new world
26 07 20136.38 am on 23 July 2013. The colours of the breaking day illuminate the icons of the new Singapore, which the Merlion probably best represents. The body of water, Marina Bay, now a reservoir of fresh water, had once been the sea where the inner harbour, the Inner Roads, once fed Singapore with its immigrants and with goods from east and west , the foundation on which Singapore’s early success was built upon.
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Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Marina Bay, Marina Bay Sands, Marina Bay Sunrise, Merlion, Mornings, Photography, Quiet Moments, Singapore, Sunrise
Categories : Architecture, Collyer Quay, Forgotten Places, Marina Bay, New Landscapes, New Singapore, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Singapore, Sunrises
Colours of the morning, 24 July 2013
25 07 2013The colours of the sunrise seen at 6.47 am from a wild and forgotten shore along which I find quiet moments on many a morning.
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Tags: Beach, Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Kampong Wak Hassan, Mornings, Natural Beach, Nature, Photography, Quiet Moments, Seascapes, Singapore, Sunrise
Categories : Nature, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore, Sunrises
Monoscapes: Dawn of a new world
19 07 2013Seen against the light of dawn by the Tebrau or Johor Strait is a fence at the beach in Sembawang. More recently erected, it marked, for some reason, a long discarded boundary between what used to be a huge British naval base, vacated in 1971 and the area to its east, once occupied by coastal villages, the last of which was cleared in the later half of the 1990s. The fence came down two weeks ago, coinciding with the completion of “renewal” work at Sembawang Park which was developed at the end of the 1970s on the eastern edge of the former base. For long spared from the huge wave of development that has swept across much of the island of Singapore, the Sembawang area is in the midst of change as new public housing and luxury private residential developments in the area will transform what was an area with a well known laid-back feel and old world charm into another well populated and overly manicured neighbourhood in new Singapore.
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Tags: Beach, Black and White, Changing Landscapes, Dawn, Kampong Wak Hassan, Monoscapes, Naval Base, Photography, Sembawang, Sembawang Beach, Sembawang Park, Singapore, Sunrise
Categories : Forgotten Places, Monoscapes, New Singapore, Photography Series, Reminders of Yesterday, Sembawang, Singapore
The Bench through the rain
11 07 2013A view of The Bench through the rain with the colours of the rising of the sun in the backdrop at 7.06 am on 9 July 2013. The Bench is very much a part of the scene along the top of an old seawall that used to belong to Kampong Wak Hassan at the end of Sembawang Road. That it is there, under the cool shade of a tree, is a mystery. Nobody does seem to know why it is there or who it had belonged to. It does serve to connect us with the kampong (now spelt kampung) or village which might otherwise be forgotten. The village was one of the last of the villages which one featured across much of rural Singapore to be cleared in 1998. More information on the village can be found on a previous post Monoscapes: Kampong Wak Hassan beach. The beach along the seawall is also one of the last natural sandy beaches left in Singapore and serves as a welcome escape for me from the overly urbanised landscape of modern Singapore (see: The song of a forgotten shore).
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Tags: Beach, Changing Landscapes, Coastal Areas, Coastal Villages, Dawn, Escapes, Forgotten Places, Landscapes, Lost Places, Natural Beach, Northern Coast, Old Singapore, Photography, Sea, Seashore, Seaside, Sembawang Beach, Singapore
Categories : Forgotten Places, Parks and Gardens, Photography Series, Quiet Moments, Reminders of Yesterday, Sembawang, Singapore, The Bench
Welcoming the first of May
3 05 2013It is for this treat that was a most beautiful welcome to the new day that I am glad that I resisted the urge to have a sleep-in on the first of May – despite having arrived back in Singapore late the night before.

6.35 am.

6.39 am.

6.43 am.

6.47 am.

6.59 am.

7.03 am.

7.06 am.

7.09 am.
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Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Kampong Wak Hassan, Photographs, Photography, Sembawang, Silhouettes, Singapore, Straits of Johor, Sunrise, The Rising Sun, Wak Hassan Beach
Categories : Nature, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore
Dawn of a new world
25 04 20136.58 am on 18 April 2013. Dawn breaks over an old world in Singapore in the midst of change – the former Seletar Airbase which is shedding its old world feel in embracing a new world – the Seletar Aerospace Park .
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Tags: Changing Landscapes, Colors of Sunrise, Dawn, Nature, New Singapore, Old Singapore, Photography, Seletar Aerospace Park, Seletar Airbase, Singapore, Sunrise
Categories : Forgotten Places, Nature, New Singapore, Seletar, Singapore
Monoscapes: Kampong Wak Hassan beach
2 04 2013What is possibly one of the last natural accessible stretches of sand along the coastline of the island of Singapore lies along the northern shoreline off Sembawang Park, stretching to the area off the former coastal villages of Kampong Wak Hassan and Kampong Tengah. Except for the attempt to “renew” the area around Sembawang Park which will result in it losing much of its previous charm, the shoreline in the area is one that is relatively untouched. Left in an almost natural state, the beach is one rich in character and in which the memories of a world that has ceased to exist can still be found. With property developments gaining pace in the area, it probably will not be long before the memories provided by the old but falling seawall and the natural beach, are paved over in the same way much of our previously beautiful coastline has. Until then, it is one of the few places close to a world I would otherwise find hard to remember, in which I can find a rare escape from the concretised world that Singapore has too quickly become.
About the former Kampong Wak Hassan:
The former village (kampong or kampung as it is spelt today), was one of several coastal villages that were found just to the east of Sembawang Road and the former British Naval Base, running along the coastline to Tanjong Irau at the mouth of Sungei Simpang. While the coastline played host to the nomadic inhabitants of the Straits of Johor, the Orang Laut, specifically the Orang Seletar, the kampong, stands as the oldest of the settlements in the stretch.
The village came to the location after work to build the huge naval base which ran along the northern coast from what is today Sembawang Road west to to the Causewayin the late 1920s displaced the the original Kampong Wak Hassan which grew from a coconut grove founded by Wak Hassan bin Ali at the original mouth of Sungei Sembawang (the area just west of what is today Sembawang Shipyard) in the 1914 (being granted rights by the Straits Settlements’ Commissioner of Lands to the use of the land stretching from the mouth of the river to Westhill Estate – which became Chong Pang Village).
While the base did provide residents of the village with employment opportunities, most of the villagers who may have originally been employed in rubber plantations which once occupied the lands around the coast and in the coconut groves, were involved in fishing.
The village besides being the oldest in the area, was also the longest lasting. While most of the inhabitants of the other villages were resettled at the end of the 1980s, the last inhabitants of Kampong Wak Hassan only moved out as recently as in 1998.
Previous posts related to Kampong Wak Hassan and the greater Sembawang area:
- 13 Feb 2012: A final frontier
- 25 Dec 2012 : The largest dock east of the Suez
- 24 Aug 2012 : A memory of a forgotten time
- 16 Jul 2012 : Last post standing
- 29 Mar 2011 : Sembawang beyond the slumber
A place to greet the new day:
- 30 Mar 2013 : A sunrise to remember
- 9 Feb 2013 : Sunrise over a world the sun may soon set on
- 30 Jan 2013 : Another Wak Hassan sunrise
- 30 Jan 2013 : Mornings far from the madding crowds
- 20 Dec 2012 : Two December’s Sunrises
- 1 Nov 2012 : The sun sets as dawn breaks
- 17 Aug 2012 : Sailing off into the sunrise
- 9 Aug 2012 : The sun rises on independent Singapore’s 47th birthday
- 2 Aug 2012 : Varying moods of a most beautiful place
- 24 Jul 2012 : A new morning, a new joy
- 25 Jun 2012 : The joy of the morning
- 22 Jun 2012 : A face in the cloud
- 7 Jun 2012 : The sun rises in the north
- 31 May 2012 : The song of a forgotten shore
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Tags: Beach, Black and White, Changing Landscapes, Coastal Areas, Coastal Villages, Dawn, History, Landscapes, Local History, Monoscapes, Natural Beach, Northern Coast, Photography, Sea, Seashore, Seaside, Sembawang Beach, Singapore, Singapore History
Categories : Coastal Areas, Forgotten Places, Nature, Quiet Moments, Reminders of Yesterday, Sembawang, Singapore
Sunrise on a day some said the sun would not rise
22 12 20127.04am 21 December 2012. Sunrise over the Straits of Johor.
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Tags: Colours of Sunrise, Dawn, Nature, Photograph, Photography, Quiet Moments, Sunrise
Categories : Forgotten Places, Nature, Quiet Moments, Sembawang, Singapore