51 photographs taken in Singapore that will take you away from Singapore

Singapore, in its 51st year of independence is sold to the world as an ultra modern metropolis and a shopping and culinary paradise. It is the icons of the new age, such as the futuristic looking Gardens by the Bay and Marina Bay Sands, that now leap out from our tourist brochures and a common perception of Singapore is that it is one huge shopping mall. There is however much more to Singapore that goes practically unnoticed, including these 51 sights of Singapore that one would possibly not associate immediately with Singapore:

(1) The woods at Upper Peirce Reservoir.

(2) Terumbu Semakau, a patch reef off Pulau Semakau, in the moonlight.

(3) Pulau Jong, the last untouched southern island, seen at low-tide.

(4) The green housing area of the former Naval Base at Sembawang.

(5) The ‘spinning tops’ off Tampines Road.

(6) The gateway into a lost world at the former Kampong Tengah in Sembawang.

(7) The secret lake at Bukit Gombak (the disused Seng Chew Granite quarry).

(8) The light at the end of the tunnel to a lost world under Clementi Road.

(9) The western reaches of the lost railway.

(10) Tanjong Merawang, Tuas, with a view towards Malaysia and Indonesia.

(11) The pier at Sungei Pandan.

(12) The mangrove forest at Sungei Khatib Bongsu.

(13) The flats of Beting Bronok, a designated nature area off Pulau Tekong, seen at first light.

(14) A sandbar at the Terembu Pandan with a view to the container terminal at Pasir Panjang.

(15) A tributary of Sungei Kranji, near the Jalan Gemala nature area.

(16) A view across Terembu Pempang Laut, a submerged reef four nautical miles from Singapore’s southern coast.

(17) The last Malay kampung at Pulau Ubin.

(18) The petrochemical complex on Pulau Ular as seen from Beting Pempang (the silhouettes in the foreground are of trees on Pulau Hantu).

(19) The intertidal flats of Pulau Semakau.

(20) The greens of the Bukit Course as seen from the western shores of MacRitchie Reservoir.

(21) The kampong mosque, Masjid Omar Salmah, at the site of the former Kampong Jantai.

(22) The magical (and some say haunted) Jalan Mempurong.

(23) The western shores of MacRitchie Reservoir.

(24) A stream at the former Lorong Halus landfill, close to where Kampong Beremban once was.

(25) A pre-war outpost on southern slopes of Pasir Panjang (Kent) Ridge.

(26) A trough belonging to the demolished Syonan Jinja Shinto shrine in the MacRithcie forest.

(27) The wooded oasis found at the grounds of the former Bidadari Muslim Cemetery.

(28) The sand store at the construction aggregates receiving terminal at Pulau Punggol Timor.

(29) A view through the woods at Little Guilin.

(30) Mangroves at Pulau Hantu.

(31) One sister to another – across the channel between the two Sisters Islands.

(32) The swimming lagoon on Big Sisters Island.

(33) The last rural sundry shop, Tee Seng Store. It has been in the hands of its proprietor, Mr Ang, for some six decades.

(34) The illuminated towers of the petrochemical complex at Pulau Ular dwarfing the observer at the edge of the fringing reef at Pulau Hantu Besar.

(35) A newly established Hindu shrine behind the Wei To Temple on Pulau Ubin.

(36) A Tibetan Buddhist shrine at the Wei To Temple on Pulau Ubin.

(37) A below ground shelter and storage complex at a 1930s 9.2″ gun battery.

(38) The view up a deep escape shaft of a pre-war Command Bunker located some 20 metres underground.

(39) Exposed parts of the Jurong Rock Formation seen on Pulau Jong.

(40) The violin, Pulau Biola a.k.a. Rabbit Island close to the southern reaches of Singapore’s territorial waters.

(41) The cliff faces of Tanjong Tajam at the western end of Pulau Ubin.

(42) A sandbar at the Cyrene Reefs.

(43) The calm before the storm – Lower Seletar Reservoir.

(44) Light and shadow – Sembawang Shipyard and the Beaulieu Jetty.

(45) Bukit Brown Municipal Cemetery

(46) MacRitchie Reservoir near the Syonan Jinja.

(47) Remnants of the Jurong Line near Clementi.

(48) Another of MacRitchie Reservoir.

(49) The Straits of Johor at Sembawang.

(50) Masjid Petempatan Melayu at Sembawang and its 6 decade old rubber tree.

(51) Changi Beach.

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The fast fading ghosts of Ghost Island

The search for the ghosts of times forgotten takes me to some fascinating places. One place I found myself in recently was an island whose name hints of quite a haunted past, Pulau Hantu – Malay for Ghost Island. Long held with much superstition, why the island, which has remained uninhabited in recent memory, possesses its rather sinister sounding name seems to have been lost on many.

Dawn over an island abandoned by its ghosts.

One theory about how it got its name is that much of the island (when seen at low tide) seems to vanish like a ghost in the night with the rising tide, leaving no more than two coconut tree lined sandbars above the water. While that is quite plausible, it lacks the mystery and forbidding that many would think is more deserving of the title.

Less than ghostly apparitions … across the channel at Pulau Ular

A 1939 newspaper article written about stories and superstitions of old Malaya does provide a more disquieting take on the origins of the island’s name, attributing it to Pulau Hantu’s haunting by spirits of the dead connect to a “long forgotten story of death and cruelty”, revealing some of the superstition with which the island was held by the people of the coast:

Pulau Hantu, though planted with coconuts, has no one living on it. There is no water to be got there by digging, but that is not the reason for no one desiring to live there.  In the centre of the place are to be found many graves, and there is some long-forgotten story of death and cruelty which makes the place haunted by the spirits of these unfortunate people, so that it is but seldom visited by the Malays, and then only to collect ripe coconuts, which are the property of a man on the next island, to which one can wade at very low tides.

(More Stories And Superstitions Of Old Malaya: Tales related by an old Malay to “Yahya”, The Straits Times, 9 April 1939)

An are of mangroves on the northern shore of Pulau Hantu Besar.

The island, or as it is more commonly taken to be today, two islands, Pulau Hantu Besar and Pulau Hantu Kechil, has since expanded in size. Additional land mass through reclamation work in the 1970s, enlarged its total area by some 12 times. While there may have been a reluctance to visit it amongst the people of the sea, it has actually long been known as a spot for recreation, and its sandy beaches and rich coral reefs have attracted many picnic goers and campers as well as divers as far back as the early twentieth century. Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC), under whose charge the two islands have come under since the mid 1970s, continues to keep the islands open for recreational activities.

The view across the lagoon between the two parts to Pulau Hantu towards Pulau Ular.

It is perhaps in keeping with the SDC sanctioned version of the tale behind the islands’ names that sees the two parts to the island being considered as two individuals islets. This version has as much to to with the spirits dwelling on the islands as with the tale told by the old Malay in 1939, as it has with jinns and sea spirits, fitting quite nicely into the collection of stories once told of our seemingly turbulent seas.

Another view by night across the lagoon – towards the smoking guns across at Pulau Ular.

I am reminded of this coming ashore on Pulau Hantu Besar. This version of the tale is what all visitors are confronted with at the inshore end of the jetties on both islands, told from a prominently placed signboard marked with these words:

There were once two great warriors locked in a fierce battle at sea. Many people died and the blue seas slowly became polluted with human blood, upsetting the Jinns at the bottom of the ocean. In anger, one powerful Jinn created a whirlpool and sucked the two warriors deep into the sea to drown them. Undeterred, they continued their battle.

Suddenly, the Jinn sprayed water onto one of them. The other warrior, seeing his opponent blinded, thrust his sword into his abdomen. At the same time, the wounded warrior forced his sword into the other man. Both collapsed and died.

The gods felt it was wrong for the seas’ spirits to interfere in human affairs, so the Jinn transformed the two warriors into islets so that their spirits could live on. As one of the warriors was smaller than the other, his islet was known as Pulau Hantu Kecil, while the larger one was named Pulau Hantu Besar.

Wandering around the shores of Pulau Hantu Besar, just a few hours past the witching hour, I am confronted not by jinns, sea spirits or ghosts but by the glare of the gods of the new age. It is from the angry stare of smoking chimneys and lighted towers of steel that now rise to the island’s north that the jinns and sea spirits have retreated, leaving only footprints fading in the sand. With no more shadows left to hide in, it is in the echoes that we find the the ghosts of Pulau Hantu, echoes in which I can only hear, the evanescing whispers of words that will soon lose their meaning.

The angry glare of the gods of the new age.

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The islands of many ghosts:

Singapore’s islands, rich in the legends of a time we have been made to forget, have many fascinating tales to tell; hints of which are found in the names of many of the islands. The islands were once an integral part of a larger maritime based society that spanned across the Riau archipelago that through the enforcement of national boundaries, resettlement, reclamation and development, have broken their links to a centuries old past.

Among the tales that have survived the self-inflicted amnesia is that of the junk that was turned into the island of Pulau Jong, Junk Island, although it may not be for very much longer. The course that has been set for the junk, based on the 2013 Land Use Plan,  will set it on collision course with a larger land mass that will have it aground by the year 2030.

Several islands, having been renamed, have also lost their ghosts. One that comes to mind is the former Pulau Penyabong (now Pulau Tekukor), where warriors were said to have dueled to the death. That tale also features Tekukor’s northern companion, the former Pulau Blakang Mati, which in being re-branded as Sentosa – the isle of Peace and Tranquility, has been cleansed of what is possibly a gory past.

The islands that are the subject of this post, Pulau Hantu, were, interestingly not alone in being so named. The other Pulau Hantu, is to be found in Keppel Harbour (see post: A Sunrise from Ghost Island) and having had its ghost exorcised in 1983 after Keppel Shipyard gained possession of it, is now called Keppel Island. Keppel shipyard has since moved away from the area and the island is now where the Marina @ Keppel Bay is located.

The Pulau Hantu, or I should say Pulau-pulau Hantu, I found myself looking for ghosts on, are located in the south-west, just south of a more recently created island that has fused the previously individual islands of Pulau Bukom Kechil, Pulau Ular, and Pulau Busing – on which a petrochemical complex is being developed, together.

Apart from the hantu found in their names, there is little that is now ghostly about the islands. A popular dive spot, the islands are also where campers and fishermen, seeking an escape from the urban world, can head to. While the surreal glow from the monster of a petrochemical complex on Pulau Ular brightening up the northern shores of the two islands may not be what a camper seeking an escape might appreciate, the islands are probably as far out from urban Singapore one could practically run off to, while still remaining in Singapore.

More information on Pulau Hantu (Besar and Kechil), as well as the rich array of marine life found in its reefs can be found at the following links:

Sisters’ Islands and Pulau Hantu (Sentosa Leisure Management)

The Hantu Bloggers

A special National Day at Pulau Hantu! (Wildshores of Singapore)

Lionfish on Lion City’s birthday at Pulau Hantu!

Sea the hidden depths of Singapore (Asia One)

The view across the inter-tidal mud flat towards what would once have been Pulau Busing.

A different ghost in the night.

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Magical Landscapes: Spain, north of the plain

A view from the backseat of a car of the landscape in the plains of the far north of Castile and León. The photograph was taken on a road trip around the north of Spain in late October 2011. The region is where some of the well-trodden pilgrim pathways of El Camino de Santiago  – the UNESCO World Heritage listed ancient pilgrimage routes of the Way of St. James, passes through, taking pilgrims on journey that is blessed with some truly magical landscapes as well as places en route that are a joy to discover.

The pilgrimage, which dates back to 9th century A.D. sees pilgrims walking hundreds of kilometres (some routes do involve distances of as much as a thousand kilometres) along several routes leading to the sacred destination of Santiago de Compostela in the far northwest of Spain, the shortest of which is just over a hundred kilometres to venerate St. James (Santiago in Spanish) the Great – one of the twelve apostles. It is in a crypt in the city’s cathedral, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, that what is believed to be the relics of the saint, is housed.

Singapore Landscapes: the tortoise in the early light of day

It 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.

Low tide in the northern swimming lagoon.

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 swimming lagoon at low tide in the light of dawn.

The incoming storm – the approaching Sumatra.

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)

Singapore Landscapes: A pathway to the divine

It is a magical pathway on which one makes a journey in the search of the divine, the lost and almost forgotten Divine Bridge. The pathway that leads up to the area where the bridge once stood, traces a route by the water’s edge at MacRitchie Reservoir, and in doing so, passes through an area that offers some of the prettiest views of water, trees and space that Singapore does have. Part of the landscape is dominated by the manicured greens of one of the golf courses at what is the Bukit location of the Singapore Island Country Club (SICC). It is at this location, where the SICC will return one of the two courses it operates to the government for use as a public course in 2021 when its lease expires. A paved public walkway now runs by the course close to the water’s edge, leading up to the area where what does remain of the Divine Bridge, the wooden stumps that were once part of the columns supporting the bridge, can be seen.

Singapore Landscapes: the secret lake

While Singapore hasn’t quite been blessed with naturally beautiful landscapes, there are several areas in which the intervention of man, has created places that are a joy to behold. One such place is the former Seng Chew Granite Quarry, nestled in a forested area well hidden from view. The former quarry is in the same area as the former Gammon Quarry, which has since become known as Little Guilin, on the slopes of Bukit Gombak.

The quarries at Bukit Gombak (which at 133 metres is Singapore’s second highest hill after Bukit Timah), were involved in the excavation of norite as granite (although they are not the same type of rocks). Norite in Singapore, concentrated in Bukit Gombak and Bukit Panjang and referred to as “Gombak Norite”, belong to some of Singapore’s oldest rock formations – thought to date back to the Palaeozoic age some 250 to 500 million years ago.

Left with hollows blasted that have been out of the rock formations, many disused quarries in Singapore,  have since become pools of water resembling lakes, giving us some rather pretty sights. Some such as Little Guilin, and the granite quarries on the slopes of Bukit Timah Hill, have since been incorporated into parks and are some of the more picturesque spots in Singapore. The former Seng Chew Granite Quarry however isn’t one, lying at present, abandoned and forgotten – although a glance at previous version of the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s previous master plans as well as the Singapore Land Authority’s onemap system seem to indicate the area’s planned use is for a park. However, this is uncertain as frequent landslides in the area may have put paid to any thoughts to do this – a nature trail, the Bukit Gombak Trail, in the area was permanently closed following frequent landslides in 2006.

Windows into Singapore: A world we soon may forget

A view from a block of new housing over to colonial bungalows that had once served as the somewhat grand residences of the senior officers of the British Admiralty stationed at the Naval Base in the north of Singapore. The base, which stretched from the old Seletar Road (which was renamed Sembawang Road in 1939) to where the causeway is, occupied some 2,300 acres or 930 ha. of land along the northern coastline. As was a feature of the British military bases set up in Singapore, generously sized bungalows as well as flats were built to serve as residences for the senior military personnel.

The rolling hills of the area around which the bulk of the housing was built, on the eastern fringes of the base, did provide a wonderful setting that was close to the sea for the residences to be built on. Well spaced apart around the area, the former residences are set in the openness of lush green yards that would even then have been a luxury only the more fortunate would have been able to enjoy. The spacious and airy bungalows of the senior Admiralty, many of which are still around today, are particularly impressive, built in a style typical of the purpose – many were of single storey design and set on on a stilted foundation to allow added ventilation in the oppressive heat of the tropics, as well as to keep snakes and termites out.

The beautiful setting in which the ‘black and white houses’ of Sembawang find themselves in.

These ‘black and white houses’ a term we in Singapore commonly use to refer to these bungalows due to their appearance (thought to be influenced by the Tudor revival movement that coincided with the first appearances of such bungalows in Singapore), are similar to those found other several areas in Singapore associated with former military bases. This includes the former RAF Seletar (Seletar Airbase) where 32 such bungalows are now slated for conservation at  (see: Straits Times report dated 11 Feb 2014).

Some 400 former residences including low-rise flats in the area were handed over to Singapore in 1971 when the British pulled their forces out. Many saw use by the ANZUK forces and later the New Zealand ForceSEA, with some currently used by the US Navy to house personnel based at the Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific (COMLOG WESTPAC) and the Navy Region Center Singapore (NRCS) at the former Naval Stores Basin. Several units are also being rented out by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).

The houses and the undulating and green landscape, provides the area not just with much of its laid back and somewhat old world charm, but also a feeling of space that is lacking in other parts of built-up Singapore. There is also that window the housing units, many of which came up during the construction the naval base in the 1930s, does also provide into a significant part of a past we might otherwise all too quickly forget.

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More on the Naval Base 

• The largest dock east of the Suez in the midst of a world that is to change
• Last post standing (a remnant of one of the main gates into the naval base)

A look at a ‘Black and White House’

• 21 Lewin Terrace

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Singapore landscapes: the view up north

In a Singapore which becoming increasingly dominated by towering blocks of concrete, it a always refreshing to be able to take in landscapes such as the one in this photograph. Landscapes such as this take us back to a time when we were truly a city in a garden, well before our urban planners decided to use that phrase to describe the vision of the next phase in the greening of Singapore.  Such landscapes, are to me, escapes which provide a sense of space we now lack in a Singapore that has become too cluttered. They are unfortunately fast being replaced in an overcrowded city state caught not just in a frenzy of urbanisation, but also of urbanising open spaces.

The photograph was taken in an area where the natural undulations which shaped much of the terrain around it have until now been preserved by what became of the land around it. The area was at the turn of the last century, one of plantations. The plantations made way when the land was acquired for the development of the huge naval base along the northern coastline in the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. While the part of the area seen in the photograph is not under immediate threat of development, it is one which does see many developments coming up around it, developments which will certainly alter an area still rich in charm and character. A huge change to it will possibly come when the nearby shipyard shuts its operations (as has been identified in the Ministry of National Development Land Use Plan issued earlier this year) freeing “new waterfront land” along the Sembawang coastline (see also A Final Frontier).

The Bench through the rain

A 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).

Black under blue

Another part of the former Portuguese colony of Macau which I was quite happy to discover was Hac Sa Beach ( 黑沙海灘), which translates into “Black Sand Beach” – so named because of its black volcanic sand,  on the island of Coloane. I visited it not so much for the beach but for lunch at a Hac Sa Beach institution, the Portuguese Restaurant Fernando’s, on a rain washed Friday during which the Tam Kong Festival was being celebrated on the island’s main village, Coloane Village. On what was mostly a grey day, the sky momentarily cleared to provide me with the gorgeous sight of the beach as it is best seen – under a bright blue sky.

Monoscapes: Moonlight on the Straits

Moonlight on the Straits of Johor, on a night of the full moon, as seen from Pulau Ubin. Pulau Ubin is a granite island off the north-east Singapore, which in its natural state was dominated by mangrove swamps, much of which were cleared at the end of the 19th century to allow farming, plantation and quarrying activities to be carried out on the island. Described as Singapore’s “last wilderness”, it is today better know as an escape from the highly urbanised main island of Singapore. It is also known for its Outward Bound School and for the wetland reserve at Chek Jawa on its south-eastern tip.

It was back in the 1980s that I first set foot on the island, joining friends on several overnight excursions around the island. Then, it played host to villages by the sea and fish farms, and its coastline was marked by boats and wooden jetties. Most have since disappeared, with just a small cluster of village houses close to where the jetty at which bumboats from the main island call at. The island, for which has been identified as a reserve for possible future housing development, was also where former a political detainee, Mr Lee Tee Tong was confined to after his release in February 1980. Lee was a former Barisan Socialis Assemblyman who was arrested during a crackdown on left-wing trade union activists under Operation Pechah in October 1963. In June 1978, some 131 Vietnamese Boat People, refugees who made the perilous escape from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon by boat up to the end of the 1970s, landed on the island. The island together with the neighbouring military training island of Pulau Tekong, is possibly the last habitat for the critically endangered Leopard Cat in Singapore.

Monoscapes: Mount Balwang

The landscape at the top of Mount Balwang, Yongpyong, South Korea in winter. The peak at 1458 metres above sea level is accessible via cable-car from Yongpyong. The mountain is part of the Baekdudaegan mountain range which runs down almost the length of the Korean Peninsula.

Monoscapes: Kampong Wak Hassan beach

What 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.

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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.

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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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