May 20, 2015
Return to Singapore: The southern-most point in continental Asia
Strange how an hour on a boat can transport you between two such different places, although rarely do international borders lead to such a sharp contrast as that found between the rough-and-tumble of Indonesia, and the clean and comfortable island of Singapore. I wondered how Tom was going to adjust as he stood in the line for customs with nobody paying him any attention beyond giving him a wide berth and discreetly covering their noses. No longer was Tom going to be the centre of attention, at least not the positive attention he had got in Indonesia. But I need not have worried. He reacted to it very well. Here’s a photo of him straight after customs:
Culture shock was further enhanced when the first thing that we did in Singapore was cycle over to the island of Sentosa. I wanted to go and take a photo with a sign that Andy had told me marked the end of Asia, and so we cycled over on the boardwalk rather than taking the road bridge. Unbeknownst to me the boardwalk only led directly into an adventure theme land type place with fake caves and cliffs and palaces and all sorts of fancy and crazy fantasy things that literally could not have been any more different from Indonesia. “How long were we on that boat?” I joked as we walked amongst the throngs of tourists in this surreal alternative universe.
We tore ourselves back to reality and headed back to take the road to explore the rest of the island. I knew roughly where the sign that we wanted was and we found our way to the beach where another bridge would take us to an even smaller island where we could find the sign. Now Andy had also mentioned that it was not allowed to cycle across the bridge but if we were quick we could nip over and snap a photo. What he failed to mention was that the bridge was a narrow rope bridge that it was very difficult to pass people on should one be traversing it with a large loaded bicycle. But after barging enough tourists out of the way we made it to the island and found the sign.
We were both so happy to get cool photos next to the sign marking the southernmost point of continental Asia that neither of us very much minded the fact that it clearly wasn’t actually the southernmost point of continental Asia. Sentosa obviously stretched on further south, we could see that with our own eyes, but whatever, cool photo right?
There were two tall wooden towers on the island and so we thought, given the trouble we’d gone through to get here, we should run up to the top of them. From the top platform the towers gave a reasonable view of the bridge, and out to sea, and of the bit of continental Asia that was more southern than the southernmost point of continental Asia signpost. There was also a CCTV camera at the top. I took a cool picture of it with the nice scenery in the background. It was some sort of artistic impression of the freedom of the island contrasting with the idea that in Singapore there is always someone watching you. And after I took the photo of it, the camera moved, following me as I moved around the platform. Point proven?
Next we cycled to the Tree In Lodge hostel and met S.K. again, the guy who had been so helpful to me during my last visit to Singapore. My plan was to drop Tom off here, apologise, and then go and stay with a couchsurfing host across the city. I would have invited Tom to stay with the couchsurfer too, but something about the obsessive cleanliness of Singaporeans told me that inviting Tom into a Singaporean home might not be a good idea for anyone involved. In fact Tom had told me a funny story from earlier in his trip, which involved him arriving in Tehran with two other cyclists and meeting up with a couchsurfing host at an agreed meeting point. The plan was for them to follow the host in his car to his family home, but instead the guy drove off very fast and they lost him. A minute later they got a text message from him saying he was sorry but they were just too filthy to bring into his mother’s house.
Things didn’t go to plan for me either though. I set off cycling towards my host’s house but then noticed the time and realised that I was still on Indonesian time. In Singapore it was an hour later than I thought it was, and I was already late for my scheduled rendezvous with my host. So I went back to the hostel, called the guy and in the end it worked better to postpone my arrival until the next night, and so I spent a night at the Tree In Lodge. It was alright though, because it was a great hostel, with half price rates for cyclists, and the evening was quite entertaining. There was another cyclist staying, a Frenchman on a recumbent, and Tom had bought a bottle of champagne sparkling wine at the imaginatively named Bottles&Bottles earlier, in order to celebrate reaching Singapore, and the southernmost point of continental Asia. Almost.
Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 40,848 km (25,367 miles)
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