I am starting off my 2015 travels tonight. Finally putting a long weekend to good use, I intend to spend the next three days in Macau and fly in to Singapore on Monday for a week. I am pretty kicked about it but there’s a nagging voice in my head saying this isn’t how it was supposed to be.
Here’s the background to that.
Some years ago, I was reading Alistair MacLean’s South By Java Head and was immediately captivated with the story. It remains one of my favourite books to this day. The 1958-published book depicts the horrors suffered by Singapore at the hands of the Japanese army during the peak of the Second World War and follows a bunch of very interesting and intriguing characters on their escape boat to safety on the South China Sea.
Reading the terrible fate of Singapore during the Second World War and comparing its position in the world today really showed me what nations can do if they really put their minds into achieving greatness. The fact that India and Singapore were both British strongholds also added to the allure of the story for me.
I remember checking the maps and deciding to take the same route when I visit Singapore. In my mind, I would arrive in Singapore from Malaysia and then take a ferry to Indonesia to continue on my South East Asia adventure that I had planned would last a year. The ferries are priced attractively at around Rs 2000 one-way too. All in all, it was my way of paying tribute to the novel as well as experiencing ferry travel between international waters.
Rather unimaginatively in comparison, I am flying everywhere this time around. To Hong Kong (more on that later), Singapore and back to Bombay.
There’s one more reason I wanted to take the ferry. I find cities like Singapore and Dubai a little too sanitised for my liking. Of course, this is a broad generalisation that I should not be making before visiting these places but there’s enough stuff out there to prove that Singapore will run efficiently and everything will pass off without a hiccup because that’s what the country takes pride in.
Be it the outrageous attractions on Sentosa or its world-famous zoos and gardens, everything also seems designed to make families feel secure and entertained. Whether or not this translates to great travel for a single backpacker like me remains to be seen but I wouldn’t bet highly on it especially when other bloggers write about ‘secret places’ that offer an escape from regular attractions.
I was really expecting to catch up with Greg, my friend in Singapore who I had met in Vietnam. But he’s back travelling in South East Asia so my one chance of actually having local experience help me out has fizzled as well.
In the larger scheme of things, these are all minor quibbles. I know that many people would kill to spend any time in places that I will go to and having the adventures that I am looking forward to. It’s just that the small voice at the back of my head telling me that this will perhaps not be the greatest trip of my life. I hope I can prove it wrong.
Ahoy to Singapore!
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(Cover image from Flickr. Ferry map courtesy of www.holidaycity.com)
