Notes From an Even Smaller Island Read online

  Staring at me intensely as if he were Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro’s character in Taxi Driver, he lowered his voice. ‘If you get sick, don’t go to government hospitals because they’ll kill you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind what illness you have, if you go government hospital, you will not come out alive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have a friend who is a doctor. I cannot tell you his name but he told me this so I know it’s true. If you are healthy and go to hospital with a little illness, they will cut your organs in a private room and you will die.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The government sells the organs to rich people all over Asia.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For big money. How you think all big politicians have those large houses and rich cars.’

  ‘Because they’re big politicians?’

  ‘No lah, because they make money from selling organs.’

  ‘But Mr Ong...’

  ‘No, no, no! You cannot say my name, okay? Hey! Why you writing? You cannot write, don’t write my name down. I only tell you because maybe you can let public know. But you cannot say my name.’ This guy was certifiable.

  ‘I’m just writing down the facts for my own benefit. I’m not writing down your name. Believe me, I’ll be telling your story to everybody for years. But tell me, how is it kept such a secret from the nation, but you know all about it?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you, I’ve got doctor friend who told me the story. He said that the government doctors who know about it cannot talk or sure get fired. And they earn big money too from the government for this.’

  ‘They must do. What do they do with the organs?’

  ‘They keep them in a freezer until someone buys them.’

  I felt a vein near my brain explode with laughter. This was something else. I imagined a secret supermarket in the basement of Singapore General Hospital (SGH) called ‘Fair-priced Organs’ or ‘Lungs R Us’ – a place where wealthy big shots silently pushed a shopping trolley along aisles of open freezers that stocked everything from blood pumping hearts to two-for-one kidneys and the cashiers were all prominent politicians doing a spot of moonlighting. My mind wandered all over the place and it was marvellous. A quick change of traffic lights and screeching brakes brought me back to the real world of writing obituaries about dead sportsmen and I sadly realised my unforgettable journey was almost over. Nonetheless, I still had time to stoke the fire one last time.

  ‘Hey! I went to SGH to have my tonsils removed. They gave me a general anaesthetic but when I woke up, all my organs were still there.’

  ‘Ah, you were lucky. They don’t really do it to the ang mohs. They prefer to use local parts.’

  I was about to say that I was a human being and not a Volkswagen but he was off again.

  ‘Also, easier to use locals, less problems. Easier to cover up. If they use ang mohs, your families and your countries will make checks, what.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said. ‘I want to keep my organs.’

  He smiled at me through the rear-view mirror and we pulled over to the kerb.

  As I got out, he said, ‘Remember always use private hospitals, okay? Are you going to write the story?’

  ‘But of course. It will be on page one on Sunday. It will be above the “Hitler is a trishaw driver” piece and next to the “Elvis was a Singaporean sailor” story. Rest assured, if I am feeling depressed, you will be the first person I call for a story. Take care and try not to dribble when you’re driving.’

  Of course, I made up the last part. Elvis was actually in the Armed Forces. However, the whole ‘hand-over-your-organs’ episode always serves as a reminder of how wonderful travel in and around Singapore actually is. The best part is that you get to do it via the wonderful local cabbies.

  The island is positively crawling with such cabbies, over 15, 000 to be exact, all ready and willing to take your money. They are also a permanent source of amusement for passengers like myself. Perhaps it is rare for them to pick up a Caucasian outside an HDB block in Toa Payoh because they always seem so pleased to see me. Without fail, they will do three things in a specific order. First, they will ask me where I want to go. Then, they will want to know where I am from and my entire life history. Finally, they will tell me about all the ang mohs they have picked up that week, month or year; depending on how talkative they are and how long the journey is. Over the years, I have honed a technique whereby I try to pace my answers because I have a habit of running out of things to say. With the really chatty drivers, I sometimes find myself recalling my favourite childhood memories before I have even left Toa Payoh.

  What makes Singaporean cabbies unique is their reliance upon the passenger for navigation. This can be quite bewildering, especially if you have absolutely no idea where the place is, which is often the case for me. Nevertheless, drivers are insistent that you direct them.

  ‘Where you go?’ they ask.

  ‘Bukit Batok West, please,’ I reply breezily.

  ‘Which way do you wanna go?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Which way you wanna go?’

  ‘Shall we try the quickest?’ This answer never seems to satisfy the chap in front and he then dazzles me with incomprehensible alternatives.

  ‘We could go PIE, CTE, then BKE followed by a short stint on the KFC. But there’s heavy traffic coming down Bukit Timah, so we could go Chua Chu Kang, then Phua Chu Kang and onto Liang Po Po, which is longer but less traffic. Which way you wanna go?’

  ‘The quickest.’

  ‘Hmm, the quickest. That could be tough unless we go through the CBD, pay extra ERP, turn left past McD and pay extra for the CHILLI. Go right into ABC and learn the rest of the alphabet so we can get to XYZ. Then we’ll have to stop because I’ve run out of sad TLA’s (three letter acronyms) that we are so fond of here. Which way you wanna go?’

  ‘The fucking quickest, please!’

  ‘Okay. We’ll go down Bukit Batok Road and we should be there in five minutes. So you’re from England? Let me tell you all about the ang mohs I’ve had in my taxi over the last fifteen years.’

  And that’s the great thing about Singapore – most places are only a few minutes away. For example, from my HDB flat in Toa Payoh, I am a five-minute walk away from shops, various bus stops, the MRT, two major highways, the national police academy, a country club and the Singapore Polo Club. My office is a fifteen-minute bus ride away. In a car, I am fifteen minutes from the beach and only twenty minutes from the causeway that joins Singapore to Malaysia. In short, everywhere is accessible, especially in a taxi, and it leaves me itching to explore.

  The irony is that there are some truly wonderful places dotted all over the island and I know that many of my Singaporean friends have not visited half of them. Of course, it is not only Singaporeans who fall into this trap. I have met Americans who have seen the miniature Statue of Liberty overlooking the River Seine in Paris but they have not seen its big sister in New York. At university, I studied with an Egyptian guy who had never been to Luxor to see, among other things, the Valley of the Kings containing Tutankhamen’s tomb. He had never seen the point. Yet I remember him getting excited when he told me he had just returned from seeing the historical sites of London.

  However, the most ignorant guy I have ever met has to be me. It was only when I came to Singapore that I realised how disgracefully uninformed I am of my own country after speaking to Singaporeans who had seen more of England’s treasures as a two-week tourist than I had in twenty years. Having studied and loved history for most of my academic life, I am ashamed to admit that I have never seen Stonehenge, a prehistoric megalithic monument dating from around 3,000 to 1,000 B.C., even though it is only a two-hour drive from my front door. Since moving to Singapore and becoming essentially an English tourist, I have developed a greater appreciation of the heritage of my homeland.

  In time, I hope increasing numbers of Singaporeans becom
e more enamoured with their own sights and sounds because there are some real crackers. Let’s start with Sentosa Island. It is Singapore’s most popular leisure resort, the home of the giant Merlion, which is the symbol of Singaporean tourism, and the place where I got my head smashed in.

  Located 500 metres off the southern tip of Singapore, Sentosa was once a military base. Then, in 1972, some bright spark realised the island could bring in a dollar or two so the Sentosa Development Corporation was formed to transform the place into a haven for fun-seeking tourists and locals. Consequently, it has been filled with musical fountains, sound and laser shows, waxwork museums, golf courses and an impressive walk-through aquarium full of sharks and manta rays.

  For an island that is just 4 sq. km, there is certainly not a shortage of things to do but my favourite place is undoubtedly Fantasy Island, the water slide park. I have visited similar parks in Spain and Greece but this one is by far the best.

  Yet I have a fundamental problem with the logistics of water slides. I have never grasped the basic laws of physics, which dictate that tall, skinny people with legs longer than Cindy Crawford are not built for water slides whereas short, muscular types, i.e. the majority of Singaporeans, most certainly are. Consequently, I have had more kicks in the back of the head than I care to remember.

  I am usually cruising down the slide when suddenly I hear the sound of flesh moving quickly through the water above me. More often than not, it is the discernible sound of a stocky teenager, with disproportionately large feet, bearing down upon me. I always try to accelerate but, without the necessary body mass, it is a bit like a paper aeroplane trying to outrun a nuclear missile. Anticipating the swimming pool ahead, a hairy big toe tickles the back of my ear before we fly off the slide as one long body, with the other person’s feet clamped around my neck. When we emerge from our underwater embrace, I rub my eyes to find, as usual, that it is a teenage boy. Fate has never once allowed my ear to be tickled by Jamie Yeo or Cameron Diaz.

  Fate, however, has conspired to make me stop altogether in the middle of a slide. On one occasion, I watched some teenagers push forcibly against the top of the slide to give themselves a better takeoff so I thought I would try the same thing. With all my feeble strength, I pushed off but I barely moved. It was stunningly pathetic. I stuttered down the slide with all the speed and grace of a dead snail. I realised trouble was brewing when the slide took a sharp vertical turn and my puny body defied all gravity and common sense by actually slowing down. At the same time, I could detect the foreboding sound of a sumo-sized Singaporean coming down the slide like a nuclear submarine. In a state of panic, I performed a kind of jerking motion through the water, which caused two things to happen. First, it produced hysterical laughter from some distant corner of the park. Second, and far more critical, my silly jerking caused me to come to a complete stop. As I lay there, I could hear the water slide world racing champion approaching.

  After a prolonged bout of silly jerking, I began my slow descent once again. I could almost feel my pursuer’s big toes brushing against the back of my neck. Then, I spotted the end of the slide. Although there were just a few more seconds to go, the guy was almost lying beside me. If I could just turn my body onto my left side, my speeding neighbour could pass on the right and we would both exit the slide together, I thought. Under the panic-stricken circumstances, this has to go down as a wonderfully quick piece of initiative. Waiting until the last second, I flipped my whole body to the left.

  ‘Aah, fuck me!’ I cannot apologise for the swearing. I nearly took my head off. As I was about to come off the end of the slide, I had inexplicably turned 90 degrees to the left, just in time to catch my head on the left-hand corner of the slide with such force that it almost knocked me out. Fortunately, a couple of my friends were waiting at the bottom and they later informed me of the semi-conscious behaviour that followed. I arose from the water like an intoxicated mermaid, rubbing a lump on the side of my head that was the size of the Merlion. Motioning to say something, I fell over again and swallowed far too much chlorine. Coughing and spluttering, I then informed everybody who cared to listen (and boy, did I have a big audience) that I intended to ‘sue this shitty place for every dollar that I can get. I’ll have this fucking place closed down in a fortnight. It made me smash my head in. Now, where’s First Aid?’

  That was not the only time that I have nearly killed myself at a Singaporean attraction. When my sister Jodie and her husband Kirk came to visit a couple of years back, one of the first places I took them to was Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. I was certain it would impress them. How could it not? Bukit Timah is one of only two rainforests in the world within city boundaries, the other being in Rio de Janeiro. At the top of the reserve is Singapore’s highest peak, Bukit Timah Hill, which is 164 metres above sea level. In addition, the 164-hectare reserve contains more species of plants than the whole of North America and is home to the black spitting cobra and the Oriental whip snake.

  Best of all, cute, but not quite so cuddly, long-tailed macaques also make their home in the reserve. Extremely intelligent, often vegetarian and quite happy to bare their arse to the world, these cheeky chappies are my kind of primate. The only threat they face comes, as ever, from man. Now, if Singaporeans are not throwing up condominiums on prime site land, they are feeding the macaques in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Despite signs being posted all the way up the hill reminding visitors why they must not feed the monkeys, they still do. Now you do not have to be an ecologist to realise that feeding the macaques will, to use a technical term, screw up the ecosystem. In time, they will stop finding their own food, thus breaking a link in the food chain. The constant feeding of macaques has already brought them into closer contact with human beings, which is a pressure cooker situation – either the human makes a sudden movement, scaring the monkey and forcing it to hiss through gritted teeth, or the monkey innocently approaches the smallest human in the group, forcing the concerned parent to react.

  In these situations, there are two options available. Without alarming the monkeys, you can pick up the pace a little and walk on. Alternatively, you can protect your family of impressionable young children by waving a two-metre-long branch at anything that moves.

  On the day that we were at the reserve, the latter option was adopted by a thirty-something Chinese chap who was walking towards us with his wife, the maid and his two young children. Whenever a 30-centimetre-high monkey approached the family, the guy stepped in front of his awe-struck family and, without a thought for his own safety, brought the branch crashing down. After watching the nimble primate easily evade the lumbering manoeuvre of its overweight attacker, it occurred to me that scientists might have made a mistake when calculating the stages of human evolution. How one had supposedly led to the other, I will never know.

  It was an embarrassing situation for me. I could see Jodie and Kirk, both vegetarians, looking on with disgust. My sister had only been in the country a week and I was bending over backwards to give her a positive impression of the place. I wanted her to feel the way I did about the country and its people and this apeman was screwing everything up. I could not walk away so I reverted to my subtle, diplomatic disposition.

  ‘Put the fucking stick down,’ I found myself shouting.

  ‘What?’ the startled monkey-batterer replied.

  ‘Put the stick down. What do you need it for? The monkeys won’t hurt you.’

  ‘But they are attacking my children.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. You’ve got food in your hands. If you feed them, then of course they’ll come near you, so put the bloody stick down.’

  It was becoming quite tense. As I had confronted him in front of his wife and children, the guy was ‘saving face’ and refused to put the branch down. With my little sister and her husband watching, I was childishly doing the same. Edging towards the guy, I could see his wide-eyed young children staring at me. What could I do? Have a fight with the moron in the middle of a public park wi
th his two pre-school kids looking on? Of course I could not so I improvised a compromise.

  ‘Are you going to hit the monkeys with that stick?’

  ‘No, I’m just keeping them away.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not.’

  With that, we continued walking up the hill. I regretted the use of bad language in the presence of small children but I was quite impressed with my self-restraint and I expected my due praise when we reached the summit. Yet the opposite proved to be the case. Over sandwiches, my girlfriend turned to me and said, ‘You should have hit the bastard.’ There is just no pleasing some people.

  Trying to save a monkey’s life was not the highlight of that day. Attempting to save our own necks proved to be the real high point. Looking back now, death seemed like a distinct possibility and I was the foolish one who had almost caused it to happen. I had arrogantly misconstrued the phrase ‘big brother living overseas’ to mean ‘big shot who knows his way around dense rainforest without a guide’. Now you may snigger at this and, of course, I know that Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is hardly Brazil – but forest is forest. Furthermore, when you are covered in scratches and crawling on your hands and knees up a vertical slope amid greenery so thick that you cannot see the sky, I think you are entitled to panic a little. When I told my boss what had happened the next day, she looked at me and said, ‘That wasn’t very clever. Last year, an experienced trekker went missing in Bukit Timah and was later found dead by a helicopter.’ It sent a shiver down my spine. I am not sure if her story is true but I do know that ours was a close call.

  The ironic thing was that we were almost on our way home. We had been to the top of the hill and we were making our way down the public footpath when we were confronted by a couple of Indian guys who had just emerged from the forest. Curious, I asked them where they had been and they told us that they had been down to see the quarry. Genuinely intrigued, we followed the tiniest of footpaths into the forest for no more than a hundred metres and found the quarry, which was a magnificent site to behold. My brain started to whirr furiously, which is always a bad sign. On this occasion, it told me to tell the others ‘if we found this quarry, a magnificent site to behold, without really trying, imagine what we could find if we explored further’. There was a chorus of ‘good idea’, ‘come on, let’s go’ and ‘Neil, why didn’t you smack that guy with the stick?’ so I knew that I had the group’s committed support for my ill-conceived plan.