SINGAPORE | A MESOLOGICAL INVENTORY
The Island of One Barking Deer and Many Palms
(Singapore’s Lazarus Island: Pulau Sekijang Pelepah)
Singapore is 65 islands.
You should at least set foot on a few of them. But don’t come here. Don’t read this. Stay away.
We had the good mind to postpone our island hopping to the day after the weekend. Mondays are good. Mondays are silent when it comes to the kind of destinations where hardly anybody goes for work.
The ferry terminal at Marina South Pier was bathing in the morning sunshine when we arrived. There were people waiting to be ferried off though. Not crowds — but a group of men in blue with fluorescent safety gear and helmets and heavy-looking toolboxes, clearly on their way to doing a job offshore.
Singapore is 65 islands, one of which is known as Pulau Ujong, which is Singapore proper, and another is Pedra Branca, a far-off rocky promontory with a Portuguese-sounding name, located beyond the southernmost curve of the Malaysian peninsula, and Singapore’s easternmost piece of territory.
Apart from these, the islands that everyone knows about or has been to, are the island group at the Jurong industrial cluster, Pulau Brani and Pulau Blakang…
