Yesterday the last train left the Tanjong Pagar railway station in downtown Singapore. From today, all trains will run from the Woodlands checkpoint, in the north of the island, the crossing point into Malaysia. It was a seminal moment in the history of Singapore and a huge crowd came to mark the occasion.
I didn't go yesterday, not being a big fan of crowds, but I was there last week, buying a ticket on Wednesday for the 4.30 am train on Thursday, the only train I could get without having to queue for ages. I'd never taken the train to Malaysia before, as for some inexplicable reason the journey to Kuala Lumpur takes 6 hours, and no-one I know had spoken kindly of either the journey or the trains themselves. Well, they were not wrong. The station itself must have been a beautiful building in its youth, but it has become very tired and dilapidated and the train was just horrible. I was glad that I was just taking a short ride over the causeway and into Malaysia, then turning round and coming back again. Living in Singapore, you become used to clean, efficient public transport, so the condition of the rolling stock was a bit of a shock to the system. The land on which the station sits, as well as the railway track, belonged to Malaysia until midnight last night, and I believe that the trains did too, which probably explains their condition. If you've visited Singapore and used the MRT (underground railway system) you will know that it is kept in a pristine state, quite different from the overground trains.
I didn't know quite what to expect when I got to the station at Johor Bahru (locally known as "JB"), but it was a temple of modernity, more like an airport terminal building than what I was expecting, and a complete contrast to its mate at the Singapore end. I just had time to buy a return ticket and a curry puff for breakfast, have a bit of a wander round, and then it was time to board the train for the return journey.
You may be asking yourselves two things at this point. 1) Why on earth did I not buy a return ticket at the Singapore end? and 2) Are curry puffs really a breakfast food? The answer to the second is a resounding "yes", of course. As for the first, read on.......
I did try to buy a return ticket, but you can only buy a ticket from Singapore at the Singapore end; you have to buy the other half at the Malaysia end. No problem, I thought. I have plenty of ringgit among my foreign currency stash, I'll just take some of those. Except I forgot. In my defence, I got up at the unholy hour of 3.30 am that morning, and I did remember my name and passport, so two out of three isn't bad. Since Singapore and Malaysia are so closely linked, I thought I would be able to pay for the return ticket in Sing dollars, but not so. When I offered to pay with a credit card the ticket lady gawped at me in amazement. Only then did I realise that, while I had paid the Singapore dollar equivalent of £6.50 for the outbound ticket, a respectable amount to put on a credit card, the return ticket cost 3 ringgit - about 70 pence. Some cost of living difference!
The return journey was in daylight, which was a lovely bonus, and the departure from Malaysia was trouble free. I had been a been a bit concerned following recent headlines about two Singaporean women who had not had their passports stamped on the way into Malaysia for dinner at JB and who were detained and required to strip and perform squats (see link for the full story) http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_679677.html. but I was wearing my lucky knickers and all went well. I say all went well, but there was a bit of a delay when we got to the Singapore checkpoint just over the border. Normally, you are able to re-board the train after a few minutes, but we had to wait for almost an hour. I was a bit concerned when I saw the sniffer dogs come through, but there was no announcement and we boarded shortly afterwards. As it transpired, my train trip coincided with a foiled attempt to smuggle a quantity of drugs from Malaysia into Singapore, concealed in the spare wheel of a car. Singapore has a very tough approach to drug smuggling, so heaven knows what they were thinking.
I'm conscious that movies have not featured recently in this blog, so let me make amends right away. The film in question, The Wind Blows Round, was part of the recent Italian festival in Singapore and it made me realise how very little I know about Italian films in general and their more recent cinema in particular. This was a movie that moved. The plot is, in many ways, slight, and not a lot happens during the course of the film. Philippe Heraud, a teacher turned goatherd from southern France, moves into a small northern Italian village with his family because a nuclear plant is being built near their home in the Pyrenees. Initially they are welcomed by the villagers for breathing new life into the village, since this is a place where no young families live any more, except in the houses which are occupied during the summer months by people from Turin who keep them as holiday homes. Things happen, some good, many not so good, and they move out.
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| Inside the art deco station building |
I didn't go yesterday, not being a big fan of crowds, but I was there last week, buying a ticket on Wednesday for the 4.30 am train on Thursday, the only train I could get without having to queue for ages. I'd never taken the train to Malaysia before, as for some inexplicable reason the journey to Kuala Lumpur takes 6 hours, and no-one I know had spoken kindly of either the journey or the trains themselves. Well, they were not wrong. The station itself must have been a beautiful building in its youth, but it has become very tired and dilapidated and the train was just horrible. I was glad that I was just taking a short ride over the causeway and into Malaysia, then turning round and coming back again. Living in Singapore, you become used to clean, efficient public transport, so the condition of the rolling stock was a bit of a shock to the system. The land on which the station sits, as well as the railway track, belonged to Malaysia until midnight last night, and I believe that the trains did too, which probably explains their condition. If you've visited Singapore and used the MRT (underground railway system) you will know that it is kept in a pristine state, quite different from the overground trains.
I didn't know quite what to expect when I got to the station at Johor Bahru (locally known as "JB"), but it was a temple of modernity, more like an airport terminal building than what I was expecting, and a complete contrast to its mate at the Singapore end. I just had time to buy a return ticket and a curry puff for breakfast, have a bit of a wander round, and then it was time to board the train for the return journey.
You may be asking yourselves two things at this point. 1) Why on earth did I not buy a return ticket at the Singapore end? and 2) Are curry puffs really a breakfast food? The answer to the second is a resounding "yes", of course. As for the first, read on.......
I did try to buy a return ticket, but you can only buy a ticket from Singapore at the Singapore end; you have to buy the other half at the Malaysia end. No problem, I thought. I have plenty of ringgit among my foreign currency stash, I'll just take some of those. Except I forgot. In my defence, I got up at the unholy hour of 3.30 am that morning, and I did remember my name and passport, so two out of three isn't bad. Since Singapore and Malaysia are so closely linked, I thought I would be able to pay for the return ticket in Sing dollars, but not so. When I offered to pay with a credit card the ticket lady gawped at me in amazement. Only then did I realise that, while I had paid the Singapore dollar equivalent of £6.50 for the outbound ticket, a respectable amount to put on a credit card, the return ticket cost 3 ringgit - about 70 pence. Some cost of living difference!
The return journey was in daylight, which was a lovely bonus, and the departure from Malaysia was trouble free. I had been a been a bit concerned following recent headlines about two Singaporean women who had not had their passports stamped on the way into Malaysia for dinner at JB and who were detained and required to strip and perform squats (see link for the full story) http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_679677.html. but I was wearing my lucky knickers and all went well. I say all went well, but there was a bit of a delay when we got to the Singapore checkpoint just over the border. Normally, you are able to re-board the train after a few minutes, but we had to wait for almost an hour. I was a bit concerned when I saw the sniffer dogs come through, but there was no announcement and we boarded shortly afterwards. As it transpired, my train trip coincided with a foiled attempt to smuggle a quantity of drugs from Malaysia into Singapore, concealed in the spare wheel of a car. Singapore has a very tough approach to drug smuggling, so heaven knows what they were thinking.
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| The station facade |
The elderly inhabitants of the village speak Occitan, an almost extinct language and are steeped in the traditions of mountain village life. Philippe is a free spirit, who does not choose to have his house blessed by the priest or show the "appropriate" respect for tradition. He and his wife are very different from the villagers and it is soon clear that conflict is inevitable. The film feels incredibly real, partly because none of the actors are professionals and much of the action centres on people's daily lives. There were elements in the film that reminded me of Jean de Florette, but the characters in this film are more nuanced, less black and white. Only one character, the mayor, stands out as being a really noble individual; the others are a mixture of kindness and cruelty - just like people are.
If you have a fondness for cinema that makes you think and makes you feel, look out for this film. If ever a movie deserved a haiku, this one does. My thanks to Chris for composing it.
If you have a fondness for cinema that makes you think and makes you feel, look out for this film. If ever a movie deserved a haiku, this one does. My thanks to Chris for composing it.
Pride and prejudice
defeat the idyllic life
in the Occitan.defeat the idyllic life
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