I STOOD in front of a padlocked rusty gate and peered down the murky tunnel, stretching my arm through the bars and running my hand along the algae-stained brick walls. With bottom lip firmly pushed out, the sad countenance gave the game away. I was thoroughly pissed off. Still, that’s no excuse for off-colour bomb jokes.
The secret tunnels of Labrador Nature Reserve, or Labrador Park, had slipped beneath my radar during my previous sojourn in Singapore. Built by the British underneath what was then Fort Pasir Panjang in 1886, the subterranean walkways led to storerooms that served the gun emplacements above ground. Shortly before the British surrendered to the Japanese, they invoked the scorched-earth policy and destroyed much of their coastal artillery. After World War II, the rise of air defence systems made Britain’s 19th-century coastal forts about as reliable as their military intelligence on the Japanese in 1942. Labrador Park’s lush jungle soon enveloped the tunnels. They disappeared and were largely forgotten about until 2001 when they were rediscovered and opened to the public. During my Antipodean adventure, Labrador Park was expanded, historical sites became more accessible and more interactive and more sections of the tunnels were opened to the public, making it a popular historical location for visitors.
So I performed Riverdance all the way along Port Road as I was French kissed by every mosquito in the Berlayar Creek, only to find the tunnels were bloody closed. I was not amused. With my itchy, rapidly swelling shins and ankles looking like I’d covered them with a tin of diced carrots, I grabbed the bars of the padlocked gate and shook them violently, just like they do in the movies. It never works in the movies either.
I spotted a phone number for the National Parks Board, or NParks to be precise, and that just fuelled my irritation. The marketing guru who originally suggested that the secret to a fab and groovy name for a company or a civil service department is to randomly throw in capital letters in the word is right up there with the relative who gets drunk at a family wedding, knots his tie around his forehead like Rambo and plays air guitar to “Hotel California”. Those inane capital letters are the marketing equivalent of playing air guitar—all wind and no substance.
The padlocked gate and the capital letter thing sent me over the edge. I rested my head between the bars and called the NParks hotline.
“Hello, NParks, how can I assist you?” the woman asked cheerily.
“Yes, hi there, I’m standing outside the gate of the underground military tunnels inside Labrador Nature Reserve,” I replied gruffly.
“Yes. They’re closed.”
“I can see that. The padlocked gate gave me a bit of a clue. How long have they been closed?”
“Ooh, quite some time already, sir.”
“But I’ve read online articles about the tunnels written as recently as 2011 by visitors to the tunnels.”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid they are closed now. I cannot say when they will reopen. We are carrying out some maintenance. Maybe next year.”
With regard to such small-scale buildings, maintenance is carried out in a matter of weeks or months in Singapore. Years are only required to reclaim land from the sea and stick a trio of towers and a sprinkling of roulette tables on top.
“You haven’t found some live ammo in there, have you,” I asked sarcastically. “Are there any unexploded World War II bombs in there?”
“That I’m not so sure.”
I stepped back suddenly from the tunnel’s gate. She had thrown me off-kilter. What a reply. I was now most anxious to pursue the conversation further, but I also remembered that most hotline phone calls to government departments are recorded (purely for training purposes) and I had frivolously deployed the word “bomb”. Not in a threatening or belligerent sense, but out of curiosity. Still, the b-word had been dropped nonetheless. I was alone, too. There’s never a loud American tourist in knee-high socks when you want one to point the finger at, is there? Besides, red ants were devouring my forearms with militaristic precision, displaying a level of organisation unheard of for an army at Fort Pasir Panjang.
It’s true. The British military history of the area in the 19th century reads like a rejected script for Carry on Camping. In 1887, a concerned Vice Admiral Hamilton reported to Governor Frank Weld that he had landed at the nearby Fort Siloso and the only security that he encountered were a few rickshaw drivers eating supper. Quite understandably, they took more interest in their rice as this unidentified European wandered around the fort, examining mounted guns, magazines and casemates, without once being stopped and asked for identification. Best of all, a Russian officer was found in one of the coastal forts, lying back and leisurely sketching Singapore’s entire military operation. He was later fined $10 and told never to do it again. It’s impossible to sneak into Fort Siloso now without a young Sentosa employee chasing you up the hill shouting, “Sir, mus’ pay first, ah, mus’ pay first.”
In many respects, the underground tunnels are little different to Labrador Nature Reserve. No longer secret, they remain somewhat hidden and cut off from public view. Labrador is a little tranquil gem. As well as the war relics, with improved information panels and interactive displays from what I remember, the quiet coastal corner boasts the only rocky sea-cliff on the mainland, offering corals, sea grasses, horseshoe crabs and the common hairy crab. I spotted a monitor lizard, my first since returning to Singapore. It was like catching up with an old friend. About 1 metre in length, it dipped in and out of the sea, making the most of the high tide to navigate its way along the shoreline (and mostly to get away from me following it).
Dragon’s Teeth Gate (or Long Ya Men) was another pleasant discovery. The craggy granite outcrop, along with another outcrop, once stood imperiously at the entrance to Keppel Harbour. Dragon’s Teeth Gate was a geological signpost for travellers, with ancient mariners documenting the rocks in the 1300s. I was awed by the presence of such an imposing, historical, natural Asian landmark, until I read the small print. Sadly, like many of Singapore’s heritage sites, it was artificial, a replica of the original Dragon’s Teeth Gate. But modern Singapore cannot take the hit for this one. Blame the British. Straits Settlements Surveyor John Thomson had the rock outcrops blown up in August 1848 to widen the entrance to the new harbour. A joint collaboration in July 2005 led to the high stone replica of Long Ya Men, which is better than nothing.
I continued through Comchest Green, which was opened in 2008 to provide a comely seafront garden location for retirees to hang out and ponder their 4D numbers, and headed for the Bukit Chermin View Harbour Walk, which follows the shoreline along Keppel Bay. It was also closed. A theme was developing. Construction workers were applying the final touches to the flooring so the harbour walk will be open by the time you read this sentence. Go visit. Keppel Harbour and the Southern Islands had never looked better from an entirely new vantage point and I should know. I was hanging off the construction site fence and clinging to a Keep Out sign at the time. I had to jump down. A foreman in a hard hat had spotted me and I really needed to pee.
Among its many accolades, new Singapore has the world’s best toilet within its borders. I had never serviced the planet’s most luxurious lavatory before. I might have once made use of the world’s worst—a dustbin on the deserted platform of Wanstead Park Station (and in a pitiful plea for forgiveness, I was 13 years old, stricken with gastroenteritis, and as my nan’s house was too far away, I might have left an incriminating trail to the poor woman’s property). Indeed, my enthusiasm was matched only by my bladder. I had prepared meticulously for the world’s best toilet, drinking continuously around Labrador Park and resisting the urge to relieve myself through the gate leading to the underground tunnel. No one samples the delights of a five-star restaurant on a full stomach. I intended to fully savour the experience.
Five years on the Aussie long drop can do that to a man. Having been a regular trekker around the splendid offerings of Parks Victoria (and few public authorities in the world manage their flora and fauna better than Victoria), I grew accustomed to their long drop toilets. The clue is in the title. The toilet is nothing more than a long drop. Australians do no-nonsense common nouns better than anyone else. The drinking receptacle for beer is shaped like a pot. So Aussies go with “pot”. When my daughter was born, she was chauffeured around in a buggy, pram or pushchair, depending on where we were or who we were with. My Australian aunties called it a “pusher”. They have no time for any of those fancy nouns like buggy or pram. When a stranger once asked if my daughter needed a “pusher”, I nearly throttled him for trying to sell her drugs.
Getting back to the Aussie long drop, it was a wonder of plumbing and environmental sensitivity. Rather than bulldoze forests to create an elaborate sewage and drainage system so a foreign tourist had somewhere pleasant to blow her nose after a five-minute stroll along a boardwalk, a single hole was dug and the long drop went in. Sometimes the actual toilets were made from stainless steel, or they were nothing more elaborate than wide plastic tubes, but the end result was the same—down the tunnel and onto the mound deep beneath the toilet block to be disposed of or treated and recycled later. So if you plan to visit Australia’s great outdoors, be prepared. There is nothing more disconcerting than emptying your bowels and not hearing the comforting plop afterwards. That plop is the crashing cymbal at the end of a rousing performance from a symphony orchestra, an empathic conclusion to proceedings. Without that reassuring splash of water, you’re not quite sure if you’ve finished. At times, you’re not even sure that you’ve started.
So I intended to hear every tinkle inside The Jewel Box.
Located at the summit of Mount Faber, The Jewel Box replaced the old cable car station, which was always the most pointless of buildings. Apart from offering cable car travellers a bird’s eye view of Keppel Harbour as they made their way across the skyline, Mount Faber Station was nothing more than a bit of a joke. It was a hilltop ghost town offering tourists little else than the chance to spot a randy couple getting it on in a nearby car park. On the few occasions that I made it to Mount Faber Park, I used to get a perverse kick out of watching overseas visitors step out from their cable cars and take cursory looks around the empty, gloomy summit with confused, slightly cross expressions that always said, “What the fuck are we doing here?”
Well, they now have The Jewel Box. With several upmarket eateries and the obligatory retail shop for any miniature Merlions missed on the other side, Mount Faber offers more creative outlets for the credit card while being fixated with being first in the most bizarre categories. Among the more surreal successes were the world’s tallest artificial Christmas trees (at 61 metres), the first Santa sleigh ride by air and the first company to be presented with the world’s only life-size cable car cabin by LEGO. I do not wish to mock these achievements. Indeed, I spent several fruitless minutes trying to find the LEGO cable car. I just struggle to imagine many other CEOs haranguing their subordinates for failing to get hold of a cable car made out of LEGO.
But everyone wants a clean toilet and The Jewel Box was awarded “Best Toilet in The World” by a French International Website. A strangely vague accolade, in all honesty, with details a little sketchy. The capital letters of the French website were provided not by me, but by The Jewel Box. I presumed that was the proper name of the site. If it was, then I failed to track it down. If it wasn’t, why be so secretive? The lovely woman working for The Jewel Box was certainly not secretive about the toilet. Bearing in mind the lavatory was the property of a premium establishment, and my sweat-soaked ah pek attire suggested I had little intention of dining there, she might have been forgiven for any reticence. Yet she was most accommodating about her comely commodious commodes.
“Yes, the toilets are this way,” she replied, gesturing towards a tinted glass door that automatically slid open as we approached.
“And is it true they were chosen as the world’s best toilets?” I asked.
“Yes, that is true. It was according to a French website. It’s just down that corridor. Will there be anything else, sir?”
An unusual query from a young woman when being led to a toilet but I declined the unexpected offer of assistance and followed her directions.
There are multi-million-dollar show flats in Singapore that are less inviting than The Jewel Box’s bogs. I followed a narrow carpet-lined corridor, which gave the impression of being wider thanks to the floor-to-ceiling mirror on my right. Such elaborate mirrors in a toilet usually say pervert, rather than panache, but the sheer grandiosity of The Jewel Box overcompensated and, I hope, prevented curious men from shaking off any drips in front of the mirror. The temptation was certainly there. I turned left and another sensor-operated tinted glass door opened. I was half expecting to find Captain Kirk sitting on the throne of the Starship Enterprise. Instead there were cable cars, dozens of cable cars. The extraordinary floor-to-ceiling window at the far side of the toilets framed much of Keppel Harbour. Sentosa, Fort Siloso, Universal Studios, Labrador Park, a docking cruise ship and the Southern Islands were all captured in one unforgettable living picture frame from inside a public lavatory. Visitors hand over a few bucks for a similar view, albeit a revolving one, on Sentosa’s Sky Tower, but at The Jewel Box, it comes free with every pee.
I stood in front of three individual, elegantly mounted marble wash basins and stared at the encroaching cable cars as they carried families of tourists towards me. I could see their faces. I started giggling childishly. My puerile streak momentarily contemplated whipping out the little fella and shouting, “Never mind your cable cars, how about this for a cable? You didn’t know they had a sky tower at Mount Faber, did you eh?”
But I refrained. Besides, from that distance, there really would have been nothing to see. Being alone in the lavatory, I peered into each of the cubicles. The toilet bowels were marble and sculpted like white eggs, the artistic symbolism of which seemed ironic. When I grew up, my mother always referred to constipation as being “egg-bound”.
“He’s having trouble going again,” she’d tell my classmates’ parents. “He’s egg-bound. The turtle’s head keeps popping out to say ‘hello’, then it goes back in again. Definitely egg-bound.”
Beside the cubicles was the soothing presence of a built-in fish tank. Fortunately, the tank was entirely enclosed. Otherwise, drunks might have been inclined to add to its water level on Saturday nights. I toyed with the idea of crowning one of the eggs, but the strategic location of the urinals offered greater appeal. Standing over the first urinal, I tilted my head to the left and savoured the sights of Keppel Harbour. Ordinarily, the only distractions offered by a Singaporean urinal are stained tiles and hilariously broken English graffiti saying things like “Cheng Hong suck you, give $10”.
Holding various limbs and appendages, I carefully pulled out my smartphone with my left hand and captured a picture postcard of the cable cars dotted along Keppel Harbour whilst taking care of business with my right. I concentrated on not swapping hands and confusing the two.
In all honesty, I was in no hurry to leave. The view from the toilet was quite intoxicating. But there is only so long a man should loiter in a public lavatory holding a phone camera.