This school holiday, go on a trip around Singapore taking in vistas with few buildings and few humans in sight. For starters, guess where these spots are.
Jessica Yeo Straits Times 27 Nov 10;
NOT very far from Seletar Airport lies a large, empty patch of land.
Grass grows sparsely in tufts on the uneven ground. Creepers spread out their arms here and there, like starfish on a seabed.
Every few minutes or so, a truck laden with construction materials zooms past - but other than that, the air is thick with silence.
This piece of reclaimed land, about a third the size of Sentosa, cannot be found near 'civilisation' - the majority of Singapore's land that is blanketed with Housing Board flats, office buildings, schools and more.
It is land that will eventually be developed.
But for now, Pulau Punggol Barat lies largely bare in its beauty. At night, couples who drive there via Seletar North Link find spots to cuddle; some people arrive with fishing rods and other equipment; others come with their friends to chit-chat.
This peaceful hideout, away from the roughly 700 sq m concrete jungle that is Singapore, is seen by many as 'untouched nature' at its most pristine.
It is not going to stay this way for long though - and neither are other places, for example the nearby lalang fields at Punggol Point, previously a relatively undeveloped part of Singapore.
The fields were cordoned off months ago for development into a suburban waterfront town - soon to be another modern, man-made part of Singapore.
Quite a number bemoan the loss. The fields used to be the haunts of photographers, those who love fishing, and even ordinary Singaporeans who enjoy a respite from the hectic grind of life.
'It was the only place where I could enjoy some peace and serenity,' said digital media planner Chen Wei Li, 26, who used to visit the fields every Sunday. He shot a photo documentary of the fields then, before 'they were completely torn apart'.
With such places vanishing into the pages of history, nature buffs worry that we will, in the end, have little left besides man-made parks and nature reserves.
As environmentalist Ria Tan, 50, who runs nature website WildSingapore, puts it: 'Singapore is in danger of becoming a giant concrete island city with straight line contours, under a bubble of air-conditioning. Any bits of nature are found only in artificial zoos or manicured parks.'
She says it is important for Singaporeans to go out, see, document and share places with others, even if by just posting photos on social media website Facebook.
'Singapore's wild natural places can play a strong role in developing Singaporeans with soul. The kind of bonding that happens in a wild natural place can't quite be duplicated in an artificial environment,' she says. (Full details from which this quote was taken: How our wild places can build a stronger Singapore).
Jessica Yeo, 23, is a sub-editor with The Straits Times. She spent four months trekking around Singapore trying to find idyllic countryside vistas with few buildings in the horizon. She did the project earlier this year as an assignment for an advanced photojournalism course at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, which she graduated from this year.
