Singapore

    I arrived in Singapore this afternoon which has triggered off several memories of previous visits here although it is never a place I would say I know. My first visit was when I was 20 years old and I had made the momentous decision of throwing away the rest of the airline ticket back to London from New Zealand and embarking on an overland trip through Asia. I remember well the feeling of trepidation as if I was approaching the end of a high diving board and trying to jump off. Ironically, I stayed in a very posh hotel which was included in my air ticket but yet I was too nervous to go out and explore. All I knew was the next day that  I had to be on a train for 12 hours, travelling up the coast of Malaysia and I just hoped that my friends who lived in Ipoh had got my letter and would be there to meet me. Those were the days before internet!
     The second time I was here was in 1985 when Andrew and I had left Bermuda and were travelling the wrong way round to UK. We had been to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia and this was nearly the last stop before we headed "home" . It was also the place that I realised that I was pregnant with Lisa - either made in Hong Kong or Thailand - and I remember breaking the news to Andrew and that feeling of fear and excitement all rolled into one. Our next visit was "en famille" in 2005 on the way back from a holiday in New Zealand when we "collected " Lisa from her Gap year. It was the first time the children had experienced Asia and Naomi and Tanya nearly fainted with the heat in the first day. However, it was a great taste of clean easy Asia for us all and we visited many things including Sentosa Island, the Bird Park, Chinatown, Raffles and the Changi Museum. We stayed in a backpackers hostel and took over the whole dorm. and had a wonderful time. The visit to the Changi Museum was perhaps the most significant for me as despite knowing that my father spent 5 years of his life here, I never asked him about it or gave it more than a passing thought. Visiting the museum however changed that and I began to realise the horrors and deprivation that the Prisoner's of War had suffered under the Japanese.The massacre at the Alexandra Hospital was not just our family story- it was described as one of the most heinous crimes of the Second World War in which between two to four hundred defenceless people were slaughtered. I sobbed the whole way round the museum ( much to everyone's embarrasment!)
    So here I am again on the eve of the surrender of Singapore 70 years ago. The Alexandra Hospital massacre would have already taken place as the Japanese approached the city. The whole of Singapore would have been a burning furnace with the oil tanks and the shelling and the desperate fighting until the end. The water and food supplies had been cut off and the Allies had to make the decision as to whether to surrender or keep fighting. Tomorrow I will be attending the service at the Kranji War memorial to commemorate the surrender. I have no idea what is in store and how many people will be present. Despite the amazing modern architecture of this city there are remnants of the colonial Singapore and tomorrow I am going to try and visit the Alexandra hospital ( now a large modern hospital) and try and imagine what Singapore was like for a young Doctor who had never left Northern Ireland before in 1940.