The Attraction of Punggol Beach

Punggol Beach lies on the Northeastern coast of Singapore. It is one of the sites where Japanese massacred Chinese thought to have anti-Japanese sentiments, at the beginning of their occupation of Singapore during the second World War. The Japanese military chose remote places such as this one to perpetrate these crimes. On February 28, 1942, about 400 Chinese men were shot on Punggol Beach by a Japanese firing squad. It is now a National Heritage site.

I had seen on the Internet striking pictures of sunset on Punggol Beach. The colors had obviously been manipulated, but the photographs nevertheless created in my mind a vision of Punggol Beach as an idyllic place, where I would like to take pictures some day. I decided to go there late afternoon yesterday to catch the sunset.

Punggol is not so remote anymore. Thanks to the highly developed freeway and road network, no point in the island is at more than a 30-40 minute drive from any other point. After a fast ride on the Central Expressway (CTE) and Tampines Expressway (TPE), I reached Punggol Road, which runs straight North to the coast. Like many other spots in the island, signs of construction were everywhere, and Punggol Road is lined with new, dense, HDB flats. Only the last kilometer or so runs through an undeveloped wooded area, but even there I drove past a fenced-in construction site ... the Ministry of National Development must be working on a new project.

The road ends at a spot on the coast where there is a small jetty. Across the Johor Straits, the highly industrialized Malaysian coastline looked very close. I parked my car and walked along a path running left on the low dam lining the very narrow sand beach. After a kilometer or so, I found a spot where black rocks, almost level with the dam, provided an easy path stepping down to the beach.

The view across the Johor straits was depressingly industrial, from the right ...

to the left ...


If you keep your eyesight low, you can believe that you are in a place that deserves to be called a beach ...


Undeterred by the scenery, a man, perched on a rock, was fishing, but I wonder whether he would eat anything caught in these waters ...


A bride and bridegroom arrived with a photographer to take wedding pictures in the day's waning light.


Starting at 6PM (the sun sets around 7PM everyday in Singapore, since it is almost on the Equator), the place became almost crowded, as more and more photographers equipped with tripods were gathering in this spot to take pictures of the sunset.


I talked to a young man and commented that this was not much of a beach. He agreed but immediately added that the sunsets here were very beautiful.

Except for its luxuriant tropical vegetation, Singapore is devoid of natural beauty, and it is sad to see its inhabitants flock to places such as Punggol Beach to catch a sunset. But these amateur photographers are well versed in the wizardry of digital photography and can create computer-aided beauty more striking than natural beauty, and post it on the Internet. This is how I was snared into visiting this barren and ugly beach on a late Saturday afternoon.

Luck was not on my side; the sunset, which looked promising since clouds were at the rendez-vous, was not spectacular, and here is the best I could do, since I have not learned any wizardry ...