Blazing Saddles: Cycling with Serendib

So it was that I recently found myself on a stop-over in Singapore en route to Australia and decided to billet for a night in the old Peranakan quarter along Joo Chiat Road. This is an area with a great deal of history parallel to that of Phuket Town. It evolved on the back of an influx of Chinese migrants, driven by famine in the mid-19th century and the architecture, cuisine and ambience still echo that era. Today it’s a quarter of seedy short-time hotels, smoke-filled karaoke lounges, all-night drinking dives and sad-looking washed-up hookers and hoodlums, all of which I somehow find beguiling and romantic as a backdrop to an overnight stay.

I’d slept well in a darkened, tiny box-room in the prosaically-named Venue Hotel and early on a Thursday dawning found myself bounding along Joo Chiat’s bustling morning lanes and alleys before the sun became too strong. The aromas of local tea shops and eateries poured into the busy mayhem as I headed south in search of runny poached eggs on sourdough and my eye-opening morning coffee. 

That was far from what I found though, as I stumbled across a tangle of pavement-side mountain bikes snoozing in the burgeoning sunshine outside a Mister Liu Quan’s ‘Because of You’ cycling emporium. I checked my watch. Yes, I had a couple of hours before I needed to jump into a cab to Changi Airport for my flight. ‘Well, why not?’ I thought.

I’d cycled the tree-shaded pathways along Singapore’s foreshore some years ago, out past Changi Airport where huge 380s boomed overhead, thundering in to land. It was a stunning ride and I wanted to repeat it in this short window of Serendib which seemed to have opened, unbidden, before me. I leapt aboard one of Mister Quan’s mountain bikes and was off, pedalling out past the vaulting sky towers in which such a large proportion of Singapore’s population seems to dwell, then through a dark cycling underpass beneath the main highway, then, all at once, the oceanic vistas assailed my senses as I emerged from the dark tunnel into intense sunlight filtered through the prolific green needles and tendrils of towering trees and bushes.

To my right lay the sparkling waters of Singapore Bay, surprisingly clean and inviting despite the veritable armada of tankers, container ships, liners and tugs that rested at anchor, or churned their slow water-furrows for as far as my eye could see.

I cycled happily along flat, well-shaded pathways shared with armies of marching school kiddies and boy scouts, skateboarders, rollerbladers and even a juggler on stilts incongruously practising his bizarre hobby this sun-dappled morning.

Eastward for about 30 minutes to the huge Bedok Jetty and out and then back along its concrete spine, the better to view the vast fleet of ships which had plied the globe’s oceans to be lulling here this gorgeous morning. Conscious of the time, I turned back and parked by a sandy cove for a sea swim in the amazingly clean waters of Singapore’s ship-packed bay.

As I emerged from my cooling dip a brace of bikini-clad beauties emerged from a nearby pup-tent under the palms where they had clearly camped for the night, and threw themselves laughing and screaming into the spume. Such is the cleanliness, safety and tolerance of the Singaporean environment and I couldn’t help but think that Phuket could learn a lot from this example!

I like to think that the Gods of Serendib smile upon those who embrace their creed of unplanned adventure and so it was that with their blessings I found myself just making my flight to Oz some two hours later, with the smile on my face and spring in my step that the magic of Serendib can ignite.

‘Bicycling’ Baz Daniel has been penning his Blazing Saddles column, chronicling his cycling adven­tures in Phuket and beyond, since 2013.