The kopi at the Changi Village Hawker Centre is the first thing I notice this morning – not the taste, but the sound. The hiss of the steam wand, the cling of a spoon against a glass, the low murmur of the aunties at the drinks stall taking orders without writing anything down. I order a kopi-C, sweet and thick with evaporated milk, and it costs about a dollar fifty. A single short MRT ride costs about one twenty-eight. Same ballpark. That still feels wrong, and I hope it never stops feeling wrong.
This is my last full day in Changi Village. Tomorrow I move west, to the other side of the island, and I've been trying to spend the week the way a resident would – not a tourist ticking boxes. But there's one box I haven't opened yet. The old colonial precinct along Netheravon Road and Hendon Road, the conserved British barracks from the twenties and thirties. I've walked past the edge of it every day, but I haven't gone in. Today I go in.
The bus drops me at the junction of Upper Changi Road North, and I walk down Netheravon Road. The trees here are old, planted when this was a British military base, and they make a proper canopy. Green shade, dappled light. The barracks are two-storey brick blocks with wide verandahs, painted cream and dark green, and the whole street could be a corner of a Wiltshire town if you ignored the frangipani and the humidity. The air smells like rain and cut grass. A few joggers pass. An old man walks his dog. It's quiet in a way that feels deliberate, like the past is being held at arm's length.
I stop at the gate of the old Changi Hospital. It's fenced off now, derelict, the windows dark. I remember reading that people used to sneak in before it was sealed – urban explorers, ghost hunters. The fence is high and the signs are unambiguous. I stand there for a minute, looking at the peeling paint and the creepers, and I think about what this coast has carried. The British built their base here in the late twenties, a little slice of England. Then 1942, and the same grounds became a prisoner-of-war camp. Changi Beach, just around the corner, is where 66 Chinese civilians were executed by the Japanese. The Museum did not sugar-coat it. Neither does this fence.
From there I walk back toward the water. The Changi Point Coastal Walk starts near the ferry terminal, and I've done it twice before, but today it's different. Today I'm not trying to see things. I'm just walking. The boardwalk is about two and a half kilometres, and it takes you through mangroves, past the kind of trees that drop pods like fat green cigars, then opens out onto a stretch where the government holiday bungalows sit behind low hedges. At low tide, the mudflats are busy with little crabs, and a heron stands so still it might be a statue. The air is thick and salty. The sun is high, and the boardwalk is mostly empty except for a group of school kids in bright PE t-shirts and an older couple with binoculars.
I stop at a bench near the water and think about money, because that's what you do when you're about to leave a place and you need to know if you can afford to come back. The monthly rent on my one-bedroom HDB flat in Changi Village is about two thousand eight hundred dollars. A friend in a similar flat closer to the East Coast Park pays three thousand two hundred. For an American listener, that's around two thousand one hundred dollars a month – and you're getting a whole flat, not a room. The hawker food is the great equaliser. A plate of Hainanese chicken rice here runs about six or seven dollars. A plate of char kway teow, maybe six fifty. I've been eating like a queen all week and I've spent less than I would on two nights of mediocre pasta back in my old life.
Lunch today is at the hawker centre again, because it's the last time I'll be here for a while and I'm not going to waste it on a restaurant. The International Muslim Food Stall is already queueing, the nasi lemak queue, the one that snakes past the drinks stall and out toward the tables. I join it. I've learned the system now: you wait, you say what you want, you pay, you take your tray. Today I get the works – rice, fried chicken wing, fried fish, egg, sambal, peanuts, a few slices of cucumber – and it comes to about seven dollars. I find a seat near the edge, where I can watch the fans turn and listen to the oil sizzle. The sambal is hot. It's meant to be.
After lunch I walk off the rice. The Changi Village Market is just across the road, under the same roof as the hawker centre, and it's the kind of place that rewards slow browsing. Stalls selling dried goods, housewares, phone cases, prayer flags, plastic sandals. A woman has a stall of fresh flowers and a man next to her is sharpening a cleaver on a whetstone, slide, slide, slide. I buy a small bag of dried longan and a packet of banana fritters from the goreng pisang stall, and I sit on the steps near the bus terminus to eat them. The fritters are still warm, the batter crisp, the banana molten inside. The bus rank is full of the usual Changi Village scene: kids in school uniform, aunties with trolleys, a couple of backpackers with their packs at their feet, one of them thumbing through a paper map. Nobody is in a hurry. The 2, the 29, the 59, the 109 – they all terminate here, at the edge of the island, and they all look content to wait.
I've been putting off one thing all week. The Changi Chapel and Museum is free for Singaporeans, and for visitors it's a timed ticket – I'm told it's about ten dollars, though it's worth checking the current price online. I go today, because it's my last chance and because I think you should face the hard parts of a place before you leave it. The museum is revamped, modern, careful. It tells the story of the prisoners of war and internees who were held in this area, the civilians and soldiers alike, the conditions, the art they made, the chapel they built. It's not an easy hour. But as I came out, there was a young family standing by the entrance, and a little boy asked his mother, very seriously, 'Did the heroes win?' And his mother said, 'The war ended. That's what they won.' I thought about that all the way back to the bus.
Which brings me to my last evening. I've watched the National Day fireworks rehearsal from Changi Beach twice this week, but tonight is the closest to the real thing – the actual National Day is in two days, on the ninth. The sun goes down late in August, after seven, and the beach at Changi Beach Park starts filling up around six. Families with picnic mats, teenagers with bluetooth speakers, couples holding bubble tea. I find a spot near Carpark 5, which the plane-spotters love, and I sit with my back against a palm tree and a packet of goreng pisang balanced on my knee. The fritters have gone cold. I don't care.
The fireworks start just after eight. They're a rehearsal, so there's no announcement, no soundtrack – just the crackle and the bloom of colour over the water, and the sound of a hundred people going 'oh' at the same time. Red and gold, green, a waterfall of silver. It's most of the way to the full show, I think, though I'm not a fireworks expert and I'm not going to pretend to be. What I know is that it's beautiful, and that I'm sitting on a beach in Singapore, ten minutes from the airport where I landed a week ago, watching the sky turn colours, and that tomorrow I'm moving on.
I walk back to the flat along the Changi Bay Park Connector, the cycling path that threads from the beach through the coastal trees, and I can still hear the last few pops of the fireworks behind me. The flat is bare in the way that only a rented place you're about to leave can be. My suitcase is open on the floor, half full. I stand by the window for a while, looking out at the lights of the village and the darker shape of the sea beyond. I'm not sad to go. I'm coming back. The west is where the next part of the story happens – the industrial side, the old heartlands, the places most tourists skip. But Changi Village has done its job. I landed here, I learned the names of things, I queued for nasi lemak, I watched the sky over the water. That's what a beginning is for.
Tomorrow I'll pack the rest of my things, take the bus to Tanah Merah, and head west. But tonight I'm going to stand at the window for a few more minutes, listening to the geckos on the wall and the distant hum of a plane coming in to land. The last thing I do, before I close the window, is look at the sky. The fireworks are done, but the city glow is still there, a warm dome of light. Two days from now, the real National Day will light up the whole island. I'll be somewhere else by then. But I'll be watching.
So this is me, signing off from Changi Village, Singapore. If you're planning your own arrival – and you should be – my advice is this: land at Changi Airport, get through immigration with your SG Arrival Card already filed, and take the bus to this corner of the island before you go anywhere else. Give yourself a week to settle, to learn the hawker centre, to sit on the beach and watch the planes come in. It will cost you less than you think, and it will teach you the rhythm of the place faster than any guidebook. Hello lah, Changi Village. See you soon.
I'm Rachel Tan, and this has been the Singapore Travel Podcast. Next time, I'll be somewhere else on this island – I'll tell you where when I get there. For now, goodnight from the east coast, where the sea is dark and the city is glowing, and the fireworks are only a memory, and the next day is already waiting.