It was to be my first visit to Singapore and I had already made up my mind. I would hate it. I was a loyal Malaysian. Blond, thin and the colour of tea with a drop of milk, as my mother would say. My land was north of the causeway; a land of tin mines and limestone caves, of jungles, rivers and waterfalls, of mile-long beaches, fruit-bats, butterflies and…friends, and I was fiercely protective. They could keep Singapore, its filthy go-downs, alleyways, docks and sprawling concrete conurbations.  I wasn’t interested.

But there was another reason for my bile, a reason that bit to the bone. Singapore was to be my exit; a door to a wonderful life closing behind me, a life I was certain I would never experience again, ahead just fear, uncertainty and trepidation – and I was just eleven years old.

The Jesuits are rumoured to have said ‘give us a child ‘till they're seven and they will be ours for life’. I wonder, is it the same with countries? Six years earlier, a wide-eyed five year old, I had disembarked with my parents off a ship in Penang and now, from the other end of the peninsular, I was about to embark on another. In between I had lived the life of a small boy in a wonderful exotic world, been blessed with a sister, there were now two of us, and made many friends; friends I was certain I would now never see again. And all because of the perceived benefit of an English education. An education I was sure would do me no good; an education I didn’t want; an education I had fought tooth and nail against. But what can a small boy do? The deal was done, my fate sealed. 

All these years later I still remember that night-time departure; the sleeper from KL to Singapore. My parents’ friends at the station, its minarets and sultanic arches like a Jaipur palace; the polished mahogany of the carriage, the fold-down bunks my sister and I would occupy, the crisp white sheets starched to an edge that could cut; the rhythm of the bogeys on the tracks, the moon on the water in the passing flooded paddi fields and the tea, hot with condensed milk bought by a steward in a spotless white jacket starched even stiffer than the sheets, as we slowed, crossing the Johore channel into the dreaded Singapore at eight the next morning. 

By rights, as a family, we should have been flying back, British Eagle Airways or BOAC, faster, cheaper, but my father, a senior NCO seconded to the Malaysian army, had ‘rolled up’ several earlier ‘leave periods' into the six-week adventure awaiting us – a sea passage back to ‘good old Blighty’ aboard P&Os majestic SS Oransay, its seven towering white-painted decks and massive yellow smoke stack like a waterborn citidel. Yes, I hated Singapore but I couldn’t deny the growing excitement of joining the 1500 passengers and 600 crew on a voyage of discovery half-way around the world calling at such magical sounding  ports as Columbo, Bombay, Durban, Cape Town and Dakar.

But for several days excitement would have to wait as the vessel was prepared and victualled for it's thirteen-thousand  mile journey; several days where my father had arranged for us to stay in another startling, majestic landmark – the tallest hotel in Singapore. 

Bleak, like a concrete shoebox stood on end,  the hotel towered above us as we and our suitcases disgorged from the old black and yellow Peugeot taxi. There were no lifts and no air conditioning but one doesn’t miss what one has never known and, craning my neck,  never had I seen such a skyscraper. 

When I see Singapore today, and I have seen it grow literally in every aspect from that day back in ’66 to this, I have to chuckle. That hotel, that shoebox stood on end, was famous. Its very claim to such fame in paint all up one towering side, a proud self-evident declaration if ever there was one – ‘The Seven-Storey Hotel’ – but fifty-six years later,  a cold beer in hand in the bar on the 70th floor of Singapore’s Swiss hotel - seven storeys! - a skyscraper? Really?