The photograph of my father, sister and me standing on a pill-box brings back many happy memories - not just of the pill-box, but of the idyllic coastline along the East Coast of Singapore which was reclaimed to build Changi Airport. Pill-boxes were once a common feature of the southern coastline of Singapore both in the East and in the West - a reminder of the huge mistake that the British forces made during the Second World War of pointing guns to the south, most of which have since have been removed.
This particular pill-box was one that was close to the government holiday bungalows at Telok Mata Ikan - a place I often spent a week at during the school holiday period. I did on occassion play inside the pill-box with friends. Entry into the pill-box could be gained through a door at the back, and if you could bear the stench of whatever lay on the ground of the pill-box rotting, it made a wonderful place to play at being soldiers - we would point pieces of driftwood through the slots that were gun openings that faced the sea.
Mata Ikan was a fabulous adventure for the young urban dweller that I was. Besides the pill-box, there was the short beach which I could dig into for shellfish. There was also a small river nearby - more of a stream, which yielded a harvest of catfish when I visited it with a simple bamboo fishing rod with a fixed length of line with a hook at the end.
I enjoyed the mornings in particular. It would be when the steady stream of mobile vendors visited offering fresh produce from the back of the vans and pick-ups they came by in. I would look forward to the arrival of the bread vendor who balanced a rack at the back of his motorcycle that displayed all forms of colourful bread - I liked the coconut filled buns he sold, which my mother would always make a point of buying.
Sadly, all good things had to come to an end. A massive land reclamation project along the South-Eastern coast caught up with the area in the 1970s, part of which Changi Airport was later constructed on. With that went that wonderful world of my early childhood and all that is left are a few photographs and a host of wonderful memories that I still have of the beautiful days I spent there in the sun.
