Day 18

20 September, 2003

Awake (0700) to Malaysia all over the port horizon. Even more shipping in a still, hot sea. Complex cloud patterns covering most of the sky, threatening rain, strong headwind and fresher air. The Malaysian coast looks like Santa Barbara. Modern apartment complexes and office blocks, many tall buildings in the land of the largest buildings in the world. Maybe a bit more lush then California.

It is funny, how big tankers look riding high in ballast. They are simply, huge metal tanks with a ship like thing welded on top like a hat.

Shave in anticipation of Singapore, predicted at 1800. I hope to plug back in to my world, both email and phone at that time. Although the time difference will be hard, sixteen hours ahead of L.A., thirteen to the east coast. Another curious breakfast of sautéed minced-meat.

So many ships, eighteen in one count, not including the sampan fishers. A large passenger ship of Star Cruises, called StarVirgo. Nice looking ship the Captain says was built in Germany. The channel is only twenty-two miles across. The shipping lanes are long established so it moves quickly.

The sea is so calm that it hardly feels like we are moving, although it is overcast and lightly raining. There must be twenty five other ships in view, of all shapes and sizes. We bring our speed down just before hanging a left into the Singapore Straits. Singapore is an island at the end of the Malay Peninsula, right across from Indonesia.

The Malay coast is all chemical, oil refining and industry for miles. Many huge tankers anchored off the shore, and many smaller ones fanning out to bring supplies to some of the thousands of islands that make up many of these countries. The ocean is still the primary means of transportation in this world. This might explain why more and more of the seamen are from this area. There is much competition between the Malay coastal ports and Singapore.

The hi-rise skyline of Singapore starts showing through the mists. Small lushly green islands with romantic little houses on spindly stilts float by. Junks push about their business, whether fishing or furniture moving. As Europe is not a city of skylines, I am somewhat unused to this huge city shooting upward, we bang a u-turn right in front of the city, and pull up to a stop in the midst of traffic. We have to wait an hour for a pilot and our berth to clear, so I get to ponder this soaring cathedral of commerce. I also see airplanes for the first time in weeks, as they take off from the airport and bank over our head (a big 747 KLM which in twelve hours will cover what it just took us eighteen days).


Right across an elevated freeway from downtown Singapore, is a HUMONGOUS container port. It makes Felixstowe look like a cute little backwater. Maybe thirty ships, with at least one or two always coming or going. A fleet of tug boats rushing from place to place. Many oil “lighters” refueling ships from the water side. These containerships range from the gigantors to the middlings like us, to the tiny ships that can only take a few containers, looking like canoes amongst this lot. The ships smaller then us, for the most part, are marked by having their own cranes to lift the containers on and off in even the smallest port. Once again, they are coming and going, supplying this watery quarter of the world.

In my wanderings here, I notice how few of these millions of containers are actually leaving the port by truck into Singapore (clearing through the customs gate). This is the great transfer station of the world. Singapore is of a few million inhabitants, but the port is the main point of distribution for an area that comprises over a billion people. So the containers dosi-doe from one ship to another.

Finally we are heading for our berth, one ship away from a sister ship, the “Pusan Senator” coming back the other way on this loop. Although ships are made of incredibly heavy steel, and if properly maintained can withstand anything, the energy reflected by the momentum of sixty-five thousand tons could crush a pyramid. That makes it an eggshell in practicality. All the people involved are seasoned pros, and do this all day for a living. Watching them inch this giant device alongside a pier packed with other ships, was a lesson in care and patience.

Literally within ten minutes of touching the berth (at 19:35), the amount of time it took for the giant gantries to swing down into place, the containers were flying. The stevedores , as they are still called, are in charge of loading and unloading. The ships officers only supervise and check.

I sat in my stateroom awaiting instructions. A port call is like a pit stop in the grand prix, everyone is nervous and liable to break out into that action movie cliché “go, go, go, go!” The seamen, for the most part, seem much happier with the quiet simple routine life of the open sea. This nervousness starts building the day before, which is possibly why I had not been able to get any actual instructions as to what the procedure would be in port. After an hour and a half, my neighbor Mr. Ong, tells me I should go down to the ships office to get some phone cards before the guy who sells them leaves (well who knew?). I had seen the phone card guys come to the gangplank right as the ship docked. But from my window so many floors up, with their blond hair and backpacks, I thought they might be new passengers (of which I had mixed feelings). But these tall, dyed hair, effeminately sweet chinamen make a living selling various services to seamen and passengers. I procured a card, and the chief issued me my passport, with all the appropriate stamps.

At that point, it was so late, I thought I would just get to a phone and check in at home. I asked directions and got a vague waving of hands. I was told there were many phones at the canteen, which was far away (we were berthed far out at the end of a long pier with three other ships). So down the gangplank (much easier with out bags) admist and under the flying containers and into a world of roaring giant monsters.

The gantries are fifteen story buildings on wheels, their sirens sound before they start moving, but the length of time is not much to get out of the way of such big things, hundreds of tracktor-trailers roaring about either with or without containers loaded. The whole nightmarish world is chanting in sync “go, go, go, go”. There is a dilapidated little bus stop in the dark, but no signs as to whether buses were running or when. After fifteen minutes waiting, I take off on foot. I dodge and duck for a couple of miles, feeling like a mouse on the San Diego freeway, half scared to death and half fascinated.

I see a rare fellow pedestrian and ask for the canteen (not having seen any sign). I follow his directions away from the piers and into the land of giant container piles, which are fussed over by ten story rolling buildings busily going “oh, this container doesn’t belong in this pile, it should be over here in this pile, there, look at that nice stack I have made” roaring off at a few miles an hour “why is that container over there? mmmm?”. In this land the trucks are even more sinister as they come roaring out of nowhere and around a corner and off to nowhere as you cling to the side of a container you hope isn’t about to be plucked from the sky.

Finally I see an officious looking man in uniform in a little office by a row of lit up but deserted customs gates, but to get there I have to cross the Mississippi of these truck monsters, flowing in each direction. I carefully gauge the narrowest point, stand waiting, and at the right moment start bobbing and weaving through rushing death. All of this on a dark night, with those occasional pools of orange light that are the same as used in hell.
The officer comes rushing at me, I was, unawares, about to escape the port without going through the immigration station. Well sorry, a sign would be nice. He looks incredulous at my request for the canteen, but then points out a dimly lit café in the distance, with a few people sitting around tables. But first I have to go through the immigration booth, two booths down!

I find out the next day, that this was not the canteen (and most would not dare walk), which is a large truckstop like place in the port, that the sailors from all these ships can go and buy everything they might need, eat, hang out etc. But I was at a local working man’s hangout. Two tv’s on the wall with soccer (I looked for any news about Leeds United, as I have kind of adopted them in emotional support of Andy). I order a coke and ask for a phone. The pay phone is in the lobby of the next building. Well I sit drinking my coke, a nice enough crowd drinking Tiger Beer, watching the games or just talking. I notice a closed food stall in the corner that sells only pigs trotters. Oh yum, I must come back (not)! The phone and cards work, all is well, talk to my Aunt, get my messages from home (a lot of automated sales calls, must be trying to squeeze in under the wire of the do not call law, which I signed up for on the internet).

I shove off for the ship, in slight trepidation of the route I have to return through, but am feeling a little more confidant in this strangeland. I watch the sistership being loaded, it was to leave in a couple of hours. It truly is identical in almost all details. When these ships were built, six years ago, they were big and fast, now they are building them twice as big and faster!

As I come up the stairs around 23:00, the apprentice and one of the crew men are on their way out, looking to party and asking if I cared to join them. Well I was flattered, but too tired, and not really dressed properly. I run across the third officer, and I asked him for our estimated time of departure, hoping to get to the 07:00 AA meeting. He said as far as he knew at 10:00, but the stevedores were moving slowly (not that I could see) so I would have to check with the captain who would be available at 08:00. Oh well, the schedule had said a twenty-four hour stay, but I guess not. So not enough time for me to safely get away and back.

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