Punggol - The Last Haven

In a bustling city like Singapore with its busy streets and tall skyscrapers, it is rare to find a place of quiet tranquility and peace. Punggol is one such place - a small village in the north-east, largely untouched and un-spoilt by the outside world.

Punggol is located on the north-eastern tip of Singapore, and even has its own MRT station. Contrary to popular belief, Puggol is in fact a part of mainland Singapore, and is actually located on the mainland. The perception that Punggol is located off the mainland is often attributed to the misleading MRT system map, which positions Punggol station outside the outline of the Singapore coast.

Top-right end of the Purple Line, seeming offshore, is Punggol Station. 

The original plan for Punggol back in 1996 was big. Then Prime minister Goh Chok Tong spoke at his National Day Rally about a town for the 21st Century, a new model for housing quality, and the project was named Punggol 21. Thousands of houses would be built, and recreational facilities would spring up to cater for the growing population in Punggol. The building began, but then the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit, and with a decrease in demands for new houses, the building stopped. And having not reached the critical population mass needed to support entertainment centers yet, Punggol was left with plenty of new houses, but little else other than that.

The first settlers came to Punggol no more than 10 years ago. Back then, there was no MRT line, and soft drinks were sold in glass bottles at the only super market in the entire village. The village lacked many of the modern facilities common in other neighborhoods, but people did not complain, spending their time flying kites at the many open fields or trekking in the nearby woods. There was a rustic charm about a village so detached from the rest of the city and so close to nature that soon made the villagers love their land.

A 2-inch cicada found along a corridor in Punggol.

They are responsible for most of the forest's music.

After a series of events that affected Punggol but went unreported in the state media (the village experienced tremors from Indonesia and a major blackout), it became clear that Punggol was a place separated from the rest of Singapore not only by physical distance. They were being overlooked, but the people living in the un-spoilt land were secretly happy that their land would remain untouched by the greed of capitalist society, at least for a period.

Things began to change with the opening of the North-East Line on 20 June 2003. By this time the villagers in Punggol were quite happy to live their lives away from the rest of the island. It took a while before people in Punggol actually started filling the trains to travel out of the village.

Peak hour at Punggol.

Then in September 2004, Punggol Plaza opened. It was the first shopping centre in the whole neighborhood, and was initially heralded as the end of the age of innocence for the village. But somehow the greed and consumerist culture did not take hold in Punggol as it had done elsewhere when a shopping mall opens. A possible factor for this was how the plaza catered to the culture in the village- Stationary shops sold bamboo framed kites, and the plaza was probably the only shopping centre in the whole nation that did not have a fast food joint. As such, villagers were often seen heading to the plaza in their pajamas, some children even carrying their bolsters.

Then in 2007 Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced Punggol 21-Plus. And that was the end of Punggol as we knew it. It was no longer going to be... untouched.

By 2008, KFC opened in Punggol Plaza. In Christmas 2010, Popeyes opened at Punggol waterway. By mid 2011, a second KFC had opened. Then last month... McDonalds opened.

For at least a month before its opening, McDonalds had been publicizing its presence. There has never been major publicity for any of the other fast food joints around Punggol (not counting the road signs that tell us where to find them, but just plain adverts like the one above). They even organized a McDonalds' Punggol-Waterway Run to raise awareness about their arrival, as well as promote a healthy lifestyle that complements the calorie rich diet they provide. Punggol was now being exposed to the outside world.

Punggol McDonalds' opened on 6th December. Soon after, there was a big karaoke competition held just outside its golden arches with a lion dance troupe to grace the occasion. But not everyone was celebrating. Some villagers saw the coming of Ronald McDonald as the end of Punggol's age of innocence and were visibly affected when they walked by the fast food joint.


Does the arrival of McDonalds' really mean that Punggol can no longer live apart from the greed and desires of capitalist society? Or can the locals find a delicate balance between village life and the encroaching urban culture; their Dora the Explorer pajamas and the formalities involved getting dressed to go to McDonalds?

Time will tell, and that telling time has come.