In Changi’s Terminal 4, a fine, cooling mist descends from a leafy avenue. Fish swim in ponds beneath the butterfly garden, and primates rest in a plethora of bright and comfy places they’d found.
I hadn’t yet left the bright lights and clean edges of Singapore, but what I saw in this eden was as surprising to me as what I hoped waited for me in the deep jungles of Borneo.
In the air the sun sets in to a rusty brown horizon. The dark water becomes a deep space, speckled with the starlight of passing boats.
Once or twice a red dwarf flickers by, as we pass the oil rigs of the South China Sea. Then finally the coast arrived. A golden nebula of lights, the remnants of life gone supernova. Its glistening filaments emerging from the rainforest.
“What adventures await me down there?” I’d wondered. But tomorrow, gliding across 30km of that same water, still not arrived at my first tour destination, I’d realise the adventure had begun back in that airport.
Perhaps in future I’d let the journey be less about the function and more part of the experience.
I sat back in the boat, gobbled down the last segment of my orange and let the cool spray of the sea clean my hands.
