There’s a saying that you don’t really know a place until you’ve walked it.
Not driven through it. Not flown over it. Not navigated between meetings and airports, but walked slowly, at human pace, long enough for the place to reveal itself.
For four years, Singapore was where I lived, but not where I belonged.
It was the regional hub for the organization I work for, yet my real work was always elsewhere. I was constantly traveling in and out. The city became a pause between flights rather than a place to settle into. Efficient. Impressive. But distant.
Last week, I decided to walk across it.
The Coast-to-Coast Trail stretches about 36 kilometres, running from Jurong Lake Gardens in the west to Coney Island Park in the northeast. I joined it a few kilometres in, starting near Bukit Timah, where dense urban neighborhoods begin to give way to larger connected green spaces. I started early, while the air was still cool and the city just waking up.
From Bukit Timah, the trail followed the edge of the nature reserve rather than cutting through its core, running alongside Bukit Timah Road and linking into the Rail Corridor. The canopy was lighter here, and the sounds of traffic never fully disappeared. Yet even at the periphery, the presence of green softened the city, tall trees lining the path, birds moving between forest fragments, nature carefully stitched into infrastructure.
As the kilometres unfolded, the route drew me deeper into Singapore’s green heart, through the Lornie Nature Corridor and into the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. These landscapes are not only ecologically rich; they are critical to the country’s water system. The forests protect the reservoirs that form Singapore’s local water catchment, one of the nation’s four water taps.
As a water engineer, this section of the walk felt deeply personal.
I wasn’t simply moving through parkland, I was walking across living infrastructure. The forests above me protected the reservoirs below. Rain falling here flows into homes and industries across the island. The land itself performed part of the treatment process long before pipes and plants took over.
Singapore’s water system is often described as world-class, but walking through it revealed why. Water here is not hidden behind fences or distant dams. It is visible, protected, and deliberately woven into daily life.
That philosophy became especially clear at MacRitchie Reservoir, one of the country’s oldest. The water stretched wide and still, ringed by forest. Kayaks skimmed its surface. Anglers waited quietly along the banks. Runners and families moved along shaded boardwalks.
This was infrastructure doing more than storing water.
It invited people in.
It built awareness without compromising protection.
Utility and recreation were not competing ideas, they were intentionally designed to coexist.
Beyond the reservoir, forest trails gave way to park connectors. Streams ran beside the path. The skyline appeared briefly between the trees, then faded again.
At one point, a monitor lizard slid silently into the water as cyclists passed behind me. No urgency. No conflict. Just shared space.
Hours on foot created a stillness I hadn’t felt in years. With every step, I became more aware of how carefully this city had been planned, and how little of it I had truly experienced.
By the time I reached the coast, something had shifted.
Physically, I was exhausted. But mentally, I felt lighter, as though walking across Singapore had finally brought the city from the background of my life into focus.
That was when the irony became clear.
After four years of living here, it took one long walk for me to feel connected and I found that connection just as I was preparing to leave.
In a few days, I move to Pretoria. Another assignment. Another unfamiliar place.
This time, I want to arrive differently.
I want to begin on foot, without hurry, without destination, paying attention to the small transitions: where streets loosen into trails, where sound softens, where a city slowly reveals itself.
The long walk reminded me that belonging doesn’t come from how long we stay, but from how closely we look. When we slow down enough to notice the curve of a path or the shift of light through trees, a place stops being scenery and begins to feel lived.
Perhaps belonging doesn’t arrive all at once.
Perhaps it forms quietly, in motion.
There’s a saying that you don’t really know a place until you’ve walked it.
So I’ll start there, and keep walking.
