Singapore

Singapore, an island nation, is known for being a city-state. While Singapore lays claim on a total of sixty-three islands (most of them tiny and unpopulated), the large majority of the country is found on a relatively tiny island (officially called Pulau Ujong) which measures 704 km². For an Asian Tiger with a booming economy and a per capita GDP that matches many Western, First World countries, it is surprising that Singapore is so small in size!

Perhaps due to its burgeoning economic activity and the plethora of people commuting into and out of Singapore, despite its small size, Singapore has many points of entry. According to the Singapore Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, Singapore has the following checkpoints:

Air Checkpoints

»	Changi Airport
»	Seletar Airport

Air Cargo Checkpoints

»	Airport Logistics Park
»	Changi Airfreight Centre
»	Parcel Post Section

Coastal Checkpoints

»	Singapore Cruise Centre
»	Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal
»	Changi Ferry Terminal
»	Jurong Fishery Port
»	Marina South Pier
»	West Coast Pier

Land Checkpoints

»	Tuas Checkpoint
»	Woodlands Checkpoint
»	Woodlands Train Checkpoint

Ports Checkpoints

»	Ports Command HQ
»	Brani Gate
»	Jurong Port Main Gate
»	Jurong Scanning Station
»	Jurong West Gate
»	Keppel Distripark
»	Pasir Panjang Terminal Gate 4
»	Pasir Panjang Scanning Station
»	Tanjong Pagar Gate
»	Tanjong Pagar Scanning Station
»	Sembawang Gate

I suppose that most of these are not open to civilians and that many of the ones listed above (such as the Air Cargo and especially "Ports Checkpoints" are only for transporting goods). To my knowledge, there are seven points of entry and exit that can be used by civilians:

Changi Airport
Tuas Checkpoint
Woodlands Checkpoint
Woodlands Train Checkpoint
Singapore Cruise Center
Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal
Changi Ferry Terminal

Of these seven, I have used four. Here are my immigrations stamps from Singapore (not including two more which are unintelligible except for the dates):

This first one from 2007 is an excellent stamp; it is clear enough that you can read the permit message: "Permitted to enter and remain in Singapore for ninety days for Social Visit only from date shown above." Most Western passport holders get 90 days while most Asian passport holders get 30 days. This was applied at the Singapore airport.

This was my first passport stamp from a country other than the US, Canada, the Philippines, and Korea (although the Korea ones were just transit stamps - I didn't spend more than 24 hours there).

Exit stamps from the Woodlands ("W") train checkpoint. I also have one from the Woodlands pedestrian checkpoint, but it is heavy and not very nice, so I did not include it in this post. Anyway, it also uses "W" as its checkpoint code, so you can't really tell the difference unless you know the story (as in my case) or you have access to Singapore's archives and can check where the immigration officers were posted that day (using their officer numbers).

This is a Woodlands entry stamp which is generic in the sense that the number of days you are permitted to stay is written in by the officer rather than incorporated into the stamp design. Perhaps this generic one was issued to make it more convenient for the immigration officers; instead of switching from 30-day to 90-day stamps when processing different passports, they can just easily write down the number of days. Strangely, though, the others who were with me when I made the crossing (and they also hold US passports) received chops with "90 days" already on the stamper..... I do not recall, though, if they got rectangular stamps (like this one), hexagon stamps (like the ones for 90-day permits), or round edge rectangular stamps (like the one shown below, used for 30-day permits).

The stamp above is not very clear, but it gives you an example of how the 30-day rounded-edge permits look - quite similar to the 30-day entry stamps of Indonesia. This one was applied into my Philippine passport. This was applied at Terminal 1 of Changi airport.


One of the benefits of the Philippine passports is that it does not have images for its background designs on each page, so stamps can be seen more clearly. This stamp above is very sharp and clear and was applied at Changi airport Terminal 1. Perhaps the reason it is very sharp is because it is the stamp used by the immigration "station" and not the immigration counters. This is because the immigration officer escorted me to the special immigration station since he has a problem with the fact that my passport was due to expire in less than six months and I was not heading for my "home country." I explained to them that I was a permanent resident in Macau and that I was flying back via Penang. The officer at the immigration station consulted their superior who replied something along the lines of, "Well, he's leaving Singapore, so it doesn't matter." After that, the rather rotund Indian-looking lady applied this stamp on my passport very clearly. It is probably sharp because, unlike the others, it is not used on so many passports.

The episode was a bit humiliating, however, because I was a Filipino passport holder being held at immigration and the first question that one of the staff asked the one escorting me was, "Overstayed?" Ironically, this was the second time I was held at immigration in less than two weeks! The first time I was ever "detained" was while crossing the Gongbei border crossing on the Macau side, but that anecdote is for the post on Macau.


This is a stamp from Tuas checkpoint. I had to manipulate the image a bit to make it clearer since the boat in the background has such a complicated design that it makes the stamp (which is actually a bit darker in reality) difficult to read. You can, however, make out the big "T" for "Tuas."


Unlike in 2007, this time the immigration officer at Woodlands used the 90-day hexagon on my passport. This may have been because I asked him to stamp clearly for a "souvenir" and so he thought it would be best to use the right stamp rather than write in the number of days permit. This officer was the first I have encountered who as very meticulous about his work. The process was very slow and he made sure to check my information page thoroughly and even looked through all my visa pages. When he finished processing me (after he had already stamped the passport), he gave the thing one more hard look before returning it. I am not complaining, but I was just a bit surprised. Many other immigration officers in this region (especially in thoroughly used border checkpoints like Gongbei in Macau and KLIA-LCCT in Kuala Lumpur) seem like they couldn't really care less. Perhaps there is a negative correlation between frequency of use of a checkpoint and thoroughness in checking (of not-so-exotic passports)?

The departure stamp is, like the one last time, very clean and sharp. It was applied by an elderly, rotund Chinese officer, whom I asked to please stamp my passport clearly. She did stamp clearly, but on top of the entry stamp, so it's not as "clear" as I would like it.

The next time I visit Singapore, I really want to take a ferry to Malaysia from Changi Ferry terminal, where I believe the checkpoint code is an "R." There are few ferries that operate there, and they are quite small 12-seaters that leave only when full (!).

Third Passport Stamps

This passport, unlike the others has different stamps from countries other than the Philippines.


The stamps from 2003 are from a trip I took with my parents to visit my ailing grandmother before she passed away. There are immigration stamps for Korea because we had a 16-hour stop-over there. Our trip was last-minute since my grandmother's health was not doing so well, so my mother took the earliest tickets available. Since we had flown Korean to the Philippines before and stayed only for a brief 3-4 hours, she thought we were in for the same journey. But we were not. Apparently, there are two flight to Seoul daily from Los Angeles and we took the earlier of the two, landing us in Seoul with 16 or so hours of waiting ahead of us.

The stamps from February 2005 are from the trip we made to make arrangements and prepare for our move to the Philippines later that May. As the stamp shows, we moved to the Philippines from the States on 23 May 2005.


The US immigration stamp is from my February 2005 trip to the Philippines. I remember expressly asking the immigration officer to chop my passport, to which he agreed. I gained the confidence to do so after asking the Canadian immigration officer at Niagara Falls to stamp my passport (even if they don't need to stamp US passports for land entries).

The other stamps are from my 2007 trip to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Singapore uses a hexagonal stamp at the airport, which I take is a special stamp for social visitors allowed to stay for 90 days. The same day I arrived in Singapore, I went straight to the Woodlands border gate to cross over the bridge to the other side, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We cross the bridge by bus and then waited for the bus to reach the end of its route. When we reached the terminal, we hopped onto the bus back to the border gate and returned to Singapore to check into our hotel room. This was the first time I would be doing something "crazy" just to get passport stamps and later I would learn that my antics would pay off.

Since we were leaving for Kuala Lumpur on a train (Air Asia was not yet so big and we also wanted to take in the sights of Malaysia along the way), we had to board at the Tanjong Pagar station, which was somewhere in the middle of Singapore. The company that services this station is Malaysian-owned Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) or Malaysian National Railways and the only destinations from this station are all found in Malaysia. Therefore, it is understood that if you are to board a train here, you are headed for Malaysia. The thing is, Malaysia seems to claim the strip of land on which the railroad tracks are laid and there is some dispute over ownership of the land on which the tracks are laid. But Singapore, of course, will not agree to this. So what happens is, you board the train until some part of Singapore that is close to the shore (Singapore is an island) and then you are all made to get off and go through Singapore immigration exit procedures, and then you board the train again. Once you board the train, you never have to get off again until you reach your destination. At first I thought it was strange that we never stopped to go through Malaysian immigration, and then I thought we might have to go through some immigration booth in Kuala Lumpur, but that was not the case. I would learn upon my departure from Kuala Lumpur that, as far as Malaysian immigration is concerned, my port of entry was Tanjong Pagar. You can read from the KL airport exit stamp, "Masuk melalui KTM Tanjong Pagar" or "Entered through Tanjong Pagar KTM..." and then the date. The immigration officer asked no questions about it, so I guess this is really Malaysian policy. The thing is, what if you are not supposed to enter Malaysia? What if you don't have the visa or what if you are blacklisted? Is this a way to sneak in without having to sneak in? Well anyway, thank heavens that I insisted on making the absurd trip to Johor Bahru so now I have a "Johor Bahru" entry and exist stamp!

Notice also that the immigration stamp applied at the Woodlands entry point is the generic stamp and that the number of days allowed to remain is filled in by the immigration officer by hand. No special stamp design at the land border, I guess. It seems immigration officers always neglect land borders: at Canadian and Mexican land entry posts, they never stamp your passport! But I guess it would matter a lot if you were passing from South Korea to North Korea by land.


Here are the stamps from my Hong Kong-Macau trip later that same year. Later on, I will post more stamps from HK and Macau and you can compare how the ones in HK have changed and the ones in Macau are still the same after 2.5 years. The HK immigration stamps do not indicate on the text the port of entry used by the visitor, but the color says it all. Black is for the airport and green was for the seaport (no it is purple).

The 11 October stamp is from an overnight business trip I took to Hong Kong a few days before my vacation trip. Note that 11 October 2007 was also the day the A380 was at the airport for its test landing and, yes, I did see it there. I unfortunately did not have the chance to see it land or take off, though. The May arrival stamp is from my arrival from Malaysia.

If you have been observant, you would have noticed that Philippine immigration stamps include the flight number of your arrival or departure flight. Notice on the 22 October departure stamp that there is no indication. This is because this was the time when I went through immigration without the officer even checking his computer! Yes, it seemed that there was some kind of system glitch. I was surprised that when I went through the check-in counter and headed for my gate, there were terribly long lines at immigration. This was the first time I had seen this, especially because it's not like MNL is like LAX where you have a flight departing every five minutes. We were stuck at the back of the line for something like fifteen minutes, and then the line started moving up so quickly! I was amazed at the sudden speed and then learned that the officers were, instead of individually scanning the passports, just stamping away quickly. I guess they were under pressure since some flights were already boarding! This was a chance for any fugitives or those on the immigration black lists to escape the country! I actually have a hunch that maybe there as some foul play and that maybe the Bureau Immigration was in on it and purposely processed the passports without checking them. Was this some kind of orchestrated corruption taking place once more? Or am I just too suspicious of Philippine government agencies?

Now, moving on, looking to the right half of the scan, you will see that all the five chops from three different authorities are from 25 October 2007! Include the HK stamp on top of page 12 and you have 6 all in one day! This was because I went on a one-day trip to Macau from HK that day and then returned to the Philippines that same evening.


This lone stamp from Canada is from my Toronto-Niagara Falls-New York trip in 2004. We flew from LA to Toronto and, since we were flying in this time as opposed to driving in like I did the last time I visited Canada in 2000, I got an immigration stamp! This one is from YYZ, or Pearson International Airport. The Niagara Falls stamp that I mentioned earlier is actually on Page 11, but the ink faded and the Malaysian immigration officer did not see it and stamped right on top of it! Today, the Niagara Falls stamp is almost invisible!


This last stamp was a bonus from my overnight trip to HK. Because I also hold a Philippine passport which I also present when I leave and arrive in the Philippines, officers often inscribe the letters "BB" for "Balikbayan status entry" or "w/PP" to indicate my dual citizenship. However, for this trip I decided not to present my Philippine passport so I received a special "restricting" date stamp which shows the day I must leave the Philippines (US nationals are allowed to stay only for 21 days). In the past, they used to write in "21 days," but now they actually stamp the date, which I think is awesome!