Sentosa Palawan Beach

Palawan Beach is on the southern shore of Sentosa, an island off Singapore reached by cable car, monorail or a boardwalk. It is six hundred metres of pale sand, and every grain of it was brought here.

Sentosa was a British military installation and then, from 1972, a state leisure project; its beaches were created in the 1970s and 1990s from sand imported from Indonesia and Malaysia, on a shore that was mangrove and rock. Singapore has expanded its land area by roughly a quarter since independence, largely with imported sand, and the regional politics of that — Indonesia banned exports in 2007, Malaysia in 2019 — is a real subject rather than a footnote.

A rope suspension bridge crosses from the beach to a small islet with two viewing towers, marked as the southernmost point of continental Asia. The claim requires accepting a causeway, a bridge and an islet as continental, which is a stretch the sign does not acknowledge; the register records the claim and its weakness together. Sentosa was called Pulau Belakang Mati — the island behind which lies death — until it was renamed in 1972 for the leisure project.

The water is sheltered and shallow, and it faces one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world — the anchored container ships on the horizon are a permanent feature of the view and, for many visitors, the most memorable thing about it. Swimming is permitted in marked areas and visibility is limited. Siloso at the western end of Sentosa is the party beach and Tanjong the quiet one, all three built from the same imported sand.

Every grain of this beach arrived by ship, the islet at the end is called the southernmost point of continental Asia on a technicality, and the horizon is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The register includes it because pretending such beaches do not exist would be the less honest choice.