Quietly tucked away in a corner surrounded by high-rise apartments and rows of bungalows is a rustic village where the old Singapore still survives.
Dogs and cats run freely and chickens cluck noisily as children play around colorful, zinc-roofed houses made of wood and cement, undisturbed by the din of cars zipping by on an expressway just a few meters away.
Welcome to Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the last surviving village on the Singapore mainland.
Photo: AFP
Its days are numbered, but until development forces residents to move, the village gives visitors a glimpse of what life was like in the 1950s before Singapore became one of Asia’s most modern and wealthiest cities.
Occupying a land area the size of three soccer pitches in the northeastern suburbs, the kampong (“village” in the Malay language) has 28 houses scattered haphazardly with a total of about 50 residents.
With unpaved streets, large backyard gardens, grassy patches and occasional banana plants, the cluster is an anachronism in a city-state crammed with office towers, high-rise apartment blocks and shopping malls.
For residents, the village provides relief at the end of each working day, a quiet oasis where neighbors still know each other intimately, quite unlike the anonymity of city living.
“I have a deep attachment to my neighbors,” said Sng Mui Hong, a 57-year-old spinster who rents out houses in the village for S$6.50 to S$30 (US$5 to US$23) a month.
Most of Singapore’s 5 million residents live in government-built apartment buildings and private condominiums.
“After all they grew up with me, and some of the grandmothers and grandfathers here have watched me grow up,” said Sng, who currently lives with a nephew and niece, three dogs and several pet birds.
Her family moved into the plot of land in 1956, when Singapore was still under British colonial rule. Electricity and running water came into the village in 1962, a period when the country was in political transition.
Singapore, a largely ethnic Chinese island, became part of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, but was expelled two years later as Kuala Lumpur pursued policies favorable to the Malay majority.
In modern-day Kampong Lorong Buangkok, racial harmony comes naturally for the Chinese and Malay families whose houses are about 5m apart.
“They are like my own parents because we are from the same village. So I don’t care if they are Malay or Chinese,” Sng said of her older neighbors.
And while the village is by Singapore standards far from supermarkets, schools and bus and train stops, residents rarely mind as there are perks to village life that cannot be found elsewhere.
Some even own cars, a luxury in Singapore.
Makeup artist Jamil Kamsah, who has lived in Kampong Lorong Buangkok since 1967, enjoys the amicable nature of the village folk.
“People here are very friendly, motherly and polite, and it is easy for me to make friends with them,” the 55-year-old said. “I don’t scold animals and I talk to plants.”
In his free time, Jamil tends to his garden and touches up the exterior of his house, welcoming visitors with a ready smile.
In land-scarce Singapore, where many older buildings and residential areas have been converted to more modern housing or commercial use, Kampong Lorong Buangkok faces an uncertain future. Sng hopes the village can be preserved to educate future generations about the past and show them how their forefathers lived.
“Not everybody started off wealthy, many grandfathers built their lives from scratch,” she said
Some city schools take their young students on excursion trips to Kampong Lorong Buangkok to learn about village life.
“Some children mistook the chickens for birds,” Kamsah said.
The village’s days are numbered, and the residents know it.
Singapore’s land-use planning agency, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), said there are plans to redevelop Kampong Lorong Buangkok, but gave no time frame.
“The kampong at Lorong Buangkok and its surrounding land is planned to be comprehensively developed to provide future housing and other neighborhood facilities supported by a road network,” a URA spokesperson said.
Sng, however, does not feel sad even if her village has to go one day.
“Nothing lasts forever,” she said with a shrug.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to