Since I was flying with Singapore Airlines, I had eight hours to kill in the island state on each leg of the trip, and I spent most of it wandering the streets of one of the city’s funkiest neighbourhoods, called Geylang Serai.
Its an interesting name. In one version, “Geylang” comes from a Malay word for “warehouse” but in another more colorful variation it is comes from “Gay Land” ; the area was once home to Singapore’s pre-World War 2 amusement park “Gay World” (meaning “Happy World”. The other kind of gay is after all, still illegal here, though increasingly tolerated).
“Gay World”, along with its sister establishments “New World” and “Great World”, closed in the 19060s, and were demolished. Until the early 90s the Geylang site existed as a public park called “Gay World Park” but (perhaps embarrassed by the name?) authorities turned it into a nondescript housing estate. Luckily this jaunty little hotel near the former site remains as a reminder.
Geylang is a cosmopolitan neighborhood. Around Joo Chiat Road it was once the stronghold of the Eurasian colonial elite; where wealthy Chinese and mixed-race bureaucrats and business tycoons nestled in privelege.
Other parts, by contrast, have been strongly Malay and Muslim.
The beautiful shophouses that still line many streets, with their tiled roofs, pastel colours and elaborately shuttered windows, are the product of the ” peranakan” culture – a Singaporean/Malaysian hybrid of Chinese and Malay influences.
Today, the area also has a large population of foreign guestworkers – Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians and bangladeshis – many of them working in the “entertainment districts” for which the area is locally famous – mostly innocuous looking karaoke bars on the little sidestreets known as “lorongs”.
As with everywhere in Singapore, in the evenings the streets fill with people cooking and eating; openair restaurants put out plastic chairs in the laneways and on footpaths, and people kick back to eat and gossip and enjoy the evening breeze.
The local specialtyhere seemed to be frog restaurants.
