Out & About In Singapore: Tanjong Pagar

Text by Dolores Parker / Photos by Janine Ralph and Lianne Chilton
More photos can be viewed via the CAS photo gallery www.canadians.org.sg/gallery.php#OAS11

Happy Lunar New Year (a bit late, I know)!  With all the talk about ways to usher in good luck for the New Year and auspicious actions and omens, I wondered if spilling kopi all over my bright white T-shirt just before leading the Out and About tour was going to be a bad omen.  Lynda Sellars and I had planned this outing and I arrived early to go over my notes.  The iced kopi was very tasty.  Too bad so much of it ended up on my shirt.

After Lynda and the other 15 Out and Abouters arrived at our meeting place, we started things off with a brief talk about the history of the area before
having a good look around the Tanjong Pagar train station.  The station was built in 1932 for the Federated Malay States Railway company and it and the tracks are still owned by Malaysia, though the company is now called Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM).  It is a beautiful old building with arches, murals and relief statues.  It was also once a prestigious 36 room hotel, but now the only overnight option is a $15 bed in a dormitory.  Last September, Singapore and Malaysia came to an agreement that Malaysia would hand over the station and railway land to Singapore in exchange for some other parcels of prime land.  KTM will move its main station to a new facility in the north and stop operations at Tanjong Pagar in July of this year.  The station building will be conserved and there is talk of  turning it into a transport museum.   If you want to see it as a working station and experience a little bit of Malaysia in Singapore, you have only a few more months to do so!

Next we walked through the Spottiswoode HDB development, pausing to look at the posted “cleanest block” award.  There was a 5 minute rain shower while we talked about the award, but we were  under shelter and it soon cleared up as we moved on to our next stop.  The Sri Muneeswaran Temple is a Hindu “jungle” temple tucked between some railway tracks.  It was one of ten small shrines built by train repairmen and is now the last surviving such railroad temple in Singapore.  Who knows if it will still be there when the land is redeveloped.

We admired the shophouses along Blair road and had a quick look at Baba House, St. Matthew’s church and the Fairfield Methodist Girl’s school on the way to our next destination.  The Pinnacle at Duxton is a unique, award winning HDB housing project.  It is 50 stories tall and has 2 high level sky gardens.  With an EZ Link card, you can go up to the 50th storey sky bridge for only $5.00.  That’s much cheaper than the Marina Bay Sands or the Flyer and the view is very good.  We all went up to the top, and after getting through the tricky gates we enjoyed walking around and taking photos of the wonderful view.

We next walked through the Duxton Plain Parkway and stopped for a little while at the charming multi storied Tong Mern Sern Antique shop.  Their motto is, “We buy junk and sell antiques.  Some fools buy and some fools sell.”  From there it was only a short scurry through another brief rain shower to the Blue Ginger restaurant where a tasty Peranakan set lunch awaited us.

So, we mostly dodged the rain showers and saw some interesting parts of Singapore and had a terrific lunch spiced with chillies, friendly conversations and laughter.  It all went really well, so I guess coffee spills are a good omen after all.  I highly recommend them.