James' Own Blog: Kampong Buangkok

A couple weeks ago I heard about a place in Singapore - the last remaining kampong (village) on the island. By 'last remaining kampong' it means it's the last village where people were originally living in Singapore before they were cleared to make room for either private investors or for the Singapore Housing Development Board to build government flats. Kampong Buangkok. After doing some quick research to make sure this place really existed and to locate it on a map,

I met up with my friend, Fal, and we rode our bikes out to take a look. Despite the vague directions on the map, it was actually very easy to find and pretty much as I expected from the information I'd found on other websites: very small- you can walk through it in about five minutes, surrounded by HDB flats and a little bit of remaining jungle, and it even had the chickens roaming around freely. The unexpected observation I didn't understand was all the junk strewn around the whole village. Tons of it. We assumed it was being sorted and sold for scrap by the inhabitants rather than just collected, but despite the seeming state of poverty, there were also signs of money, lots of money! like the Benz parked outside one of the houses for example which was one of many other cars there. It's rumored that the rent for these places is in the tens of dollars per month, which at least I consider cheap, but still, cars are expensive here. I wonder what the people who live here do for a living. They seemed cool though, all pretty relaxed and indifferent but friendly towards us walking our bikes down the main path through the village, sections of which were not paved. Meaning they were not paved with asphalt or bricks or cobblestone even, but with carpet- which I find not only resourceful and inventive, but also classy (no it's wasn't red carpet though). Speaking of money though, the land has been reported to be valued at anywhere between 20 to 80 million dollars but the owner is unwilling to sell to private investors because the inhabitants like the life there as it is. However, they also realize that if the government wanted to take over the land there is nothing they could do about it, as in Singapore the government has eminent domain and can take over any land as required, as I understand. It's interesting though that along the kampong there are definitely signs of government public works like the cement storm drains borderign it. On one of the websites, I read that that flooding during major rains in one of the major problems the community faces. In summary, I'm glad we went to take a look and see the kampong as it's an ongoing part of Singapore's past which in many other cases has been left behind to modernization.