Penang - Journey back to 80s Singapore

As befitting my middle-age status, I sometimes reminisce about my childhood years, trying to sieve through an increasingly foggy memory to recall memories, sights and sounds of yesteryears. And it is getting more and more difficult. Visiting places to jolt the memory is no use because most of the pre-war buildings that we frequented have been either torn down or refurbished losing its flavour as a result.

One of my more vivid recollections is visiting the Upper Bukit Timah area quite often in my childhood. That was because it was the nearest shopping belt apart from going to the city or Chinatown. The belt-stretch starts where the Ten-Mile Junction is sited now and extends all the way to where MINDEF is. Shops and buildings do extend both ways from this stretch but are less busy and patronised.

This row of two-storey shophouses was where our books, school shoes, spectacles etc. were purchased. On the eastern side behind the row of shophouses, there used to be small hills and I recall mum bringing me to visit a quite famous sinseh (TCM practioner) when I was unwell. There were also many coffeeshops with most of them at the corner streets where traffic was the busiest.

So I felt immediately at home and extremely nostalgic at Penang precisely because of of its 80s Singapore feel. The old-ness, the faded colours, the five-foot way, all of which seemed to have leapt off the pages of my memory.

The smell and taste of the food were delicious linkages to small and obscure bits of episodes filed away in my mind. The greying rain-stained building facade were exactly the ones I saw in 80s Singapore. Walking along the five-foot way, surveying the goods on display, dodging some of the items hung on the ceiling, the expectant look of the shopkeepers at passerbys.

To complete the adventure, we hopped onto a trishaw and it turned out the appropriate, albeit overpriced, thing to do. The slowness of the trishaw complemented the feel of the area around Campbell Street which are dotted with many UNESCO heritage sites.