Singapore's Last Village

The Singaporean government is planning to raze historic Buangkok Village. In its place new schools and housing will be built. Already a fleet of cranes is parked nearby, a sign of the destruction to come.

In a forest clearing, surrounded by high-rise apartments, this cluster of zinc-roofed wooden homes in the northern region of the island is the last bastion of life from a Singapore soon to be found only in history books.

There isn't much time left to get a look at the way things were "back in the day."

Exploring Buangkok

At the entrance of the village a battered sign proclaims ‘Kampung Buangkok.’ ‘Kampung’ is the Malay word for village, and before the juggernaut of modernization struck the nation in the 1960s, most locals lived in villages like Buangkok.

But this place no longer looks or feels like Singapore. It’s quiet enough to hear birds caw and tweet. Honeybees circle and butterflies flutter around jack fruit, mango and papaya trees.

The tiny settlement covers the area of about three football fields. Houses are painted in bright pinks, blues and greens. Doors are left unlocked. Everybody knows everybody. A woman on her porch plays with her tabby and its five kittens. When you linger on the dirt path in front of her house she smiles and asks how you are.

Twenty-eight families live in Kampung Buangkok. Rents are paid to one landlord, Ms. Sng Hui Hong, whose father bought the land in 1962. Rents range from S$6.50 to S$30 a month, roughly what a couple drinks will cost on a night out on the town for the modern Singaporean.

A scratch of road weaving away from the village leads to a junkyard operated by a friendly old man who’s been in the trade since he was a boy. A tour of the premises reveals a graveyard of old refrigerators, billboards from the 1970s and other discarded items that, like this village, are waiting only to be purged from Singapore's collective consciousness.

Getting There

Buangkok Village is located at Lorong Buang Kok in Hougang in the north-eastern region of Singapore off Sengkang East Avenue near Yio Chu Kang Road.

By Bus: Take SBS bus no. 88 and get off at the junction of Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 and Yio Chu Kang Road. Walk towards Gerald Drive.

Editor's Note: Melissa wasn't the only one drawn to the last kampung. Three photography enthusiasts, Sajid, Darrell and Carl also embarked on their own missions to document Buangkok in all its innocence before it disappears. Check out their work in the gallery above.

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