Our Bedok Kampong House Singapore

Maria Menado - Malaysia’s beloved actress, screen siren, and icon of the golden era of Malay cinema - passed away recently in Kuala Lumpur on 30 April 2026, at the age of 94. For many across the region, her name evokes the glamour of the 1950s and early 1960s. For our family, her presence was something far more intimate: she was a figure who was once a part of the daily rhythms of our Bedok kampong. In those years, the ladies in our household were enthralled by her celebrity. They would stand at the veranda, or pause in the garden, hoping to catch a glimpse of her whenever word spread that she might be arriving. And indeed, she often did - to stay at the holiday home of Sultan Abu Bakar of Pahang, whom she married in 1963 before retiring from the film world. We were told that whenever she was in residence, music and song would float from that house, carried across the old Sungei Bedok tributary like a soft announcement that the star had returned. That house stood diagonally acros...

With heartfelt gratitude, we celebrate a milestone: 25,000 blog page views. Over two years and 260 posts, our Bedok kampong house stories have grown into a collective archive - shaped not just by our memories, but by the voices of neighbours who shared this journey with us. Thank you for reading, remembering, and keeping these stories alive. If you’d like your own Bedok story to be part of this living heritage, send us a private message. We’d be honoured to hear from you.

Kampong folk sometimes mistook them for Arabs, but the residents of Rumah Bombay - as the house at 4E Bedok Road (formerly 614) was affectionately known - actually hailed from Gujarat in India. (Yes, Gujarat was part of North Bombay before 1 May 1960.) They were one large extended family, led by their patriarch, the late Haji Kassim bin Adam, who ran a thriving dates business at 29 Arab Street under the company named “Kassim bin Adam Pte Ltd”. They lived just next door to us, separated only by a simple fence. Abu Bakar, Haji Kassim’s grandson, still remembers vividly the day they moved in - January 1957 - and how the family transformed the former hostel/boarding house into a home spacious enough for the families of Haji Kassim’s seven children, their children, and grandchildren. The house eventually held nine bedrooms. At its peak, more than forty family members lived together under that magnificent two storey roof fenced with beautiful, yellow-flowered Australia Gold Vine creepers...

In February 1968, the Hall family arrived in Singapore when Michael’s father - serving with the RAF - was posted here. Michael still remembers the stark contrast between the cold, grey skies they left behind in the UK and the sunny, amazing Singapore that greeted them when they arrived. October that year saw them move from their Serangoon Gardens home over to Bedok Road, near Simpang Bedok. Evenings were often spent at the hawker stalls at Bedok Corner. Thirteen-year-old Michael recalls, “I remember the pressure lamps hissing away,” he says - a sound and glow that defined the hawker nights of that era. But what he remembers most fondly is Bedok Beach. “My youngest sister thought it was great jumping around the sand and seeing those washed up sea cucumbers!” he laughs. At low tide, the shoreline came alive - sea creatures emerging with the ebb, the sand rippling with movement, the beach revealing its hidden world. Thankfully, Michael’s father had the presence of mind to capture a ...

In the days when the Sungei Bedok tributary still flowed beside our Bedok kampong house, long before it was filled with landfill around 1960, a handful of small bridges linked one bank to the other, carrying neighbours, bicycles, and the small routines of kampong life. One of these crossings was this distinctive curved hump timber bridge , built for pedestrians and cyclists. Kampong folk fondly called it “Jambatan Hitam” , the Black Bridge, after its dark‑painted trusses and the structures that led toward the police quarters. For many, it was simply part of the daily route; for others, including our own family, it became a favourite spot to pause for a photograph. Taken in 1959 , this photo captures the bridge at a time when water still ran beneath it, the stream moving gently through a Bedok that has since vanished. With a little help from AI, we can now focus on the bridge itself, letting its shape and memory stand clearly once more. Our thanks to our former kampong neighbours...

Shelter — just as the houses in and around our Bedok kampongs once offered a roof and refuge to the families within them, our fathers did the very same. They found for us a place we could call home, a place where we felt safe enough to live, to grow, and to experience all that life had to offer. And like the homes they built or provided, our fathers themselves became our shelter — the place we turned to for guidance and advice, for provision and restoration, and most of all for the comfort of knowing we were safe in their presence, wrapped in their arms whenever we needed them. Many of them are no longer with us, yet we look back with tenderness and gratitude at the sacrifices they made — carrying the weight of being the family’s breadwinner so that we could go to school, play freely, and enjoy the simple joys of childhood that kampong life gave so generously. To all the fathers reading this, thank you. May you be blessed each day, knowing that the labour of your hands has neve...