Our Bedok Kampong House Singapore

This end December 2025 finds us reviewing our Facebook page’s top 5 posts for the year – with the highest views of 12, 714 featuring our parents during their 1960 honeymoon trip, We are also grateful to Tony Holt, Michael Hall, and Daniel Koh for contributing to these best seller posts! We also wish to express our gratitude to our followers who viewed and liked our posts, helping in the interaction process. You make this page and our blog come alive as if our memories were just made yesterday! Even though these posts are about the past, we want to wish you all well for our collective future in 2026 and beyond to be especially bright with good health and lucid recollections always!

We chanced upon this remarkable aerial photo of the road corner turn linking Upper East Coast Road and Bedok Road (photo of 1969 and sourced by and previously shared by “The Long and Winding Road”, and others, with acknowledgement). Amazingly our Bedok kampong house at 10J Bedok Road can be seen here, just diagonally behind our neighbour Kak Min with the large 2-storey white concrete house she and her large family lived in. (original source is http://www.users.waitrose.com/~g8jan but link is not accessible now) Please note that the red indications are all ours

She has been the darling of our FB stories postings, garnering many likes as she fashionably posed in the garden of our Bedok kampong house, or when she accompanied her sister, our mother on outings and trips and sometimes dates with our father before they tied the knot! Our mother’s youngest sister, she was just 3 when the war happened, and Singapore was occupied. The sisters also lost both parents at a very young age – yet through it all, developed resilience and never-say-tie in their attitude and outlook in life. All with their respective families now, we wish to congratulate our Ee Ee on her 86 th birthday this week!

We are extremely excited to cross the milestone of 10,000 pageviews of this blog and so appreciative of all the support you have given us! This blog and companion Facebook page shares personal memories and experiences of life in our kampong house in Bedok of old. (FB - Our Bedok kampong house - Singapore) This house was located at Kampong Bedok Laut, just inside Bedok corner, behind the Bedok Rest House (now the Eastwood residences). This wooden plank, zinc-roofed house was originally 614-3 then became 10J Bedok Road, Singapore 16. The entries include stories of living in the kampong between 1954 and 1974, enjoying the nearby beach, family trips, tributes to family and relatives, alongside historical anecdotes about the kampong lifestyle. We are also glad that the National Library Board has included us in their web archival collection as well.  https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/webarchives/2024-11-11%2002:31:38.000/details/ourbedokkamponghousesg.blogspot.com.html Thanking you an...

This weekend we remember the first ever wedding that took place at our Bedok kampong house 67 years ago on 14 December 1958. We had previously shared this story with photos in a blog post last year. This time we are blessed to share a video edit of a film made that day on a 16mm movie camera by the brother of our paternal aunt's husband, our uncle Ah Tio. Later in the 90's we managed to salvage what was left of the deteriorated film, transferring it onto a VHS tape, then later converting it into an mp4 clip. This clip showed the groom leaving his River Valley Road home to fetch his bride from our Bedok kampong house and going back to his place. Glimpses of the kampong and the house can be seen, and hope you enjoy this clip..

This pebble-strewn pathway linking the back of our Bedok kampong house to the garden in front is memorable not just because the pebbles seem to be varying in colours (not so obvious in this colourised black and white 1964 photo) – each morning we would find dozens of giant garden snails or siput all over this part of the garden and not sure why till this day. For young children like us, it was pretty scary when the snail tentacles were actively moving! And our uncle, dad’s cousin, who lives with us would take his dependable penyapu lidi (traditional broom) and metal puntau (made from diagonally cut cooking oil cans) and clear them all. Hey even in those days we practiced sustainability!

Interestingly, when we did our housekeeping of our late father’s belongings, we found among the many photos not just those of his and of his own family’s but also photos that he kept that once belonged to his father and older sister that were given by friends. Especially wedding portrait photos. We are indeed blessed to see one from each decade before the 60’s or precisely 1934, 1940 and 1952. Observing the wedding gowns and suits of the bride and groom in themselves was a marvel! We do not personally know these couples and would be glad to connect with anyone who know them as your relatives or ancestors. But so glad we found them! Several of these are already on their way to be archived by the National Library Board Singapore to whom we are grateful.

Every once in a while, the family would make a trip to visit our maternal second aunt and her family at Jalan Khairuddin at Opera Estate, Singapore. What was interesting about that house was the music selection our cousin enjoyed, and played while we were there. While we (already 12 and 10 years old at this time) had been exposed to music that our father played at our Bedok kampong house with his LPs (33 1/3 rpm) and EPs (45rpm) vinyls, we heard different kinds of songs from her. Bread, America, Sergio Mendes, Carole King – unfamiliar sounds to us at that time.  But on this day in 1973 it was to celebrate our cousin’s 21 st birthday. To us boys it was a loud party! She and her friends were dancing in the living hall which had its main light turned off with some psychedelic lights to create the atmosphere. No rock’n’roll by now and we distinctly heard them play “I Feel The Earth Move” (1971) by Carole King and “Smoke On The Water” (1972) by Deep Purple! But after the party was over...