Our Bedok Kampong House Singapore

One morning in July 1961, a baby boy - the first ‑ born in our Bedok kampong house - came into the world at KK Hospital. And from that very first night, he made sure the kampong knew of his arrival. For a hundred nights he announced himself without fail in loud cries and wails, until a medium advised his parents to appoint godparents who shared his mother’s family name, though not related. Only then did the nightly chorus finally cease. He grew quickly, and soon a younger brother arrived eighteen months later. Then came cousin after cousin, until the house brimmed with joy, noise, and the unmistakable music of childhood. Six children in all - the house siblings’ third generation - filling every corner of our kampong home with laughter. As the oldest son of the oldest son in a Peranakan family, that once ‑ restless baby boy is now   65. Looking back, I count it a privilege to reflect on the historical significance of the life we lived in this literal corner of Singapore - Bedo...

A little less than two years ago, we shared a story about our go to barber along Bedok Road - Hair, There and Everywhere - a hilarious account of how impossibly difficult I was as a young boy whenever it was time for a haircut. Back and forth I went between our Bedok kampong house and the little shop, never quite cooperating. Today, we are deeply grateful to have reconnected with the lovely family who once lived in that humble house cum barber shop at 34 Bedok Road, right by the bus stop - the very spot where Eastwood Centre now stands. M.S. Velu was part of a group of Indian merchants who arrived from Java in the 1930s, seeking a better life in Singapore. Here, he found his life partner, settled into the family home at 34 Bedok Road, and with his skillful hands set up a barber shop that served Bedok kampong, Jalan Greja, and the surrounding neighbourhoods. For many years he worked alone, occasionally receiving help during festive seasons, but he remained the preferred barber for coun...

Some records describe Kampong   Bedok   Laut as a settlement for fishermen and farmers. Yet when our family arrived in the mid ‑ 1950s - and through its life until the early   1990s - the kampong was already a living tapestry of multiculturalism. Having called it home for twenty years, we still recall our neighbours vividly: Kak   Min and her family at Rumah   Bombay; Chew   Nian and Sa   Kor across the lane; the Ho’s and Soh’s nearby. Mdm   Salmah, her large family, and other residents along Jalan   Greja shaped the kampong’s architecture with their daily rhythms. M.   S.   Velu, our village barber, worked beside Ah   Yam of Swee   Aun   Provision   Shop - each eking out a livelihood with steadfast dignity, quiet industry and honest labour. We remember too our friends Adrian   Boudville , Mark   Roch, and their families, and Daniel   Koh. Aimida Haq and the households at Padang   Terbakar who brought colour to our neighbourhood. Adding to this mosaic were Jackie Munro, Ann Froud our R...

How wonderful it felt when SingPost recently launched their new stamp and postcard issue, Our Last Kampongs - and our follower and friend, Dr   Ernest   Chew, gifted us a full postcard set, “inspired by our posts,” he told us. According to SingPost, these postcards “capture the distinct spirits of Kampong Lorong Buangkok and Pulau   Ubin ’ s Kampong   Sungei   Durian through a charmingly quirky lens. Each design offers a whimsical glimpse into a vanishing way of life, illustrating the tightly huddled zinc‑roofed houses and the sun‑drenched, nature‑reclaimed dwellings. Through these artistic windows, the postcards rekindle the warmth and simplicity of our shared heritage, serving as a nostalgic bridge that transports us to a gentler era beautifully preserved in every tiny, intricate detail.” And inspired by these beautifully illustrated postcards, we tried our hand at an AI-re-interpretion of the August 1955 photo of our Bedok kampong house in a similar illustrative style – and h...

Mention Bedok Boys’ School and Daniel Koh’s eyes immediately brighten - as though those primary school years from 1960 to 1965 were waiting just beneath the surface. “I remember my time there like it was only yesterday,” he said, his voice lifting with unmistakable excitement. Each day, Daniel walked from his home at Padang Terbakar (later Siak Kuan Road), passing by our Bedok kampong house on his way to school - and again on the walk home. He recalls the flag‑raising assemblies vividly: “We sang God Save the Queen from 1960 to 1963, then Negara Ku from 1963 to 1965, before Majulah Singapura finally came into being.” National milestones, yet also quiet transition markers of his own childhood. Among the boys, it was considered a small badge of honour to be chosen to buy food from the tuckshop for teachers - a task that spared them the long walk from the staff room. And then there was the strict principal, Miss Annie Tan. Daniel remembers her clearly, though not quite fondly, desc...

When it comes to memories of hawker food sold around our Bedok Corner, these flavours transcend time - bringing us together across generations. Our former neighbours Ron   Ho and his siblings can still taste those culinary delights of the 1960’s even now. “Under the tree at the corner across from Bedok Rest House, there were five famous hawkers,” Ron recalls. “Top of mind was Aman, who sold rojak, tahu goreng, jaganan and some Malay kueh. Then there was Yusof with his mee rebus, the daging soup version. And another mee rebus seller, Ahmad, offered a dried prawn soup version. There was also a very popular sarabat stall selling all sorts of hot drinks - coffee, tea, milo - kosong, with sugar, condensed milk, or ginger (alia). Not forgetting their mamak triangular curry puffs, bread, and sugee cookies. And finally, that Chinese man with his push ‑ wheel stall of cut fruits and buah lai chwee, starting his sales promptly at 5pm every day. ” The Hos also reminded us of Bachik, who sol...

11 July 2026, we honour the birthday of our paternal grandmother - the quiet pillar of our Bedok kampong house. Had time allowed her to stay, she would be 129 this year; instead, her story closed gently in December 1969 at the age of 73. In this 1960 photograph, she sits at the veranda in full Nyonya kebaya splendour, as befitting her age, gathered with the ladies of the family around the household table covered with a hand ‑ knitted white lace tablecloth she had woven herself - the very same table that still rests in our mother ’ s home today. The moment is tender and ceremonial: it is 2nd October 1960, the day her eldest and only son - our father - was to be married to our mother. They were awaiting the bridal couple's arrival to the house. Her niece stands beside her, while across the table sit our mother’s auntie and our Tua Ee, mom’s oldest sister, dressed in soft lilac. In this quiet tableau, you can almost feel a new family linkage taking shape - two households, two lin...

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...

Here on the shores of Bedok Beach once rested a handful of sampans -  among them, one belonging to Ahmad, husband of Salmah and father to Saadiah and her family of 35M Jalan Greja. Humble and unadorned, his vessel held more than nets and oars. Within its frame lived the story of a man who carried responsibility, devotion, and the weight of being his family’s shelter. By day, Ahmad served as a lab technician at the Singapore General Hospital. But in the evenings, and whenever time allowed, he would push his sampan gently off the shore, rowing into the calm to fish - steering with the same steady hands that guided his family through life’s shifting tides. When his sampan lay pulled up along the coast, it became a quiet landmark. It beckoned family to come closer to admire, and to mark their visit with a photograph, like this one. We remember and honour Ahmad , along with brother‑in‑law Mohd Noor and Jalan Greja neighbours Iazim and Leman - all sampan owners of Bedok Beach in...

A rare, quietly beautiful glimpse of Bedok Beach in 1951 taken from this angle. Our paternal aunts, cousin, and grandaunt sit together in the sea breeze, taking in a shoreline that belonged to another Singapore. Behind them, the familiar silhouettes of the three‑storey Sa‑chan‑lau and the British WWII pillboxes stand watch, markers of a coastline still shaped by the post‑war years. Even the roofline of the former Bedok Rest House peeks into view, completing a scene that feels both intimate and historic. This is the kind of photograph that lets us step back in time to the 1950s for a moment - when Bedok was quieter, the sea closer, and family outings like this were simple and precious.

Our grandmother really enjoyed eating the wantan mee from the coffee shop at the corner of the row of shops facing Bedok Corner along Bedok Road at the turn. Almost every day, our cousin - whom Grandma had raised from infancy and who lived with us in our Bedok kampong house - would head out to buy this meal for her. She was in her early teens then, around 1964. On the way to the stall, she would pass the sundry shop and the Ho family’s house at 6C Bedok Road. She remembers clearly how, time and again, music spilled out from that home - guitars strumming, a band rehearsing, and a young female voice rising above it all. It was only a year later, when Silver Threads and Golden Needles became a hit in 1965 (her favourite song), that she realised she had been walking past the home of one of the members of   Singapore’s 1960s music royalty: The Crescendos . All she knew back then was that she had a teenage crush on one of the boys, Raymond Ho “he is so handsome!” Many thanks to Ra...

One of the quiet treasures of our old Bedok kampong house was an 11‑page commemorative booklet marking the public celebrations of May 1935 in honour of the Silver Jubilee of His Majesty King George V - the maternal great‑grandfather of the present King Charles III. Once belonging to our paternal grandfather Tan Piah Eng , this fragile programme is more than a keepsake; it is a window into the civic life of pre‑war Singapore. Its pages map out routes and landmarks still familiar to us today - Orchard Road, Connaught Drive, the Padang, Jalan Besar, to name a few - and reveal a city alive with parades, lantern processions, fireworks, and community pageantry. Most strikingly, it records four centres across the island that served free meals to the poor, a reminder that even amid royal celebration, the spirit of communal care ran deep. This book has since been donated to the National Library Board / National Archives of Singapore for preservation , ensuring that its stories -  and the ha...

A visit by cousins from our first step‑grandmother to our cousin - the second step‑grandmother - at her Jalan Haji Salam home was never complete without a short stroll down to Bedok Beach. There, a photo would always mark the day. We’re so glad they took this one - seated just outside the fenced police quarters, on a perfectly placed rock that seems made for the moment. Decades later, it still feels as if they’re waiting for us to join them, inviting us to sit, smile, and remember. Our heartfelt thanks to Winnie Goh and Yap Teck Gim for sharing this lovely photograph - a window into a gentler time and the enduring ties of family.

On lazy weekends, the songs of old - especially those beloved Chinese melodies from the 1960s like Lover’s Tears - would drift through our Bedok kampong, carried from someone’s Rediffusion box or a Radio Singapura AM set. They invited us to hum along to their beautiful tunes, even when the lyrics were heartbreakingly sad. Ann Froud remembers this song well, and she even kept her original 1963 record. Here is Poon Sow Keng (Pan Xiuqiong) once again lamenting her lost love for us, her voice as tender as ever. Thank you, Ann, for sharing your 45rpm EP cover, this lovely memory, and for opening this gentle doorway back to the world we once knew.

We feel so honoured that our former neighbour, Daniel Koh , has shared glimpses of his childhood and growing‑up years in our Bedok kampong - at Padang Terbakar , where he was born and raised with his family. This lovely video offers an intimate look at his family of origin , including a touching segment dedicated to his paternal grandfather, Koh Sek Lim . Watching how Daniel enjoyed life in our kampong — especially that unforgettable ‘outdoor swimming pool’ just outside his home - brings back a whole era now long gone, yet still rich with memory and affection. His stories remind us of the simple joys, the freedom, and the neighbourly warmth that shaped our childhood landscape. Kam Siah, Baba Daniel (Peranakan speak) — thank you for keeping these memories alive.

What sat beneath a kampong house? For many of us who grew up in these raised wooden ‑ planked homes, that shaded under ‑ floor space became our own version of an attic - a cool, half ‑ lit world where old furniture, tools and forgotten belongings quietly settled over the years. In this 1961 photograph of the back of our former Bedok kampong house (614 ‑ 3, later 10J Bedok Road), you can see how the timber structure rested on a concrete platform, creating a natural storage space beneath it. Within that low ‑ slung area, a narrow passageway allowed the adults to duck ‑ walk their way to whatever they needed - but for us little boys, it became a perfect looping tricycle track. We pedalled round and round under the beams until the day we finally grew too tall to fit. By around 1967, our uncle - ever the skilled carpenter - enclosed a small section facing the front. That tiny nook became our toddler cousin’s playroom, and for us older boys, a cherished corner to play ‘house’ long before...

Sometimes an ordinary evening walk along Bedok beach in 1963 could turn quietly magical. That was how Ann Froud - out with her little dog - found herself greeted by children from the nearby kampong, their faces bright with curiosity as they reached out to meet their new four-legged friend. Behind them stood the familiar silhouettes of the government holiday bungalows, tall and reassuring. Ann had arrived in Singapore earlier that year with her RAF husband, settling into her home tucked between the Bedok Rest House and the three storey sa-chan-lau, reached by a small side lane leading down from Bedok Corner. She would spend more than three years there, gathering a treasury of memories. She often recalled how “the people from the local shops and the kampong were all so kind and friendly towards me.” Even now, decades later, she remembers the comforting soundtrack of that place: the rhythmic click clack of mahjong tiles drifting from a neighbour’s home, and the gentle call to prayer r...