Districts
The hidden stories of Singapore’s neighbourhoods, told from an insider’s perspectives.
Articles in Series
Districts
We Tracked Singapore’s Housing Debacle Over The Last Month So You Don’t Have To
Singapore's public discussions around housing are a headache to keep up with. But there has never been a time like this month where the discussion reached a peak and compelled HDB and other government agencies to reveal figures we never we thought would see the light of day. Here's a brief guide to the proceedings of November to keep in your digital pocket.
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The Ex-Journalist Who Turned His Sengkang Home Into Boutique Bar Section D
In many ways, home-based bar Section D is more than a libation lover's idea of a good time. For owner Dannon Har, it's also proof that in competitive Singapore, you can have it all; fulfilling work, a wage that pays the bills, and a passion that became a career.
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Displaced by SERS — Marsiling Estate Residents Show Us Their Fondest Memories of Home
If places makes memories, and memories make the home, what happens when you're relocated away from familiarity? For residents of the blocks here at Marsiling, recently acquired by HDB under the SERS scheme, the struggle to keep the feeling of home remains. We hand them film cameras and ask them to show us, literally, through their lens, places in the estate that hold deep and meaningful memories for them.
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Folklore & Food: Misheard Monikers at St John’s and Lazarus Island
What happens when you take a young chef out of the kitchen and ship them over to an offshore island? You get an appetite for adventure, cultural history, and (of course) food. Having nothing to do with venerated saints, the island of Sekijang had its original name misheard and mispronounced by
Districts
Folklore & Food: Kusu Island’s Spiritual Sanctuary
What happens when you take a young chef out of the kitchen and ship them over to an offshore island? You get an appetite for adventure, cultural history, and (of course) food. Located less than 6km off the mainland is an island steeped in spirituality, ancient myths and… turtles. Chef Nurul Ain
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Folklore & Food: Pulau Ubin’s Hidden History
What happens when you take a young chef out of the kitchen and ship them over to an offshore island? You get an appetite for adventure, cultural history, and (of course) food. Chef Sam Chablani wanders deep into Pulau Ubin’s kampung houses, the town square and other hidden gems with local guide
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I Walked Through Jalan Besar With Ghosts From Hotel New World
The collapse of Hotel New World is an enduring hallmark of the Singapore story. It’s a tale of failure and incompetence from a period of modernisation and prosperity. 35 years on, it remains a fixture in our collective imagination. Why?
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What Will Your Neighbourhood Look Like In 2071?
What if we were to tell you that the local landmarks etched in our hearts such as Gardens By the Bay, Sembawang hot springs, and even Haji Lane are at risk of being completely submerged by seawater forever? It might sound impossible, but as things stand, this could very well be our reality in 50 yea
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Geylang’s Red Light District is Fading
When sex work gets driven out of Geylang, where will it go? With an impending rezoning and the rise of online platforms for dating and sex work, the demand for brothels on the ground have dropped to an all-time low. Amidst their disrupted livelihoods and loss of their second home, the sex workers
Amongst Us
“The Only Certainty Here Is Change”: Finbarr Fallon’s Dreamlike Architectural Portraits of Singapore
In this new RICE series, we invite photographers from the region deserving of our admiration and attention to curate a series of images from their body of work, from which serves as a starting point for an in-depth conversation about their work.
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After Dover, Will Clementi Forest Be Next On The Chopping Board?
Trudging through the maze of vegetation, we brush off waist-high foliage lazily trawling our sides, gingerly setting shoe to soil until we finally emerge into a landscape reminiscent of Jurassic Park. With the ethereal morning mist draped across the valley of lush greenery, it is a marvel that this
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We Went Languishing Around Singapore And It Was Terrible, But Perfect
In April, the New York Times termed the latest stage of the pandemic fatigue as languishing. The thinking goes: We’re not burnt out, depressed, or anxious. We’re joyless, aimless, stagnated and empty. “ feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life in a foggy windshie
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Indians Not Allowed, Thank You.
All images by Zachary Tang. “Indians not allowed, thank you.” This was what an agent said to me back in April, when I was looking for a new home here in Singapore. Trouble is, this wasn’t even an isolated incident. Before long, I had to either start looking for houses owned by Indian families,
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I Took A 12 KM Walk To The Industrial Heartlands Of Tuas, Because Phase 2(HA)
All photography by Ivan K. Wu. A month ago, before Singapore went into ‘heightened alert’, I hit upon the idea of walking to Tuas on foot, following the 2009 heritage trail from Pioneer MRT to Tuas Link station. The journey is 12-kilometres long and takes roughly two and a half ho
Kranji War Memorial: Finding Meaning In Remembering the Fallen
After spending his childhood playing among the cemeteries at Kranji War Memorial, Christopher never expected to end up as its caretaker today. Now, he recognises that his former playground is actually a place of historical significance, and that his job of maintaining the 24,000 graves of Commo
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The Plight of Dover Forest, And One Secondary School Teacher’s Fight to Save It
All images by Feline Lim unless otherwise stated. Though he’s wearing a threadbare military tee from his NS days, it’s hard to imagine Chua Chin Tat crawling through the mud with a semi-automatic weapon. He is calm and deliberate when he plods, heron-like, towards Dover Forest.
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Finding Softness in a Place: A Portrait of Jalan Hang Jebat
Photography by Zachary Tang and Feline Lim. Author's note: This story has been optimised for viewing on desktop. It’s a Wednesday morning in the first days of 2021, and I’m walking down a row of British military houses. This was not a country fighting a war, nor was it a country still under co
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Before There Was Dover Forest, There Was The Lower Peirce Golf Course Saga of 1992
All images by Wu Bingyu (@bingleswu) unless otherwise stated. Just minutes at the Lower Peirce Trail will remind you of the ordinary magic of paying attention. When I get out of my Grab, Bing, the photographer, is crouched in the vegetation lining the trail entrance, observing something. He points
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One Last Walk Down Lorong 3 Geylang
Photography by Marisse Caine. A stillness fills the air as I turn onto Lorong 3 Geylang, which is quietly tucked away in between an industrial loading bay, a canal, and a HDB block. The only crackle of sound within earshot comes from an uncle riding his bicycle down the lane. I stop him for
Districts
Under One Roof: How The Covered Walkway Conquered Singapore
In December last year, I was returning home from Yio Chu Kang swimming pool when I saw something which took my breath away: a brand new covered walkway. Not any regular ol’ covered walkway, but a covered linkway built on steel girders, spanning a storm drain of some 15m. Awed by this miracle of u
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Window Shopping After Dark: Strata Malls Getting a New Lease on Life Through Sex Work
Image Credits: Yours truly Hair salon, hair salon, nail parlour. Hair salon, hair salon, hair salon, nail parlour. Hair salon, nail parlour, massage parlour … *opaque glass store swings open* “Hello, would you like a massaaage, 50 dollars.” “Hi, I’m actually a journalist writin
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Racial Enclaves: How Serangoon Garden’s French Community Brings Back Singapore’s Kampong Culture
Licking the spoon clean, I savour the smooth, slightly sweet, cream cheese paste, which contrasts nicely against the firm crack of flavourful sausage casing that I bite into a moment later. These are Bibeleskaes and Knackwurst, two foods native to the historic Alsace region of France. After tasti
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I Live in Jalan Kukoh, One of the Poorest Neighbourhoods in Singapore. This is My Story.
[𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱. 𝗔𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁, 𝘄𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟳] In 2019, RICE launched a series on Jalan Kukoh—a rental estate right next to the CBD—seeking to understand how the poor in Singapore live, and more importantly, the kind of support they need. Here, Belle Tustain writes about what it means to dream of somewhere else while living in the shadow of million-dollar condos and city skyscrapers.
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Singapore’s Land Has Been Expanding Rapidly, But No One’s Talked About It—Until Now
Singapore’s landmass is twenty-two per cent reclaimed, a fact that doesn’t escape the supposed main character of A Land Imagined, hard-boiled insomniac detective Lok (Peter Yu). Less than an hour after watching the movie, I find myself sitting down with Singapore’s latest international-fil
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Hawker Centres To Go Cashless, Hawkers Respond by Going Tasteless
In response to the news that cashless payments will be rolled out at hawker centres island-wide by The National Environmental Agency(NEA), many hawkers are brushing this off as “stupid”, and have proclaimed their readiness to go on the offensive. Seah Kwei Peng, a 50 year-old hawker selling
