Okay this is a long one, but a good one.

As another blogger wrote: ”She’s old school. She’s charming. She’s so hipster it hurts. She’s Tiong Bahru.”. 

This is common underline to explaining what Tiong Bahru is. So why is that? It is actually one of the oldest social housing projects in Singapore, from the 1930s. So in Singaporean terms, it’s older than the country itself. After some fast googling, Tiong Bahru actually means ”new cementry” and was before filled with cemeteries which is today long gone. If you really wanna dig into neardy stuff, the architecture style that emerged during the 30s and is apparent here is called Streamline Modern, or Art Modern.

It’s arguably the number one hipster area – that is – a lot of cool cafes, some with a little Italian/French style to it, good eco-fair-trade coffee, waffles, bakeries, design and art galleries, small bookshops (only found one here though?), and even smaller shops with old LPs hanging in the window, and there is supposed to be cool young people hanging around. And of course the area is old, usually it’s a bit rough around the edges, which is supposed to be cool and add to the hip feeling.

There are two interesting side stories to this area. The first one, is that apparently the cafe Forty Hands (where we took a coffee upon our first visit here) which opened in 2010 started the whole thing of making this area into what it is today. The founder was pleased in finding a gem of a place. More tagged along and did so under the same locale developer. Now the Forty Hands owner, talks about how it’s a shame that so many cafes and shops are established in the area causing it to be gentrified. Well, what a surprise.

The other thing is that as late as this year, the URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore, deals with all the things surrounding planning and development) started kicking out ground floor businesses in the area. Locale residents has complained about increased noise levels, pollution and congestion in the area and some of the shops didn’t have the proper license to turn there ground floor flats into business space with open doors to the passing by public. It’s only been four years, as I understand, and I have no idea how it was before really but it seems the changes has been pretty extensive in some ways.

The area sounds to be totally buzzing with people, cars, noise, action and life. Well I would say that is a lively place, but my first impression is that is a world apart from the Singapore I’ve seen. Or the other hip places we’ve been to so far. It is so calm and subtle, the whole scale is just so much smaller. You walk trough Tiong Bahru in 15 minutes, tops. I thought at first we had come to the wrong place because of the lack of people on the streets.

But the contrasts are never far away in this city. The food market and hawker center is packed with people, from the streets outside you just hear a silent buzz, knowing that something is going on. Here it looks like any locale hawker, diverse of people and food.

The architecture of this area is interesting in another way than just being old and unusual, but because of the floors above ground are ”hanging out”, you can’t really see what is going on at ground floor. Like the cafes are a little bit hidden. And it actually looks like some places are place homes, made into something else which I didn’t at the time know was the case.

And oh the cars on the streets, I think they say something about how thick some of the wallets are around here.

In all of these older neighborhoods, you’re always reminded about how most modern life looks like in Singapore. In almost every picture, you see an HDB high-rise climbing it’s way into the background. Areas like Tiong Bahru are like the grounds and roots of the thick rain forests, some life and species will just die out if these places are run over.