Our hotel at Straits Collection along Armenian Street was a delight – high ceilings held up by the original exposed beams, quirky furniture, an “outdoor” rain shower and a big wooden bath tub, original heavy wooden doors painted over with bright white and green paint, AND two resident dogs and resident cats in the gift shop next door. Exactly what you wished your home looked like.
Ah Hock the caretaker/trishaw driver/corner coffeeshop worker is a true sweetheart. He’s a slight but sprightly old man with really gentle eyes and deep laugh lines – we were very well taken care of over the weekend.
All the buildings squat along the road like old men playing chess; wrinkled, sunburnt, lines etched into their beams from years of exposure to life but still breathing with life. A rubber stamp maker living in one here, a butcher cleaning pigs out in one over there, an antique shop bursting through its wooden cracks with trinkets. I wish we left more buildings in Singapore alone, let them age organically and do what buildings were meant to do – house people, house lives and be passed on in entirety from generation to generation instead of torn down and updated to version 2.0 every so often.
The food – oh! I cannot think of the food and relive the tastes now, because I will certainly weep knowing what I will miss until I next return.
