Here are the highlights from the final Tales of Asia talk, featuring cities of the British Empire – Rangoon, Penang and Singapore.
The full talk to follow.
Tales of Asia V – Rangoon (Yangon), Penang & Singapore HIGHLIGHTS
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Tales of Asia V – Rangoon, Penang & Singapore, 14 Nov, Sat, 2 – 3 p.m., Library@Orchard, 313 Orchard Road
Supreme Court and Municipal Offices, Singapore.
Part V of Tales of Asia – the final episode – features the British Empire in the Far East, and the cities of Rangoon (today’s Yangon), Penang and Singapore.
Join me as we travel back in time to:
- Stroll through Old Town Rangoon, exploring the European Town with its monumental architecture reflecting the puissance of the British Raj, and the multi-cultural districts with their Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and other communities, living in harmony.
- Discover how the British wrote TRADE and EMPIRE into the urban planning and the architecture of their showpiece cities in the East Indies.
- Visit colonial George Town, Penang – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – and explore what remains of the British colonial heritage today. Also take a walk down the city’s “Street of Harmony”, a single street where many religions co-exist.
- Get a glimpse into the life of the British colonials in the cities in the Far East – including Rangoon, Penang and Singapore.
- Dive in deep into colonial Singapore, uncovering what it used to look like in the 1800s and 1900s, and discovering how the urban landscape has changed dramatically in the 20th century.
- Find out more about the lives of the Sarkies Brothers, and the history of their three most famous hotels – the Strand Hotel (Rangoon), the Eastern & Oriental Hotel (Penang) and the Raffles Hotel (Singapore).
…amongst other things.
Tales of Asia – Public Talks in Singapore, 18 Oct – 14 Nov 2015
For those of you who are in Singapore, join me in October and November for a series of 5 weekend public talks, featuring histories and images from The Romance of the Grand Tour.
Tales of Asia takes the armchair time-traveller back in time to the East Indies – what we know as Southeast Asia today. Over the course of 5 talks, we visit 10 historic port cities in the region. In each city, we journey back through time to the 1500s – 1800s, and back again to the present day to hunt down traces of the past that remain in the cities today.
The talks will be visually rich – featuring archival images, maps, prints, as well as contemporary photography. We shall explore castles and forts, rivers and canals, city streets, and the often strange, hybrid architecture and cultures that evolved in these cities where the East and the West met.
Here are the dates, times and venues for the talks. No registration is required. Just come and be ready for an hour of travel, wonder and nostalgia!
More details on each talk shall be posted here on The Romance of the Grand Tour each week. The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia shall also be available for purchase at selected talks.
[The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia is available now at all major bookstores in Singapore, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and London. Find it also at http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.com, http://www.waterstones.com and http://www.bookdepository.com.]
5 Essential Sights for the Grand Tourist’s Itinerary – Singapore
Gates to the Old Christian Cemetery on Fort Canning Hill.
✑ A stroll around the Singapore River, the Civic District and Fort Canning Hill, taking in the sights of Colonial Singapore. This tiny area has Singapore’s greatest concentration of museums, monuments and historical sites, all immaculately preserved. There’s so much that is historical here, it’s mindboggling.
✑ Visit Singapore’s historic districts – Bras Basah, Chinatown, Kampong Gelam/Arab Street and Little India. In particular, pay attention to the “streets of harmony” – streets on which multiple places of worship stand side-by-side in harmony – of which there are three: Waterloo and Queen Streets in Bras Basah, and Telok Ayer Street and North Bridge Road in Chinatown.
✑ The Singapore Botanic Gardens, to catch glimpses of the colonial. The park is one of the oldest in the region, and hasn’t changed much since the British left. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.
✑ A stroll down Orchard Road, once a landscape of orchards and colonial villas, but today the region’s most upscale shopping street. Take a short detour up Emerald Hill for the beautiful Peranakan Chinese mansions.
✑ Have a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. The atmosphere is raucous, cosmopolitan and touristy; very much the Grand Tour at its very essence.
Singapore is the best place in the region to get an authentic taste of the colonial life; to experience the splendour of a world lost everywhere else in the world but here.
Statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, at his purported landing site, along the Singapore River.
Boat Quay, along the Singapore River, today. Note the row of colonial-era godowns.
The Former Supreme Court Building in the Civic District is today’s National Art Gallery.
Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street is Singapore’s oldest synagogue.
Colonial Contemporary – St John’s Church on Queen Street juxtaposed against the National Library.
Thian Hock Keng Temple, Telok Ayer Street, is Singapore’s oldest Chinese Temple.
Sri Mariamman (Hindu) Temple on North Bridge Road.
Sultan Mosque, in the Royal Compound of Kampong Gelam.
Colonial Contemporary – the last surviving Sino-Portuguese Mansion on Orchard Road proper.
Colonial black and white at the Singapore Botanic Gardens – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
And finally… the grande dame herself: Raffles Hotel.
[The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia is available now at all major bookstores in Singapore, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Waterstones in London. Find it also on http://www.amazon.co.uk andhttp://www.bookdepository.com]
Raffles Place, Singapore: Then and Now
Singapore: Raffles Place in the 1930s.
In the spirit of national mourning for the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, I kick off this blog with a post on the city Mr Lee built, which also happens to be my city.
The photos present Raffles Place in the 1930s and today – and they demonstrate starkly and eloquently Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy, as well as the phenomenal growth of Singapore from a colonial entrepot to today’s global trade and financial hub.
Raffles Place is the commercial heart of Singapore. Known as Commercial Square in the 1820s, it was renamed in 1858 after the (British colonial) founder of Singapore, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles; and it has held that name every since.
Throughout much of the 1900s, it was the centre of the major trading and banking corporations in the world, including the Standard Chartered Bank and the Hong Kong and Banking Corporation. It was also the centre of retail, housing the premises of premiere departmental stores, Robinsons & Co. and John Little & Co., both of which still operate today.
The photo on top shows the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China building (the forerunner to Standard Chartered), with its distinctive dome and Neo-Classical architecture, at centre. Immediately to the right is the John Little & Co. departmental store building, erected in an Ibero-Moorish style.
The photo below captures almost the exact same view, with the Standard Chartered Bank building standing exactly where it used to stand, but replaced by a towering, brown skyscraper. At centre is the entrance to the Raffles Place MRT Station – MRT being Singapore’s underground public rail system – built to recall the facade of John Little & Co.
The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia will be available after April 15, 2015 at all major bookstores and featured hotels in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, major museums in Singapore and on http://www.amazon.co.uk.
Singapore: Raffles Place today.
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