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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Tag Archives: Southeast Asia
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.
Singapore Writer’s Festival 2015 – The Fluid Identities of Southeast Asia, 7 Nov, 4 – 5 pm
I am delighted to update that I shall be featured at this year’s Singapore Writer’s Festival, which launched on Friday, 30th October 2015.
Join me and journalist, Elizabeth Pisani (author of the book, Indonesia, Etc – Exploring the Impossible Nation) at a panel on “The Fluid Identities of Southeast Asia” on Saturday, 7th November, 4 – 5 p.m. at The Arts House, Blue Kumon Room, Singapore.
We will be discussing this intriguing question of Southeast Asian identity, including the lingering impact of colonialism today, the historic links between the region’s major (port) cities, and how a heritage of trade and travel has created multi-cultural and mestizo (Peranakan) communities in cities like Batavia (Jakarta) and Singapore.
To get you tickets: https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/nacswf/nacswf/programme-listing/festival-events/THE-FLUID-IDENTITIES-OF-SOUTH-EAST-ASIA.html.
Tales of Asia II – Batavia (Jakarta) HIGHLIGHTS
Highlights from the second Tales of Asia talk on Old Jakarta, at the Toa Payoh Public Library, Singapore on 25 October 2015 are here. A link to entire talk to follow soon.
A link to the full talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD81C_LExjo
[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.
Tales of Asia I – Malacca & Manila (Highlights)
Dear armchair time-travellers, here’s a clip featuring highlights from my talk at the Woodlands Regional Library, Singapore on 18 October 2015. A link to entire talk to follow soon. In the meantime, enjoy…
A link to the full talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYa3SA8_7HY
[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.
Tales of Asia I – Malacca and Manila, Sunday, 18 Oct, 2 – 3 pm, Woodlands Regional Library
Part I of Tales of Asia – my series of talks on port cities in Southeast Asia – features Malacca and Manila, mediaeval walled cities built in the 16th century by the Portuguese and the Spanish respectively.
Join me as we explore the cities’ rise and fall, and uncover traces of the Portuguese and Spanish heritage that still remain today. In particular, we…
- Trace the path of the former walls of the Fortaleza de Malacca, and understand the colonial history of the city through one remaining portion of the wall – La Porta de Santiago.
- Visit the Portuguese Settlement in Melaka today to explore Kristang food and culture.
- Retrace the journey of the fabled Manila Galleon across the Pacific from Manila to Acapulco
- Revisit the walled city of Manila at the height of its splendour, in the 1700s and 1800s.
- Understand the unique mestizo architecture – the bahay na bato – that developed due to the adaptation of Spanish colonial styles to the tropics
…amongst other things.
Map of Intramuros, 1917. Private Collection.
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.]
Old Manila and the Spanish Empire
Manila Cathedral and the Headquarters of the Knights of Columbus.
Old Manila was a mediaeval walled city, built by Spanish colonialists in the late 1500s. Up until the early 1900s, it was a beautiful place of baroque cathedrals and ornate villas, reminiscent of towns in New Spain (today’s Mexico), from which it was ruled. It was known by sailors who stopped on her shores, as the “Pearl of the Orient.”
Unfortunately, much of Old Manila – called Intramuros (or “inside the walls”) today – was ruined in the aftermath of World War II. Specifically, the old city was a casualty of the Battle of Manila – a key battle on the Pacific front between the United States of America and Imperial Japan.
Today, much of Intramuros still lies in ruins, and around these ruins sit luxury residences alongside shanty-towns. But look hard (and look up) and you will find windows into the past – when you can just about imagine how it was like 400 years ago when the Spanish brought EMPIRE, RELIGION and TRADE to these shores.
[The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia is available now at all major bookstores in Singapore – Kinokuniya, Times and MPH – as well as at museum shops and the airport. As of mid-May, it will also be available at major bookstores across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, at Waterstones and Blackwells in London, and on http://www.amazon.co.uk.]
Vintage view of a calesa (horse carriage) exiting the Puerte del Parian (Parian Gate), Walled City of Manila.
Fort Santiago is the entrance to the Walled City of Manila.
Rangoon in the 1900s
In the course of writing the Rangoon chapter, I managed, very fortunately, to acquire quite a few early 1900s vintage postcards that presented views of the city of Rangoon in British Burma – today’s Yangon, in Myanmar.
The first postcard above is a spectacular bird eye’s view in colour, of Strand Road and the Rangoon River. As you can see, Rangoon was a bustling port – in fact, it was perhaps the most important port in Southeast Asia proper, after Singapore.
The second view, below, is that of the historic High Court Building (at centre), which still stands today. The building was built in 1914 in a distinctly Edwardian style, and wouldn’t feel out of place in London itself.
The wonderful thing about today’s Yangon downtown, is that it looks almost exactly the same as the Rangoon presented in these vintage postcards. All the amazing monumental architectural heritage still stands, and there is a race against time to preserve and restore many of these.
The first chapter of The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia takes the reader on a stroll through the old town of Rangoon/Yangon in the 1900s and today, presenting views and vistas from the turn of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century.
The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia will be available from mid-April in all major bookstores, museum shops and featured hotels in Singapore, the Southeast Asian region and Hong Kong.
Rangoon City View with the High Court at centre. Collection of the Author.
The High Court Building today.
Steamships, Grand Hotels and Port Cities in Southeast Asia
Dear Readers,
After two and a half years of working on this, my new book, The Romance of Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia is finally to be launched on 15th April, 2015 in my home city of Singapore.
It is a new coffee table book celebrating the Grand Tour of Southeast Asia in the 1920s. Retracing the journey of those grand tourists of the ‘20s, the book takes today’s traveller through 12 fabled port cities in what was then known as the East Indies.
Setting sail from Rangoon (Yangon), we visit Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Batavia (Jakarta), Surabaya, Bangkok, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Phnom Penh, Hanoi and Manila before disembarking at Hong Kong harbour.
Each chapter presents a historical and photographic overview of the city’s old town, colonial precincts and living cultural heritage, drawing on archival images, maps and accounts, as well as contemporary photos.
In each city, we also stop at the city’s grand colonial hotel – the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in Penang and the Hotel Metropole in Hanoi, to name a few.
As part of the on-going marketing and publicity campaign for the book, I am starting this new blog, where in the course of the year, I shall be posting images, photographs, maps and quotes from my book; interesting stories related to the “making of” the book; book events in the region, AND – as a plus – images, quotes, bits of history that are related to the history of travel, or to the 12 port cities in my book, but which did not make it into the “final cut.”
Welcome on board ship… and to a year of history, nostalgic and excitement!
Sincerely,
Kennie Ting
The Romance Of The Grand Tour 