"Singa Pura ('lion town' ..." a Singapore Travel Page by sha_stallion

---

VT Meets all around Singapore

---

Festival of Lights (4 Oct 03)
Oktoberfest & Halloween Nite (Oct 03)
VT Mini Chill Outs (Jan 04 ~ Aug 05) (latest!)
Singapore Sling & more cultural makan (Apr~Aug 04)
June 2004 VT Meet + birthday surprise
the McCafe meet (Oct 04)
a Hari Raya visit to traps' & jaka63's (Nov 04)
couples' tour to Istana Kampong Glam (Nov 04)
Singapore welcomes vigi (Dec 04)
Care & Coke @ Coffee Bean Wheelock (Dec 04)
dinner with the Kripac family (Jan 05)
with kenHuocj @ Telok Ayer (Jan 05)
a beach birthday (Jan 05)
eastside VT Meets (Feb 05)
VT Meet on the quay (Feb 05)
the International-Singapore Meet (Mar 05)
in common with Ho Chi Minh, Dallas & Leigh-On-Sea! (May 05)
first VT Meet for 7 May! (May 05)
second VT Meet for 7 May! (May 05)
birthday picnic in May 2005
Glutton's Bay with ireneski (Jun 05)
Glutton's Bay with cyberhunk (Jun 05)
beach celebrates June 2005 (Jun 05)
from Singapore to Blue Hawaii... (Jul 05) (latest!)

~ geylang sipaku geylang, geylang sirama rama
pulang marilah pulang, marilah pulang bersama sama
mari pulang marilah pulang, marilah pulang bersama sama ~

Malay origins of Singapore
Ponder this. If Singapore had stayed as part of Malaysia [returning to 1965], we probably won't find VTers here complaining about the sterility of Singapore local culture! ; ) The original dwellers are a very cultured people who still don their cultural clothes regularly and still cook traditional food at home ; ) No need for cultural campaign!

Send Photo to a Friend

Malay musicians famed in Singapore

Some meaning of MRT stations:

Aljunied : named after a Hadhrami merchant
Bedok : is a 'large drum'
Bugis : of course, reminiscent of Bugis traders in the 1800s
Bukit Batok : name of a hill, bukit means 'hill'
Bukit Gombak : another hill
Eunos : named after Justice of Peace Eunos bin Abdullah who founded Kampong Eunos in 1923
Kallang : I still think this is misprounounced for the word kilang which means 'factory', reminiscent of the industrial estate that used to be here
Kembangan : are 'flowers in bloom'
Khatib : generally means 'one who reads the sermon'
Kranji : is the name of a tree (dialium indicum) growing in the district
Pasir Ris : pasir means 'sand', though recent articles claim pasir ris to mean 'white sand', how one arrives at ris to mean 'white' I don't know
Paya Lebar : paya means 'swamp' and lebar means 'wide'
Potong Pasir : potong means 'cut' and pasir, again, means 'sand'
Punggol : has been said to refer to the action of hurling sticks at the branches of fruit trees to bring the fruits down to the ground Sembawang : as many Malay villages were known here, eg Kampong Wak Hassan, could be yet another mispronounced Malay word
Sengkang : though in Chinese sengkang is said to mean ‘prosperous harbour’, in Malay it would mean a 'bar across'
Tampines : an old Malay name for a Riau iron-wood tree
Tanah Merah : 'red earth' as merah means 'red' and tanah means 'earth' or 'soil'
Tanjong Pagar : tanjong means 'a cape' and pagar means 'fence' suggests the houses raised on stilts on the area's shoreline by Malay fishermen (orang lauts)
Tiong Bahru : tiong is the 'mynah' bird and bahru means 'new'

Singapore's nationalism (latest!)
Singapore's national anthem was written by Zubir Said in 1956-57 and launched with the National Flag and the State Crest, at the installation of Singapore's Yang di-Pertuan Negara Yusof Ishak on 3 Dec 1959. Singapore then had not separated from Malaysia, which explains why the anthem was composed in Malay. Yusof Ishak then continued heading the state as President when Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965. There was never a Malay President since despite mentions of 6yr term rotation between the official races.

more on Malay origins of Singapore ~ Singapore in the Malay archipelago:
In 1365 was referred to in an ancient Javanese chronicle, the Nagarakertagama, as Temasek. The Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals told a story of how Sang Nila Utama (or Sri Tri Buana as he was more popularly known), ruler of Palembang (in present day Indonesia), landed at Temasek one day while seeking shelter from a storm. Sighting an animal he took to be a lion, he decided to establish a settlement which he named Singapura, i.e. "Lion City", from the Malay words singa (lion) and pura (city).

When the Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511, the reigning Malaccan sultan fled to Johore in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, where he established a new sultanate. Singapura became part of the new Johore Sultanate and was the base for one of its senior officials in the latter sixteenth century. In 1613, however, the Portuguese reported burning down a trading outpost at the mouth of the Temasek (Singapore) River, and Singapura passed into history.

Send Photo to a Friend

after midnite with fellow VTers

In the following two centuries, the island of Temasek was largely abandoned and forgotten as the fortunes of the Johore Sultanate rose and fell. By 1722 a vigorous seafaring people from the island of Celebes (modern Sulawesi, Indonesia) had become the power behind the throne of the Johore Sultanate. Under Bugis influence, the sultanate built up a lucrative entrepot trade, centered at Riau, south of Singapore, in present-day Sumatra. Riau also was the site of major plantations of pepper and gambier, a medicinal plant used in tanning. The Bugis used waste material from the gambier refining process to fertilize pepper plants, a valuable crop, but one that quickly depletes soil nutrients. By 1784 an estimated 10,000 Chinese laborers had been brought from southern China to work the gambier plantations on Bintan Island in the Riau archipelago (now part of Indonesia). In the early nineteenth century, gambier was in great demand in Java, Siam, and elsewhere, and cultivation of the crop had spread from Riau to the island of Singapore.

The territory controlled by the Johore Sultanate in the late eighteenth century was somewhat reduced from that under its precursor, the Malacca Sultanate, but still included the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, the adjacent area of Sumatra, and the islands between, including Singapore. The sultanate had become increasingly weakened by division into a Malay faction, which controlled the peninsula and Singapore, and a Bugis faction, which controlled the Riau Archipelago and Sumatra. When the ruling sultan died without a royal heir, the Bugis had proclaimed as sultan the younger of his two sons by a commoner wife. The sultan's elder son, Hussein (or Tengku Long) resigned himself to living in obscurity in Riau. But though the sultan was the nominal ruler of his domain, senior officials actually governed the sultanate. In control of Singapore and the neighboring islands was Temenggong Abdu'r Rahman, Hussein's father-in-law. In 1818 the temenggong (a high Malay official) and some of his followers left Riau for Singapore shortly after the Dutch signed a treaty with the Bugis-controlled sultan, allowing them to station a garrison at Riau. [More of the history of the Bugis people in I am a Bugis]

explore beyond Singapore
All being said, if you ever run out of ideas for the weekend, you can always consider crossing Singapore's border, where you will immediately be greeted by Johor Bahru ; )

---

and for my latest edition! an all-new main island Singapore page!

---