The Grey Nomad in Geylang



Thought it was time for another blog. It's over a year since I learnt the expression "Grey Nomad", which fits me perfectly, travelling across Australia on the Indian Pacific. Having no fixed abode in Singapore I have settled into a routine of staying in budget hotels, and the budget hotels are mostly in Geylang which is famous for putting the SIN into Singapore. The budget hotels grew up to fill a demand for rooms that could be rented by the hour but now make most of their money from budget tourists and, possibly, a few grey nomads like me. Geylang doesn't fit the squeaky clean image most people have of Singapore, and which the government tends to promote, but for several decades the small streets on the south side of Geylang Road, the even numbered "lorongs", have been an officially sanctioned "red light area".  It's a variegated mixture of Buddhist temples, Chinese clan associations, Indian food shops, pawn brokers, budget hotels, coffee shops, restaurants and, yes, brothels, which is being increasingly gentrified by the addition of new condominiums. 





Traditional Houses in Geylang

Traditional Shop Houses

Coffee Shop

Coffee Shop

Various Trades

Kampung Style House

Mosque

Chinese Temple

Buddhist Prayer Wheels
With Instructions
One of Geylang's (In)famous Establishments

Open Air Barber Shop


Over the past year I have been travelling around South East Asia, parts of what used to be Yugoslavia and Japan but now heading to a totally new, for me, sub-continent, India.




Comments

  1. Li Mandy23 November 2017 at 09:45

    As well as a grey nomad could refer to yourself as a snowbird : A person, usually one who is retired, who travels from a cold climate to a warmer one in the winter.

    ReplyDelete

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