I knew that this day was going to be another rather truncated day, both because I was going to meet some Dunman High friends in the evening, as well as having a bunch of work in the morning to catch up on. This only left me with about a four to five hour period around lunch to mess around with, which was fine since it was the second day of Chinese New Year and lots of things around the city were still closed anyway.

So what I did for the day’s plan was that I basically opened the map of Singapore, and looked down the train routes at the stations that I was not familiar with. I picked two that had malls next to them and also had residential areas with “malls” or shopping areas more or less in between them, and decided that I was just going to go there and do some residential walking between those places and see what i find when wandering. I ended up selecting two stations on the Northeast Line for this, Buangkok and Hougang, with the plan going to be that I would start at Buangkok, go west to the Hougang Green Shopping Mall area, south to Hougang Village, and then east to Hougang Mall and the MRT station there. The first and last spots were REIT malls, the middle two were random shopping areas, and I would pass by lots of residential blocks along the way for exploration!

(There’s a Sengkang Grand Mall next to the Buangkok MRT Station, Google Maps just doesn’t like to show everything at this zoom level on my laptop.)

With that all planned out, I set off for Buangkok MRT, which took about 40 minutes to reach. Google Maps had me walk from my lodging to Dhoby Ghaut MRT station, and then take a direct train line from there. It started to drizzle again as I was walking there, but unlike yesterday, it wasn’t heavy enough to make me melt this time, so I wasn’t too concerned. One quick train ride later, and I found myself in that aforementioned Sengkang Grand Mall.

This mall was a very weird mall, largely because it lacked the large, air-conditioned interior that most REIT malls had, and instead was more of a covered but open-air mall. For the most part it was also just a two storey mall (plus possibly an underground level that I didn’t really explore), and most interesting to me, there was an entire actual hawker centre integrated into its second level too. And while the mall was lacking air-conditioning and thus was warmer than your average mall, the hawker centre component was full of wall fans and much cooler than your average hawker centre.

Many of the stalls were also closed due to the Chinese New Year holiday as well as the time being a little past the lunch hour by then instead of the morning breakfast rush. Most of the open stalls had some sort of greedy Chinese New Year surcharge added on to their price.

There was also a corner of the hawker centre dedicated for people to donate and pick up reusable bags. Edmonton should adopt this. I’ve previously seen something like this in Tampines on a previous trip.

I ended up having Shredded Chicken Hor Fun from a stall named HK Wanton Noodle & Roasted Delights, #02-K33.

This one was okay as far as food goes but disappointing in terms of expectations — for $5.70 after surcharge, there was only a pitiful amount of food, and while I was pretty sure that “Hong Kong style” hor fun was different, this was not what I was expecting, especially the noodles, which are supposed to be thicker. That bowl of soup was also very random and “token effort”.

I walked around the mall a little after eating, collecting brochures from the various learning centers there that were closed but that still had their brochure stands outside their shops. Then I left, making my way west across the neighbourhood blocks, dodging the occasional drizzle by following covered walkways where possible. I amused myself by taking photos of interesting-to-me things as I went, cataloguing things like these ephemeral posters outside a preschool called Harmoni PreSkool @Buangkok.

Not far from there, I took a random picture of a field with trees that I liked:

And the reason I included that is that I turned around and then immediately saw a carpark:

With trees on top! There was obviously some sort of garden up there. So I climbed up that thing using the car ramps, and made my way to the very top to take a picture facing the field from more or less the same angle, just from higher up.

Much better. It was still raining lightly, so I didn’t stay long up there, but the half of the garden I did peer around at looked like this:

I then found an elevator that took me down to the bottom, and I was mildly annoyed that I never found that elevator for the journey up in the first place. Ah well. I could also peek into nearby flats from my vantage point up there, but I didn’t see anything too scandalous in the brief time that I was there, sadly. With kaypoh (busybody) mode off, I continued onwards.

There were a lot of small but neat touches in the community blocks that I passed by. Like this random swing bench and table that someone, likely the owner of the very first ground floor house on the right, installed.

While technically on public property and outside of their home boundary, one of the advantages of living on a ground floor home is probably just having more flexibility to put stuff outside their home. Usually its just flower pots and similar gardening-related stuff though.

Talking about gardens, I ran across this community one too.

Soon after, I reached Hougang Green, which was a two-level shopping area with coffeeshops, restaurants, sundries shops, and supermarkets on the ground floor, and things like learning centres on the upper floor which I promptly also raided.

There was one single set of escalators, and a whole lot of regular stairs, both covered and uncovered, leading up to the top level, but the top level was mostly deserted and most of the commerce happened on the ground floor.

There was also this guy:

I don’t know if he was mentally ill or just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but he walked round and round the Hougang Green shopfronts, yelling things like “Fuck Filipinos” and “Filipinos come to Singapore to be gay” into the air as everyone tried not to make contact with him. There was even a ground floor security desk in Hougang Green that was staffed by two officers but they did not step in at all, and he was there for at least ten minutes as the same time as me. The photo above was taken just as he was finally leaving.

I meandered in and out of the shops for a bit, then cut across some HDB blocks on my way south to Hougang Village. The rain had stopped, and the temperature was pretty cool, if slightly more humid than normal. Humidity doesn’t particularly bother me though, which is good since Singapore is perpetually humid, so I loved it. I saw this court that was missing a net and used it to frame a picture of some coconut trees and two separate buildings facing each other:

Behind me from there was a playground that was neat too:

And part of the reason it was neat was that there were a bunch of old aunties and uncles that had gathered behind the children playing on the slides, and they had brought along a table and were playing (and likely gambling on) cards. I snuck close enough for a picture.

A bit further on, there was also this dolled up void deck area that looked like someone’s hideyhole. It had two vending machines prominently in the middle rear side of the area too, in stark contrast to the traditional decorations and the shrine on the right, the latter of which gave me a brief, special moment of peace as I stood near it and felt the wind rush by and flutter my clothing.

I also saw this on a neighbourhood board, which brought back memories.

I don’t know for sure what this is, but this brought back a distant memory of seeing something very similar in Japan, possibly Kyoto during my study abroad trip, where I had seen community signups during a festival or celebratory period with plaques outside people’s houses or something where they could write down their name and order alcohol or food delivered to them on the special holiday? Or was that in China? Or was that in an anime like Tamako Market? I’m so confused and am not sure what keywords to search up to find it in my own blog, but I’m sure I’ll find it someday and then think about editing this to link the two together, but fail to do so because I won’t be able to find THIS entry at that time. Sounds about right.

Moving on, I saw this Senior Citizen Corner in another void deck, which put a perspective on what the earlier one two pictures probably was. This one was in use though, so I didn’t go too near for fear of getting caught in a web of curious questions, and instead just took a picture from the outside, while capturing a really fancy-looking car in the crosshairs as well.

Soon enough, I reached Hougang Village, which like Hougang Green was a bunch of local shops that had sprung up to serve the local community. Unlike Hougang Green, the buildings here were the type with shops lining the bottom floor and residential units above, rather than the entire block being dedicated to commercial purposes. There was also no xenophobic madman wandering the corridors yelling about foreigners here, at least not during my tenure here.

There were also several kopitiams/coffeeshops attached to this sprawling market area that spanned several buildings, and I was feeling peckish and brave so I had a mid-afternoon snack at one of them, opting for some Bee Hoon with Sausage and Fish Cake from Bai Li Xiang Bee Hoon. This was basically Economic Bee Hoon, though they didn’t specifically use that term on the menu. It was actually really nice, I loved the chili in particular, and I quite liked the simplicity of the meal. Also it was just $3.20 even after the 50 cents Chinese New Year surcharge. I found out much later that the store has abysmally low ratings for some reason though. Maybe other branches give even more bang for the buck? Either way, I was here to consume food and not Google reviews, so I enjoyed my meal and then walked on.

I had also wandered into one of the random minimarts earlier named ABC Mart, and picked up a random bottle of tea that I had never heard of for a dollar. That’s the kind of local weirdness I like to try. That drink was a Yeo’s bottle, so a very famous brand locally, and the particular flavour was Buah Markisah Tea, which I’m now learning is the Malay word for Passion Fruit. But then the bottle also reads “With passion fruit juice”, so is this passion fruit with passion fruit juice? What’s the tea component in here anyway? Well, whatever, it was a nice enough drink!

I really enjoy the “clutter” around shop areas like this though, and I still dream about this shopping walkway style sometimes. Here are some additional pictures of the area that might help with visualization the next time I attempt to describe a scene like this in my dreams.

Finally pulling myself away from the area, I crossed the roads towards the east, looping around a school on my final leg back towards Hougang MRT Station. I noted with amusement that one side of this decoration, seen at a traffic light, was sponsored by someone.

But the other side was sponsored by someone else.

My walking took me into a cluster of blocks, at the bottom of which one of the ground floor homes had taken over parts of the walking path and turned it into a large potted garden. I love seeing scenes like this everywhere, and I’m pretty sure the government and local neighbourhoods try to encourage it too since it adds greenery and life to an area for “free”.

Suddenly, as I was walking by the area, I heard a loud clamour and what I recognized to be lion dance music. Drums and cymbals breaking out noisily somewhere in the vicinity. Lots of curious residents from the neighbouring blocks peeked out of their balcony to try to see what was happening, but no one could find the source of the noise. It went on for about ten minutes, and I’m pretty sure it was coming from one of the upstairs units of one of the HDB blocks, as opposed to a performance on the ground floor somewhere. I could not locate it either though, but I stood around enjoying its ebb and flow for a bit, then decided to record the last couple minutes as a sound bite for the blog.