Very hot, and very sweaty, our last few days in Singapore, but there were adventures yet to be had in the shade of the shophouses’ five-foot ways. We headed to Kampong Glam one morning, me and Mowmy and CC and the kid, before the sun reached its full burny power. I know that Glam, pronounced glahm, comes from the gelam tree that once grew in this colonial-era Malay enclave, but this does not stop me from expecting the high life and bejewelled transvestites whenever I venture into the neighbourhood.



We wandered down Kandahar Street to Bussorah Mall, where, in the shadow of the golden-domed Sultan Mosque, the Malay shopkeepers played bird-call whistles to enchant the kid. We admired the Peranakan bowls and teapots for sale at the Little Shophouse, and, some doors down, smoothed our palms on pink and green sarongs hanging from the eaves. On Arab Street the cloth traders called us into the cool of their shops, to their draped saris, to their printed Indian cottons and piles of neatly folded sheets.



’Round midday down Haji Lane, the nighttime bars and slouchy after-hours hangouts were shuttered, still. At noon the shishas had yet to be lit.