I remembered as a kid, the thing that thrilled me the most about driving back to Malaysia for the Chinese New Year was the fact that we would buy lots and lots of fire crackers midway to KL and we’ll play them when we reach my dad’s hometown. Don’t imagine the traditional red ones. The ones we play with come in all kinds of designs, sounds, colors and patterns! Those of you who have lived in Singapore all your life will prob not know what I’m talking about, because such firecrackers were banned in Singapore eons ago. Haha! But because I’m so nice, I tried to google a photo, just to show you what I mean.
This is what I am referring to. My favorites have got to be the hopping frog, which was a tiny little frog which will hop forward and make funny sounds when we light its buttocks! My dad would spend hundreds on all kinds of firecrackers and we’ll spend one whole evening just lighting up every single one of them. Awesome.
Anyway, I was really looking forward to going back to my dad’s hometown, which is a Hakka Village (Yes, everyone in the village is a Hakka and speaks Hakka). You can’t find such a place in modern Singapore!
My dad’s house! Yes, it’s wholly made up of wooden planks and comes with a zinc roof. My dad’s family was very poor (as were most families in that village) and he had to work in a rubber plantation when he was only 11 years old! I’m so glad I had the chance to go around and snap photos of this lovely place, because the wooden house will be demolished in a couple of month’s time – It’s infested with white ants. :( My uncle who still lives in this house had already applied for government assistance to build him a new house – a concrete one. This house holds special meaning to me too because I lived one year of my life there! My grandma took care of me when I was 2 years old. =)
This is just outside the house. You can see that the house opposite has already been rebuilt and is now a bungalow. I heard it’s because that neighbour struck lottery! Haha!
My Uncle’s motorcycle, and the main type of transportation here.
The wooden doors.. Ah.. nostalgic!
The inside of the house..
The courtyard & kitchen..
The house has a well right smack in the centre of the courtyard! I have fond memories of Grandma drawing water from the well before. By the way, the ones behind are the toilet and bathroom. The flush toilet was built about 5 years ago. Before that, you can imagine how the sanitation was like. I dare not even go into details. =P
To Joey, this is definitely something new!
Joey looked so out of place here! Haha!
This is the wooden cupboard we kept all the utensils and cutleries. It’s so retro isn’t it??
Lunar calendar, which has become less and less common now in Singapore..
We were so happy to meet the mobile ice-cream man outside the house! The weather was scorching hot!
This costs us only RM1, which is 40 cents!??
Baby Jayne was probably wondering why this place looked so weird!
Joey would probably have a very different childhood if she lived here! She would play with sand all day long!
And since we don’t come here all the time, I decided we should leave some marks. Haha!
What I love about this place is how everyone knows everyone in the village. There’re 300 over households in this village but my dad says he knows everyone. There is only one Primary School in the village so every kid goes to the same school. When we were having dinner at one of the restaurants, one of my dad’s primary school classmate came to talk to him! *gulp* It was more than 45 years ago, for goodness’ sake. It was even scarier when some very old grandmas came by and greeted my dad and told me they remembered me as a little girl! Gosh….
Ooooh… how i love this place! =D
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