The Place Where I Live

Tanjong Pagar, nicknamed Little Korea, is a small neighbourhood located around the central/southern area of Singapore. It is made up of both high rise office buildings and HDBs, which is what makes it very different from a lot of other neighbourhoods/places in Singapore. It has more than 15 Korean eateries, mainly K-BBQ, which is how it got the nickname, Little Korea.

I moved here with my family 5 years ago from Tampines when I was 14 and have been living here ever since. Although I've been living here for 5 years, I can't say that I know this place very well yet (mainly because I hardly left my house for the first 3.5 years). But now that I'm into photography and photojournalism, I decided to explore my neighbourhood a little more and show all of you around through my photos.

From the fitness corner to the large steps, you can already tell that it is very different as compared to most other neighbourhoods in Singapore. There are daily exercise lessons in the morning with blasting music. And it is not just one group of people exercising, but a few groups, ranging from normal exercise routines to Tai Chi and other forms of martial arts. There are also Pasar Malams that come every few months, where a few stalls will be set up along the road of Tanjong Pagar Plaza. There will be the standard Pasar Malam food and pottery and even plants being sold. Due to the space constraint, the Pasar Malams are always small scale, whereas places such as Tampines will have Pasar Malams that stretches across streets.

Of course, the most iconic part of Tanjong Pagar is Tanjong Pagar Plaza. It is made up of 8 blocks of flats, where 2 blocks are the market and all the first and sometimes second floors are filled with shops. There isn't a full scale supermarket like the one I'm used to at Tampines, so there are a lot of things that are not available here. The 'Market', which is block 5 and 6, has a hawker center on the second floor and is famous for a lot of types of food. From the Yong Tau Foo to the Nasi Lemak, a lot of the stalls have been on TV before and are worth trying and it is almost impossible to finish trying all the stalls since there are just too many. 

The other part of Tanjong Pagar, like I mentioned above, is the more city like part. It is filled with office workers, high rise buildings and hotels. There isn't any proper shopping malls (the nearest one would be either Chinatown Point or Vivo City), but there are office buildings and hotels with a small shopping center, such as Amara Hotel and International Plaza. It is also probably the only city area where you will see people in their home clothes or even pyjamas, because of how the flats are situated next to these high rise buildings.

There are many other roads and streets that are under Tanjong Pagar, such as Everton, Duxton, Cantonment and Yan Kit Road, a lot of which I have yet to explore, therefore I am unable to cover them here. But overall, Tanjong Pagar can be described as the neighbourhood of juxtaposition, with old and new buildings and a large portion of the population being the elderly. 

All photos were processed using VSCO Cam.