The magnificent villas of the past are still standing, sleeping and unbreathing. Dustily uncared for.
These villas were the homes of traders who came here in the 1700's and 1800's and found their fortunes - Georgetown has always been a masala of people and business - Indian traders, Armenian Jews, Sultans, Portugese, Dutch, English. Raffles spent much of his time here while trying to establish Singapore and the Chinese had a unique ethnic community here for over 500 hundred years. They all came, made money and proudly built homes, schools and temples.
There is money here now but its not interested in staying here and making elegant places to live in.
This new money just wants to go up, up, up.
Just wandering around grubby Georgetown, you can find relics of the past still standing, unadvertised and unwatched. Catholic graveyards, over grown tombs with traders gravestones dating from 1829 - 'loved and passed away' English on one side, Chinese on the other.
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The Crashpacker
I never meant to go travelling, I just went. You start moving and can't stop, and when you do come to rest the inertia swells i…
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