Singapore

We spent 10 days in Singapore recently.  Before leaving, I had looked up all the suggested locations to find antiques and collectables, wrote down some addresses and instructions on the train stops and bus numbers to catch.  It all looked promising.  However, reality was a little different.  We spent many hours sight seeing, immersing ourselves in Singaporean history and culture and visiting tourist attractions.  That was fun.  We also spent many hours LOOKING FOR interesting things to buy.  Unfortunately, very little came out of it.  Most Asian antiques are very expensive and the retro finds were very very rare.  On a few occasions we found the anticiated shop, only to find it was closed, with no opening hours on the door.  Due to much building and development works, some places had moved out.  The struggle to find places was too hot and frustrating to call it fun.  This did lead us into some interesting places though, off the beaten track and into the regular lives of Singaporeans.  That part I did enjoy.

For people heading to Singapore, who want to see some antiques, two places I can recommend visiting are Chinatown (there are a couple of shops filled with Asian antiques, hidden behind the cheap tourist stuff on tables), and Tanglin Mall at the Tanglin Road end of Orchard Road (just don't go on a Sunday or too early in the morning).  It seems retro has been tossed out for new shiny expensive objects in Singapore.  We did see a couple of gift shops that are using copies of retro objects and making them into something else, like a box brownie camera that is a clock.  (See http://www.thewrightgift.com/products.php for examples).  I don't like the idea of changing objects like that because I appreciate their original design and functionality and I like the history of different items.  But I do like that it exposes a different set of people to the objects, other than just the retro/vintage collectors like me. 

In an interior design store, I also saw natural objects (like a sand dollar or a reproduction skull) placed on an industrial style base or stand, to create a decorative piece.  That style of thing I found very arty and very intriguing.  It's like spotlighting a piece of nature and putting it in your living room for everyone to appreciate it's beauty and uniqueness and to be inspired by it.  One other notable find, although I had no chance of being able to afford it, was a funky wall piece featuring a comic picture made entirely of lego.  This was in a shop where you had to walk over a beautiful fish pond with coi to reach the displays.  It's called John Erdos Home, on Dempsey Road (http://www.johnerdos.com.sg/)  The artist who makes the lego pieces is called Eugene Tan.  Very cool.