You know how sometimes you can't think of one place without thinking of another, especially if both places are close by? Like how you can't think of Ang Mo Kio without thinking of Bishan, or how you can't think of Telok Blangah without thinking of Mount Faber?
That's how it is for me when it comes to Ann Siang Road and Club Street. I've never been able to think of one without thinking of the other, and why should it not be, when geographically speaking, it is literally one single road that wraps around the curvature of a hill?
Ann Siang Road begins from the summit of what is today Ann Siang Hill Park and cuts down all the way to South Bridge Road. Club Street runs perpendicular, beginning midway along Ann Siang, goes down the hill, and ends at what is today Cross Street.
It's not so much the entertainment of the place that is fascinating (even though there're a good number of cafes, pubs, bars and restaurants there) but the architecture that the place itself entails, the stories those shop houses embrace, and the heritage that she represents.
I'd been interested in the vicinity of Ann Siang, Club, Maxwell and Amoy for a while, and when it so happened that I was in the area with a twenty-minute interval waiting for an errand to be completed, I decided I'd take a quick wander around the neighborhood rather than hang about (impatiently) in the common area.
Given that there wasn't much time I decided I'd head down to Erskine Road first to the 7-11 (so badly needed a drink) then back up to Kadayanallur Street, then make a left onto Ann Siang Road.
By a building along Erskine Road, I made a quick stop. Interesting this building is, with five floors (I think), and where some of the barred windows are remarkably close to the road. The name of this now-empty building I do not know, but I read somewhere that it once used to be a Mission Hospital, and most recently, served as the offices of Tangs Department Store.
On Kadayanallur Street, I made another stop right at the junction of Scarlet Hotel and the URA East Wing. From here I could look down Erskine Road towards the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple on the opposite side, the housing blocks of Kreta Ayer Estate, the Tanjong Pagar area to my left, and the roofs of Maxwell Food Center down below. From here too, at a vantage point of the back alley between two rows of shop houses (one facing Ann Siang Road, the other facing Erskine Road) I gazed straight ahead- as the crow flew- into the distance until the corner of the new State Court Building caught my eye.
There wasn't time to walk along Ann Siang Road, so at the junction I grabbed a quick picture, then headed towards Ann Siang Hill Park where I found myself looking at a nice,quiet pathway that presumably led to the foot of the hill, and the back of a row of shop houses that stood upon Amoy Street down below.
I don't know if I'll head back to the area again.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I won't.
It depends.
But what I realized that day of Ann Siang Road I won't easily forget.
Because for the first time in a very long while, she possessed a very different vibe.
It was a vibe that I never knew existed. It was a vibe that I thought had been long forgotten, and yet- yet- loud she was along the silent road, clear she was resounding in the brick walls of the shop houses now hushed of chatter and chillax music, and patient she was in the tale she still waited to tell.