Tanjong Pagar

It began as an after-work romp, a nightout to cap a long, hard day at the office. There was Geylang, of course, but it was too far from the office, and it was sort of cliché already to be going there. We weren’t tourists anymore, and we were just looking for a place to unwind without getting too bummed out we wouldn’t know how we got home the morning after and where our hard-earned money went. So, heeding the advice of a Pinoy mate who, for 10 years, had explored every nook and cranny of Singapore, we wound up in this district called Tanjong Pagar.

I can bore you here right now with the many things and trivias the place is known for – like how it used to bridge the docks with the old town, or its historic Jinkricksha station (the old main rickshaw depot that now houses one of Jackie Chan’s restaurants), or that it used to be the district represented in Parliament by the man himself, Lee Kuan Yew – but you can already Google these things up.

What makes Tanjong Pagar unique, I think, is this little, quaint restaurant known as Kamayan, its name a reference to the way we Filipinos like to eat our tuyo, with a small plate of kamatis, itlog na pula and sibuyas as sawsawan – with our hands.

The place is open for about 18 hours a day, and it serves dishes that will give Nanay’s adobo and sinigang na baboy a run for their money. The price is a steal – S$4 for a bowl of rice and two ulams, plus a Coke! – and the place’s pretty much the same in layout and feel as those carinderias taxi and jeepney drivers love to troop to in Quiapo and Timog for some things to warm their stomach and feed their tsismoso and usisero minds. But that’s not what makes Kamayan a special place.

As in many places that strike us and leave more than just a good impression, it’s the people who go to Kamayan that makes it one of those special corners of this vast, complicated and suffering world where we feel like we leave a tiny part of ourselves each time we go there.

During most of the day, Kamayan plays host to the regulars: office-weary Pinoys working in the district’s tall, gleaming towers, or Singaporeans egged by their Pinoy mates to try out some Filipino delicacies. It pretty much looks like any regular kopitian – Singapore’s version of our carinderia – through most of the day.

When it hits 3am, however, they start coming, first in trickles – in pairs or in small groups. Then by 4am, the taps open and they pour in – a horde of exhausted, hungry, young women coming out of those glitzy bars tucked inside Tanjong Pagar’s and Duxton Hill’s rows of shophouses, exploding into a cacophony of boisterous banter in a language all their own and transforming Kamayan into a noisy family reunion, a mini barrio fiesta.

Uy, Be, naka-quota ka ba?

Ay, naku, puro buraog!

Kailan ka naman e-exit sa JB?

Di ko nga alam, eh. Kulang pa nga pambayad ko sa Dragon kay kuya Robin. Hay, naku, Be…

There, they are stripped of all that’s superficial that goes with their “trabaho” – make-up rinsed, their micro-minis, tank tops, halters, high-heel shoes and faux jewellerey tucked neatly inside plastic bags. They are a noisy, raucuous bunch, making tsismis about who went out with who or made a scene at the club, laughing, checking out the competition, spying warily at the crowd for trouble.

There, reality catches up with them. They are no longer these pretty young things providing company to testosterone-laden young men, manic depressive middle-aged men and senility-fighting old men. At Kamayan, they are someone’s mother, wife, sister or daughter.

http://pininggapura.wordpress.com/
http://supermouseandtheroborats.blogspot.com/
rdancel@gmail.com