Report by Bianca Polak

Raymond Goh guided this special tour, and led participants thereafter to the exhibition, Bukit Brown: Our Roots, Our Future, on Sunday 7th July, 2013

Once the post went up, so many signed up, more guides were needed!

There were more than 60 participants so we split into 3 groups: 1. Raymond & Steven guiding, 2. Fabian & Andrew guiding and 3. Keng Kiat & Beng guiding. The first 2 groups would go by bus to the exhibition after a 2 hour tour and do an exhibition tour at Chui Huay Lim club. Group 3 went on a longer cemetery tour. we finished around 11.30am. It was a beautiful sunny day and group 3 bumped into group 2 a few times, as we were taking a similar route. It was a good introductory tour with general tomb design, how to read a tomb and find out about the person buried there, different style tombs, such as Hokkien, Peranakan, Teochew, war style tombs, ornaments, etc. The pioneers were also highlighted and we visited Chew Boon Lay, Lim Keong Saik, amongst others, as well as Ong Sam Leong, to which we took a short-cut from Boon Lay’s grave. Some nature on the way too, which Beng was happy to point out and explain.

Raymond Goh aka “the tomb whisperer”(Photo: Bianca Polak)

Raymond Goh (Photo: Diana Teow)

Brownie Steven Toong (Photo: Diana Teow)

While we were looking at the graves, two Kingfishers were looking at us from a tree branch.

two Kingfishers (photo: Bianca Polak)

Besides the graves of some of the pioneers of Singapore, we also had a look at some special tomb designs, such as this war-time grave which has Japanese influences. The round shape seems to depict a Japanese lantern.

war-time grave (Photo: Bianca Polak)

Teochew graves are distinct in design too and have inscriptions in red and green colour font engraved on the tomb.

Teochew tombstone (Photo: Bianca Polak)

Part of the group that stayed on for an extended tour (Photo: Bianca Polak)

Chameleon (Photo: Raymond Goh)