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Thursday, January 7, 2016

Remember Railway Station Names in Singapore

Singapore flag. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

How do you remember the railway station names?

Here's the new Downtown line in Singapore.

Bukit Panjang (long hill - the terminus)
Cashew (tree lined road up a hill; no longer cashew nut trees)
Hillview (Area with view of hills)
Beauty World
King Albert Park
Sixth Avenue
Tan Kah Kee: Mr Tan, donor to a uni in China; education is the key, thinks Tan Kah Kee.
Botanic Gardens
Stevens (possibly named after a police superintendent).
Newton (named after one of many from the pioneer days, building the new town of Singapore)

Bukit Panjang
The first station in the north, the terminus or terminal or last station, is Bukit Panjang. The station is nearest to Malaysia (formerly Malaya) in the north. Bukit is Malay language (Bahasa or language, Malay - which you will see on dictionaries). Bukit means hill.  Singapore was originally part of Malaysia, until the late 1900s.

Bukit - hill
Bukit appears in other names in Singapore. Bukit Merah. (Hill red or Red hill. There is also a Singapore station given the English name Redhill.)

P a n j a n g (Watch out for predictive text which turns this word into Panning.)
Long. It's a long word. Bukit P a n j a n g ..........!

Cashew
Cashew station is in Cashew Road and as you may have guessed it once had cashew nut trees.
The station is at the bottom of the hillside Cashew Road, on a busy motorway leading north, with lots of buses. (Get a bus map or photograph the bus stop and bus route poster so you can find your way back, and see the best bus and any alternatives which take the same route or get you half way there.

Hillview
This area has and had a view of the hill, which we already noticed was Bukit in the Malay language.

Hillview and HillV2
Above the station is the HillV2 shopping mall. You go up an escalator to the enclosed but outdoor plaza with the jumping fountain in the middle, coloured at night. HillV2 is small mall with upmarket shops, an upmarket supermarket, coffee shops and fine restaurants such as my favourite IO Italian Osteria which serves lunches and dinners and also sells deli items such as breads and bottled foods and delicious cakes to go (or as we say in England, take away.

Glossary
Bukit - hill (Malay)
Merah - red (autocorrect likes merry so I may have to spell it out as M e r a h)
P a n j a n g - long
timah - lead (the metal which was mined)

http://remembersingapore.org/2014/01/09/pioneer-names-in-singapore-streets/
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Singapore resident.

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