Scouring for Treasures in Singapore’s Den of Thieves
PUBLISHED September 19th, 2012 12:25 pm | UPDATED July 23rd, 2024 12:52 am
Stark under the naked sun beating down your shoulders, you squeeze through an alleyway thick of the bustling buzz of people, trickling in numbers through alleyways, walking over and through stalls of many varied sizes, standing humble against each other, vendors’ open voices fill the air in engaged and enthusiastic haggling over goods and prices as sweat drips down their faces and over their products – some tattered, some new and branded, some irrevocably rare and priceless, some commonplace and mundane.
Welcome, welcome! Come one, come all… Enter the fantastic circus about to unfold. I welcome you to the Den of Thieves. I welcome you to the Thieve’s Market!
You fight against crowds, peeking at half-dressed ah pecks fanning themselves under their big umbrellas, their smiles warm and crooked, as one pushes to your hands an amulet, bronze and faded, but beautiful, gleaming under the hot-flashing Singapore sun. ‘Fifty,’ he says and you look back at him and his glittering bald head, the weathered face and the weathered fingers – digits that could tell you stories if you had the time to listen. ‘Ten,’ you say. He shakes his head and points to the amulet.
You finger it and feel its expert carving; opening it, the timeface smiles at you, as old as your grandfather. ‘Thirty,’ the peddler pulls you out of your thoughts and he might as well be as old as your grandfather too, the whiskers on his face as white as the open sky. ‘Fifteen,’ You haggle. He muses for a moment, and then shrugs. ‘Very good,’ he says as he collects his rewards. You thank the man, looking back at your new find, glittering in its time-stained bronze finish, an unexpected treasure of an unexpected adventure.
Introducing the Thieves’ Market
The line between trash and treasure becomes minutely blurred once you step into Sungei Road, a place worlds away from Singapore’s cosmopolitan hub of glittering glass walls, marble-tiled floors and state-of-the-art, quality service-staffed shopping centres. Here, the floor’s a road marked with dirt-stained shoe prints and untended grass patches; the walls are picket fences and incomplete blocks of brick walls making dead-ends and graffiti canvasses; and the state of its art and quality of its service are non-existent. It’s a shopping spree close to an adventure. This is the den of thieves; this is the Thieves’ Market.
Like stepping into a universe altogether opposite of one’s general notion of everything Singapore, Sungei Road offers a shopping experience under the open sky with the cool (or hot) breeze blowing by your neck as you walk shoulder-to-shoulder with other people through a street lined with stalls that are actually barely stalls but road spaces marked as store territory as big as each seller’s mat size.
The goods are unlike the heavily advertised products of Chanel or Apple – although one could chance upon a branded product or two. Commercialism has no merit where the thieves come to congregate. The products they offer are a mixture of garbage and gem, from half a pair of tattered converse shoes to second-hard hardcovers of The Secret to weathered limited-edition LP albums of The Beatles.
Famously named because of its history for being the place where not only second-hand goods but also contraband items are being sold, the Thieves’ Market is the oldest and one of the largest flea markets in Singapore. It is situated at Sungei Road, literally River Road as it runs along Rochor Canal. It had a history of being known as literally an avenue where stolen items are disseminated, although presently and almost sadly, it has ceased being so.
But ultimately, it is a carnival of noise, bargain and unaffected vintage goodness where the karang guni displays his finds of the day, where you can find that phone you lost at the coffee house last Friday, where you can scour age-borne trinkets of all sizes and shapes, where there’s no receipt, no refund, and the stall you bought that watch yesterday won’t be there tomorrow for sure. This market doesn’t believe in permanence, and its existence is as transitory as the seasons.
The City Nomad Guide to the Den of Thieves
Adventure lies in Sungei Road where the open-air market occupies the long stretch of Pasar Lane and Pitt Street, with many a peddler, not the least dressed to impress customers, line up their goods on mats or tarpaulin sheets laid on the ground, with their products sprawled all over. The road is situated between Serangoon Road and Jalan Besar, running along the so-called river. It’s a good 15-minute walk from either Bugis MRT station or Lavender MRT station. From the junction of Bras Basah Road and Bencoolen St, one can set out along Bencoolen St up to the junction of Rochor Road and Ophir Road. It isn’t hard to spot. Follow the sound of busy ah pecks flaunting their goods or the scent of human sweat in the air…or just spot the road filled with giant umbrellas and bobbing heads.
It is open, free and messy, with equally sweaty and not-so-equally smelling bargain hunters crowding as much as the noises from old stereos and haggling is filling the air. Light clothing is advised, and an umbrella would be a blessing under the sun. Or the rain. Both can happen but the market shall keep standing.
Top Picks
The Thieves’ Market is carnival of all things second-hand, aged and sometimes, thoroughly precious. Sometimes, the precious could be lost among the mundane; and other times, what’s precious to one is not so important to another. In our last scavenging, we found five precious enough to deserve the spotlight in the City Nomads Thieves’ Market Top Picks.
TYPEWRITER
I am a writer and I’ve always had a love for typewriters. The feel of its keys, the courier new font, the sound it does at the end of a line – ‘DING!’ like a momentary applause for the achievement of being able to write a full line. Computers don’t have them and should. This typewriter was a little old (though not as old as some of its neighbours), but with a change of ribbon, it would be easy enough to live my hipster dream to.
SHADES
I found this piece of treasure irresistible. It’s aged, bronze and so steampunk, I’d have bought it even if it wasn’t on bargain. But it was…and it cost $15 after a short haggling with its vendor who insisted it must be bought for at least $30…and with that finishing and state, it might have been too. The vintage-lover in me could just melt for it.
TIMEPIECES
I’m a cosplayer/writer/scavenger-hunter…with a love for the old and aged. So it isn’t much surprise to say that I love timepieces. Not watches. Not clocks. Timepieces. There’s a timeless – no pun intended – quality to timepieces. So one could just imagine the hyperenergized state of euphoria I was in, scouring for the best of the best among them. Their prices range from a dollar to fifty, though some of the really good ones, beautifully aged but still working, were sold for a meagre $5. It was timepiece heaven.
RUSSIAN EGGS
They’re not really eggs. But I call them eggs. It’s the shape. But regardless of that, this jewelry box/container is one of the more unexpected finds. I’ve never thought I’d find one here. And it was awesome that I did. It’s the odd shape and the beautiful finish that drew me to it. It reminded me of childhood.
DISCO BALL
Two words: Boogie night. Enough said.
If one cares to look and perseveres to scour this big mound of treasure adventure, unexpected finds would be in hand. With enough digging and sniffing, one would find a treasure among treasure, this is where the thieves come to sell their goods. This is the Thieves’ Market. And this is the living reminder of the whole notion of one man’s trash being another man’s treasure.
Written by Soap
