Skybars - the city from a bird's-eye view
Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are famous for their rooftop bars. At the ones we visit most often, the bartenders know what to prepare the moment we walk in.
In 1918 the writer Jerzy Bandrowski stopped briefly in Singapore on his way from Vladivostok to Europe. His book "Przez jasne wrota", published two years later, is a remarkable account of the city-state a century ago.
Arriving from the sea
The year is 1918. Jerzy Bandrowski, a Polish writer and journalist, is making his roundabout way from Vladivostok back to war-torn Europe. The ship he is sailing on stops for a few days in a port unlike anything a traveller from Galicia had ever seen – Singapore.
Two years later his book "Przez jasne wrota" ("Through the Bright Gate") appeared, with several dozen pages devoted to the city. It is one of the earliest Polish descriptions of Singapore – a record of a world that no longer exists. If you want to see just how much this city has changed, take a look at our piece on Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the Lion City.
A melting pot of peoples and languages
What strikes Bandrowski most of all is the diversity. Chinese, Malays, Tamils, Arabs and Europeans pass one another in the streets, each in their own dress, each in their own language. The writer describes with fascination the buzz of the markets, the scent of spices and the ceaseless motion of a port that never sleeps.
It is a portrait of a colonial city in full bloom – wealthy, cosmopolitan, yet full of contrasts. To a reader a hundred years ago it read like a dispatch from another planet; to us today, a fascinating testimony to the beginnings of a metropolis.
Singapore – it is the gate through which the East looks upon the West, and the West upon the East, and neither of them turns its eyes away.
What has survived to this day
Many of the places Bandrowski described can still be found today – though on a different scale and in a different context. The colourful shophouse terraces in the Chinatown and Little India districts are living monuments to that era, carefully restored today.
Singapore today – and how to see it
A hundred years on, Singapore is one of the most modern cities in the world, where colonial townhouses stand alongside futuristic Supertrees. The best way to see it is in person – walking the very same streets Bandrowski described. Take a look at our ready-made trips to set off in his footsteps.
See it in person
Singapore with our guide
A city-state transformed beyond recognition over a hundred years – we'll show it to you inside out.
See the trips