Tucked away in some corner of Yio Chu Kang, a quaint little village that's so near, yet so far from urban civilisation, far from the maddening crowd.

Met with one of the Malay residents there. He was reminiscing about the good old days when the kampung was a lot more alive. Told us about how, as a kid, he would run to the fields to join his Chinese friends to gaze at the beautiful lanterns during Lantern Festival. The different races mixed around freely then, without the need for any contrived notions of "racial harmony". Life for us urbanites is quite different as we surrender ourselves to our four-walled cells at the end of every workday, with nary a glance at our neighbours.

It was a short, 3-minute chat. But those three minutes were enough to transport my mind back to when it was quieter, where the air was crisper and when life was, well, a lot simpler.

This resident lamented about the uncertainty of Kampung Lorong Buangkok's future, and that if people wanted to see what real Malay culture was like, they should come here, instead of the fabricated Malay Village. He asked us to write to the press to convince the authorities to preserve the kampung. I guess that's been done many times already, and with the younger generation opting for an urban lifestyle, despite the best of intentions to preserve the place, its days are numbered.

So I guess I'm doing the next best thing by sharing these shots with you, to create awareness. Go visit the place for a real sense of a bit of S'pore history. We're all too familiar with the fact that such places tend to go sooner rather than later, so now's a good a time as any to check the place out.