As spaces go, the atrium of Lucky Plaza is not a particularly welcoming one. The mall lighting is harsh, its tiles and pillars starkly white, making the overall effect one of aggressive brightness. But Bhing is telling me about the first time she stood waiting in this very spot, on a Sunday morning in December I had borrowed all of these from my sister.
Like thousands of her fellow countrywomen, she had come to seek employment here as a domestic worker, leaving her three young childrenβaged one, two, and four at the timeβin the care of her family back in Manila. But that was over two decades ago, and the woman standing in front of me is a far cry from the nervous year-old in hand-me-downs, waiting for a friend to come get her.
The very notion of needing someone to show you around a mall sounds absurd, but to enter Lucky Plaza is to enter a different world. This, as I will learn, makes all the difference.
Like its sister malls from that decade, Far East Plaza and Far East Shopping Centre, Lucky Plaza looks its age, from its matte grey-beige facade with the iconic yellow lettering to the cacophony of mismatched shopfronts: , Baleno, a sex shop. Next to newer, glossier neighbours like ION Orchard or Mandarin Gallery, with their sheen of dark glass and developer money, it is almost defiantly unlovely. At its opening, however, the mall was among the first of its kind hereβmulti-storey and fully air-conditioned.
When the Foreign Maid Scheme was introduced in , there were around 5, foreign domestic workers in Singapore; by , this number had swelled to 40, The mall has several other Filipino eateries; the oldest, Kabayan Restaurant, has been open for decades, and has probably served every Pinoy on the island and then some, but Bhing insists this is the best.
