Visit A Modern Kampong, Harvest Some Crops And Learn To Cook — In One Place

It’s an understatement to merely call this 48-year-old property a modern-day kampong — it’s an organic farm, cooking school, art gallery, and artist’s space all rolled into one quaint time machine. Upgrading has a whole different meaning for the Sohs. Rather than go for bigger, newer, shinier, Calvin splashed out $250k on renovations in 2015 and turned the house, which is under 2,000 sq ft, into a rustic retro sanctuary.

The two-storey abode has been home to four generations of Sohs since 1969 and was passed down by Calvin’s grandparents to his 74-year-old mum, Helen Soh (affectionately known as Mummy Soh to guests). The oldest of 13 children had initially intended to sell the property six years ago, before Calvin convinced her to keep it and turn it into One Kind House.

The front and back yards were transformed into farms that supply the family (and guests) herbs and veggies (think rosemary, kangkong, laksa leaves, okra, among others) for the lunch and dinner that they’ll cook together afterward. “It’s all organic. We don’t use chemical pesticides. We make our own — it’s a vinegar and chilli padi spray,” says Calvin.

One Kind House started out as a social experiment by Calvin Soh, 50, who left a cushy ad job five years ago (“It’s my ‘reverse retirement’. I wanted more time with my kids. Now that they’re older, I plan to go back to advertising soon.”) He wanted to rekindle the kampong spirit right in his own family home.

“I had the idea five years ago. I’d wondered, how did we progress from being such an open community [in the old kampong days], where you’d welcome people into your house, to such a closed society [today]? How did we become so disconnected with nature? It took me one whole year to convince my mum to do this,” he says.

Calvin conducts tours and cooking classes with Mummy Soh. Dylan, his 14-year-old son, and wife, Arlette, a 48-year-old homemaker, pop by to conduct tours and mingle with guests regularly as well. It may have been up and running for one year, but only folks in the know would’ve heard about One Kind House via word-of-mouth.

That is, until it was recently included as one of the 12 local excursions in Airbnb Trips. Think of it as an extension of the home-sharing platform where, instead of your home, you're hosting guests in unique local 'Experiences', which is a departure from run-of-the-mill tourist attractions. Each session here is $80, inclusive of the meal. Both travellers and locals can book Airbnb Trips excursions.

Instead of jostling with the throngs at the mall again, why not sign up for a cooking class with a twist or a hipster-approved modern calligraphy class, or go bar-hopping and pick up the tricks of the mixology trade? Book at https://www.airbnb.com.sg/s/singapore/experiences.

Past the front gate and the lush organic farm is an art gallery of sorts. These are artworks are done by Calvin’s uncle, artist Ng Yak Whee, who still lives at the house with Calvin’s brother. The rest of the family live in an apartment five minutes away.

This airy outdoor kitchen is where you learn to cook traditional home-style dishes like curry chicken from Mummy Soh, and fusion dishes such as squid ink Hokkien mee from Calvin. The mother-son duo have one thing in common: they don’t follow fixed recipes. Instead, they adapt the dishes according to what’s in season in their gardens, like true farm-to-table cooks.

And there’s a lot of produce, as we learned as we helped Calvin pluck basil, mint and laksa leaves in the front yard. “It’s not just a cooking class. You have to understand the whole process. We want people to appreciate the ability to lead a sustainable lifestyle — just because we live in a city doesn’t mean we can’t grow our own food. So we show that to people and enable them to make that change,” he explains.

So even though you may not leave with a stack of printed recipes, you’ll walk away with a GIY (grow-it-yourself) stick, an urban farming device developed by Calvin and Dylan on Kickstarter (above), to simplify the process of growing your own greens at home, even in HDB flats.

Whipping up a meal kampong-style means no shortcuts, okay? After squeezing coconut milk by hand, Mummy Soh instructs us to make the kedondong pesto for dinner, and Calvin demonstrates. We pound the kedondong fruit, a kind of tropical plum, with chilli padi and other herbs from the backyard.

Who knew rice could be so Instagram-worthy? The Sohs used blue pea flowers from their garden to make the rice such a lovely shade of blue, that even carb-fearing models wouldn’t be able to resist having a bite.

The blue rice complemented our meal that we’d just had a hand in whipping up — curry chicken, pomfret topped with kedondong pesto, a beansprouts and beef stir-fry, blue pea lemon tea and homemade pulot hitam. The menu is switched up according to the guests’ level of culinary prowess. Ours is the beginner’s level. Hey, everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

Typical in the kampong houses of days of yore is a breezy airwell where sunlight is abundant. One Kind House has turned theirs into a chillout zone (with retro-cool relics from the original house) — with a modern, Earth-friendly twist. When it rains, the sun roof closes automatically, though the family collects the rainwater to water the plants.

The toilets were modelled after the old kampong style (albeit with retro-mod flair), as Dylan, our tour guide for the day, tells us. “In the past, the toilets were usually separated into sections — one to wash clothes, one to shower and one to do your business,” says the eloquent ACS Barker student (the boy has helmed TED Talks before, okay?).

Upstairs, this cavernous space is available for hire, whether it’s for yoga sessions or kids coding classes.

It’s also where Dylan’s camera-shy 11-year-old younger sister makes the clothes that she designs, like this pair of fisherman pants on Dylan.