How It all Begin

The word Geylang is found early in Singapore's history. On Franklin and Jackson's plan, reproduced in John Crawfurd's 1828 book, Geylang appears as a river, referred to in the map as R. Gilang. The word Geylang is of Malay origin, and likely to be a corruption of the word kilang, meaning "press", "mill" or "factory". This may be due to the large number of processing factories for the coconut and lemongrass plantations in the area, and it could be that mills or presses operated on the coconut plantations to produce oil from copra.

Another possible origin to Geylang is the early presence of the fierce orang gallang tribe, one of the many orang laut tribal groups that lived along the coasts and rivers of Singapore island. The orang gallang were well-known for their piracy and pillaging of helpless craft in seas around Singapore island.

The other possible origin to the word "Geylang" is Chinese Hokkien "鸡笼“, which means chicken cage.

I was called the Geylang Kid during my NS days for my Warrior like activities every weekends.