Funan Fountain Pen Shop Open Till 10pm Daily: Think

Think keeps its shutters up until 10pm every day of the week, so it is the Singapore fountain pen shop you can still reach after dinner in the Civic District. The shop is at #02-15 Funan, 107 North Bridge Road, Singapore 179105, opens at 10am. It calls itself a lifestyle stationery shop, but the reason pen people climb to the second floor is a counter of Japanese inks and paper that few Singapore malls carry.

Funan has a long memory for Singapore shoppers. The mall opened in January 1985 as Funan Centre, became Funan The IT Mall in 1997, and for two decades it was where people bought laptops, cables and memory cards. It closed on 30 June 2016, was rebuilt from the ground up, and soft-launched again on 28 June 2019 with a 200-metre cycling lane on its first floor and a Climb Central rock wall inside.

Think arrived as part of that new Funan. Its own About page describes a team of stationery specialists who are also super fans, and says its premium stationery is imported from Japan and Europe. The mall's tenant page repeats the line that the shop may be new but is unique. On a floor of gadget and lifestyle stores, the result feels like a quiet reading room, with notebooks stacked by brand and ink bottles lined up in rows of colour.

Start at the inks, because that is where Think stands apart. The shop carries Sailor's Ink Studio range in 20ml bottles, which Think lists as 100 colours plus three new launch colours. Studio inks are numbered rather than named, so a shelf of them reads like a paint chart, and the only way to choose is to see each colour written out. Bring a pen you already own and know your nib width before you start comparing.

Next to them sits Kobe Ink, made since 2007 around the theme of Kobe city, with each colour drawn from a landscape or a piece of the port city's history. Taccia's Ukiyo-e inks take their colours from Edo-period woodblock prints, and Think notes that every shade was supervised by colour consultants in Japan. Taken together, the three lines show what the shop is for: bottled ink as something you collect, compare and argue about.

The oddest item on Think's list is the Mirror of the Sky luminous ink set. Left still, the shimmer powder settles and the ink writes light grey, turning light blue under ultraviolet. Shake it and the line becomes blue. The box includes a separate blue ink for mixing, a spare empty bottle, mini pipettes and a small white-light UV flashlight. The flashlight ships without a battery, so buy one on the way home if you want to see the glow that night.

Be honest with yourself about the rest of the shop. Think also sells Flatty bag-in-bag organisers, pop-up stickers, desk globes and multi-colour ballpens, and they are pleasant to browse, but they are not why you came. If your time is short, skip those front tables and spend it at the ink and paper shelves, which is where the staff know the most and where nothing duplicates what a general bookshop sells.

Ink is only half the test, and Think stocks the paper to match. The Seven Seas Crossfield notebook is an A5 book of 384 pages on Tomoe River paper, ruled in a 7mm grid, with a Bakuram cover. Tomoe River is the thin, light sheet that fountain pen users seek out because shading and sheen show up on it, though it needs a few seconds longer to dry than ordinary copier paper.

For something sturdier, the Watanabe Book Note comes from Watanabe Book Binding Works, a Japanese bindery that Think says has been at work for 70 years, and it lies flatter than a glued notebook. The category list also covers Hobonichi, Midori, MD Paper, Traveler's Note, Yamamoto Paper and Leuchtturm 1917. Left-handers who smudge should pick the MD or Leuchtturm pages over Tomoe River, since slower drying means more ink on the side of your hand.

In a long Reddit thread where Singapore residents traded stationery tips, several people named Think at Funan as the first stop for a pen hunt. One commenter singled out its dedicated fountain pen area, and another said the staff member at the fountain pen counter was wonderful and would help a beginner out. Other commenters in the same thread called Think pretty good partly because it sits in the town centre near a cluster of attractions, which matches the mix you see at the counter: locals on a planned ink run and visitors fitting a pen stop between museums.

Treat the shelf as a shop rather than a sampling bar: ask a staff member before you uncap a bottle or pick up a display pen. Bring the pen you plan to fill, tell them your nib size, and say whether you want a quiet everyday blue for work notes or a shimmer ink for letters. That short brief gets you to the right bottle much faster than wandering the rows of colour on your own.

Weekday mornings just after the 10am opening are the calmest, when the mall is still waking up and the counter staff have time to talk through inks. Saturday afternoons are busier, as families arrive for the climbing wall and the cycling lane and drift upstairs to browse. Because Think closes at 10pm every night, a weekday visit after 8pm is the best compromise if you work in the CBD and want the shop almost to yourself.

If Think does not have the colour you want, walk ten minutes north to Fook Hing Trading in Bras Basah Complex, a fountain pen specialist that has traded since 1960 and focuses on pens rather than lifestyle goods. It does not open on Mondays, so plan a Monday trip around Think alone. If a specific Sailor colour has sold out at both, email Think through the address on its website and ask whether a restock is coming.

Take the underground link that runs about 100 metres from Funan to City Hall MRT, or leave by street level and cross North Bridge Road toward St Andrew's Cathedral, whose white Gothic spire rises above the trees of its grounds. From there the green lawn of the Padang opens up, with the domed National Gallery Singapore on its far side, the right place to test a new ink in a sketchbook.

If you prefer shade, follow Hill Street uphill to Fort Canning Park, where the trees and old ramparts give you a bench to write your first page. The walk back down passes the Armenian Church, a small white church completed in 1835 that is often described as the oldest church building in Singapore. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP to plan a route that strings these stops together around your visit.

Address: Think, #02-15 Funan, 107 North Bridge Road, Singapore 179105. Hours: Monday 10am to 10pm, Tuesday 10am to 10pm, Wednesday 10am to 10pm, Thursday 10am to 10pm, Friday 10am to 10pm, Saturday 10am to 10pm, Sunday 10am to 10pm. Email: Info@thinkshop.sg. Nearest station: City Hall MRT, linked to Funan by an underground walkway. The mall's tenant page lists Think as accepting eCapitaVouchers and earning CapitaStar points.