Tan Kim Ching who happened to be Anna Leonowens, a young widow, looking for work to support herself and her two children. The story of the schoolteacher and the King of Siam has been made popular through the films "The King And I" (Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr) and "Anna and the King" (Chow, Yun Fatt and Jodie Foster). When the King and Queen of Siam landed in Singapore in 1890 they stayed at Tan Kim Ching's house, "Siam house", in North Bridge Road. It was reported that The King, who was expected to arrive in Singapore at Tanjong Pagar Wharf on board
Anna Leonowens reforms were goals established by his father. By 1869, Leonowens was in New York City, where she opened a school for girls for a brief period on Staten Island, and began contributing travel articles to a Boston journal, "Atlantic Monthly", including "The Favorite of the Harem", reviewed by "The New York Times" as "an Eastern love story, having apparently a strong basis of truth". She expanded her articles into two volumes of memoirs, beginning with "The English Governess at the Siamese Court" (1870), which earned her immediate fame but also brought charges of sensationalism. In her writing, she casts a