Mark Reyes

Mark Reyes is 17 years old and a Senior High student living in Laguna province. He was born in Pateros and moved to Singapore as a young kid when his father found work there. He grew up in an HDB block in the heartlands, in a neighbourhood that had everything within walking distance: a kopitiam, a wet market, and a laundromat that felt as much like home as anywhere.

In Singapore, laundry started with his mother hand-washing clothes at the sink. When they eventually got a second-hand top-load washing machine, it broke often enough that the neighbourhood laundromat became a regular stop. Mark spent a lot of time there as a kid: watching machines spin, listening to the hum of dryers, and getting to know the aunties and uncles who ran the place. They knew every family on the block by their laundry habits. That kind of knowing is what he remembers most.

Mark moved back to the Philippines in 2022 after the passing of his father. He now lives with family in Laguna, where they run a small farm and raise pigs. Life is quieter than the heartlands, but not unfamiliar. The neighbourhood laundry shops in the Philippines have the same warmth he knew in Singapore: the same community feel, the same sense that a laundromat is more than just a place to wash clothes. That overlap is what he writes about.

Outside of writing, Mark plays basketball, makes videos, and is deep into technology and video games. He cooks too. His specialty is Tinola, and he takes it seriously.

On LaundryAtlas, he covers Singapore's laundry scene from the inside: not as a tourist or analyst, but as someone who grew up sitting on a plastic chair watching the dryer finish and considered that a perfectly good use of an afternoon.