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Photo Roundup – Kuala Kangsar, Ipoh, Cave Temples

15 Friday Apr 2011

Posted by ourmaninkorea in Malaysia, Travel

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Cave Temples, Gardens, Ipoh, Kuala Kangsar, Mosques, Palaces

Kuala Kangsar – the quiet royal capital of Perak, Kuala Kangsar slumbers in a comfortable corner between two rivers. I arrived in time for the colourful Sunday market. The small town has some nice views across the river – the compulsory yet elegant colonial buildings arranged around the central padang (playing field) and most importantly, a grand gold-domed mosque, Sultan Azlan Shah’s palace, and a museum dedicated to his royal life. A perfectly Malaysian blend of British colonial class, Islamic splendour and Malay royal prestige.

Masjid Ubudiah, the splendid mosque designed by famed colonial architect A.B. Huddock.

The Sunday markets

Kuala Kangsar stretches out lazily along a bend of the Sungai Perak river

Former palace and now the Galeri Sultan Azlan Shah, a musuem about the sultan's life

The sultan's palace, Istana Iskandariah, closed to the public

Abandoned houses beside the mosque, slowly dissolving into the jungle

Headscarf holders - I really wanted one, even though I can't think of anything I'd have less use for

Ipoh and surrounding cave temples – a city with a good serving of colonial buildings and Chinese shophouses, plus some great street food, Ipoh is off the tourist map but still has some worthwhile sights, especially the cave temples in the surrounding limestone karsts, which form a lumpy, jungle-covered fringe around the whole city.

Garden outside Sam Poh Tong cave temple

Through a tunnel in the caves, Sam Poh Tong opens up into a giant, circular chasm

Monkeys eye off the turtles, which are released by locals to bring Karmic balance

Kek Lok Tong, the massive, serene and out of the way cave temple that is Ipoh's best, and least-touristed

Inside Kek Lok Tong

Through Kek Lok Tong and out the other side, a beautiful garden amid the karsts

Rain clouds brood over Ipoh's padang but the game goes on

Graffiti on a wall in Ipoh - a startling urban artwork that completely took me by surprise

Taiping – gardens, monkeys and monitor lizards

12 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by ourmaninkorea in Malaysia, Travel

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Gardens, monitor lizards, Monkeys, Taiping, war graves

Taman Tasik Taiping - the lake gardens, in the early evening

Taiping is a quiet, timeless little town that seems to be perpetually dozing in the heat of a vanished colonial day. Its Chinese shophouses are crumbling gracefully; its wide streets are quiet and made for ambling walks; its gutters and sewer canals are populated with prowling cats and the terrific splashes of monitor lizards. Once an endless battle ground for the Chinese secret societies, then a booming tin mining town that boasted of some 40 “firsts” for Malaysia – including its railway, prison, post office, newspapers – Taiping is today known mostly for its beautiful lake gardens, Taman Tasik Taiping.

The gardens are absolutely stunning, large circular ponds connected to a series of sculpted lawns dotted with stands of palms and jungle. Its setting – a disused tin mine actually – at the foot of an old hill station provides a grand backdrop of slumbering, cloud-wrapped hills. I walked through the paths for about two hours, pausing at countless playful monkeys rolling down from the hairy trees to scavenge in bins and lope across the grass. Lovers sat on benches, coyly romantic in their restrained, Muslim way. I almost forgot my inexplicable teenage fear of lizards, until a 5-foot monitor lizard burst out of the water in front of me in a scaly, graceful splash. I swore so colourfully a sailor with Tourette’s syndrome would have been shocked by the outburst.

I was halfway through the gardens, annoyed with the attention-seeking monkeys and still wary of another monitor lizard, when through a thick wall of trees I heard the roar of a tiger, then the trumpet cry of an elephant. It was a full, nervous second before I remembered there was a zoo in the middle of the park – they have a night safari program popular with children. I think myself adventurous, but I never said I was brave.

Behind the gardens a few kilometres in a peaceful clearing is the Commonwealth Allied War Cemetery, where the neat white rows of headstones mark fallen allied soldiers. There are graves of British and Australian servicemen, soldiers of the Indian army, the Punjab regiment, Ghurkhas and the Federal Malay States Volunteer Force. The names on the headstones are a mix of Anglo-Celtic, Indian, Arabic, Chinese and Malay names. All the fallen men – and at least one woman – are recorded at the war graves commission website. Its easy to forget that people of such diverse nations fought and died together in these now beautiful, quiet lands.

At night the monkeys and lizards had left the gardens, and white birds filled the trees. The afternoon downpour was typically short and thick, a cool end to the day. Taiping is a marvellous old town, with a sleepy charm that hangs thick in the air. Even though I only spent the better part of a day there, it quickly felt like an old friend. It still does.

The Commonwealth Allied War Graves Cemetery - known unto God

The Taiping Prison - escapees will be shot amidst the lovely bushes.

Jungle walks and tea amid the clouds – the Cameron Highlands

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by ourmaninkorea in Malaysia, Travel

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Boh Tea Estate, Cameron Highlands, Jungle, Tea Plantations, Temples, trekking

The hot flat earth rose up in a green heap and the bus trip slowed to a winding crawl. As we reached the tops of the hills the tropical heat dropped to a mild 18 degrees and patches of cloud settled over the gentle slopes of vegetable farms. The effect is like stepping out of a baking sauna and into the cool wet grounds of an English country garden. And that is precisely what a hill station like the Cameron Highlands is all about; a most colonial of creations, a retreat from the tropics into lush, wet hills. The British carved a track through these hills and into the fertile slopes, landscaping it in their own image. Even today, long after the Empire has packed up her picnic rugs, the Cameron Highlands still retains plenty of idle charm and colonial character.

But let us not get carried away, old boy. The Highlands, for all that, is bursting with modern development. The number of resorts seems unsustainable, if not ludicrous, and the reality of carving farmland wildly through the hills has led to some truly damaged jungle. Parts of the Highlands have simply been hacked out for agriculture, and patches of thick jungle have been left jutting out over bare cliffs, clinging desperately to a fast eroding perch. It looks more like rape by bulldozer than sustainable development.

Because of this, I arrived in the tourist strip town of Tanah Rata feeling let down by the hype and the glossy Malaysian marketing, not to mention the persistent drizzle – the Cameron Highlands, like its English inspirations, receives an incredible amount of rain. After the rain cleared, I walked down to jungle trail 9A, aiming for an easy hour trek on one of the safer, easier trails and down to the Boh Tea Estate, searching for the real charm of the Cameron Highlands. At first the path was concrete but as it rolled down into a valley it became a thin dirt track and I reached the falls. The jungle was thick and wet, full of birds and insects but without the inquisitive monkeys that are everywhere else in Malaysia. It was only after the first half hour that I realised the safe and well-maintained trail was a complete lie.

It started off easily enough

The narrow path became narrower, the earth having long washed away down the sides of the trail until the path was just about the width of one of my – admittedly large – boots. At several points the trees above had fallen over the path, and at one bend the path – and by now it was only being called a path out of common politeness – had actually collapsed, swallowed up by the falling jungle. I had to stretch myself across a punji pit of tree branches, a structure sustained more by optimism than strength. I made it over and pushed on through the encroaching jungle. Pushing too fast, as it turned out, failing to notice a particularly narrow point. I slipped, overbalanced, and actually managed to fall off the jungle, crashing upside down into the undergrowth, which thankfully kept me from rolling down the side of the hill.

After that things got better, and it turned out I really was on the right trail all along. The jungle soon melded into farmlands and I stopped to de-leech myself at an unattended Buddhist temple. The square red bricks and dragon columns looked totally out of place in the midst of green hills, but I thanked the Buddha for the use of his tap. Another hour of walking on the main road and I finally reached the Boh Estate. And by Buddha it was worth it.

The hills had lost their rugged jungle edges, replaced with row after row of curving tea plants, which stretched up into the clouds that lazed over the green valleys. It was calm, cool and sublimely beautiful. I stopped for tea at the Boh Estate, enjoying the usual Malaysian customer service treatment. In Malay, the word customer must translate as ‘nuisance’ and service as ‘try not to look at him.’ But the tea was good and the hills and the clouds seemed endless and timeless and forever fertile with rain and green life. I would have been quite happy to never leave at all. Who ever said colonialism was a bad thing?

That's a damn fine trail you got there

Georgetown

23 Wednesday Mar 2011

Posted by ourmaninkorea in Malaysia, Travel

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Tags

Temples, Traditional houses

Classic shophouses in Georgetown

Georgetown is a city that needs to be walked in. Penang’s capital, more like a big town than a city, is a compact collection of neighbourhoods that melt into each other. Rather than big landmarks or natural wonders to work through, it is the World Heritage listed streets and buildings that make this place so appealing. A visit to Georgetown is one big walk, soaking up the little details; the smells and colours of Little India’s shops and restaurants; the dark stone, imperial red and sombre gold carvings of a Chinese clanhouse; the spotless white majesty of old colonial mansions.

Penang’s districts are ‘ethnic’ neighbourhoods that lump a lot of very different people groups together. Towards the north of the city is the colonial district, the old administrative heart of a long vanished British administration. The area is dominated by the padang, the clean rectangular playing field where polo and cricket were once played. Every colonial town I visited in Malaysia – and there were quite a lot, given my Anglo-obsessiveness – had a padang. Stately courthouses, town halls and governor’s residences line the edges of the field with great dignity, overlooking the sea.

Colonial dignity - and faded grass - overlooking the padang.

But the real point of interest here is Fort Cornwallis, the ruddy brick remains of a largely empty fortress. The rusty 9-pound cannons point blindly out from the star-shaped walls – a design that gave the fort more angles of fire – and the thick walls are covered in grass. Fort Cornwallis is testament to a colony whose early military fragility was soon replaced by an administration built on trade and racial co-existence. No battle was ever fought here.

If the colonial district is the white-wigged judge or the Lord Mayor of Georgetown, Chinatown is its wealthy merchant, wrapped in silk robes and gold – the crowded mercantile counterpoint to the colonial district’s pompous administrative role. Chinatown is full of Buddhist and Confucian temples of varying orders, reflecting the diverse nature of Penang’s Chinese population. Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, Peranakan, the name Chinatown is misleading, rather like saying all Indians are Hindus or calling every white man an Englishman.

Khoo Kongsi - the mother of all clanhouses

The best buildings here are the clanhouses, or clan associations. Part temple, part office, part recreation hall, the clanhouses – or kongsi – are the community centres for overseas Chinese clans. A clan is made up of people related by ancestry, a common home-land or dialect, and a shared surname. The clanhouses were, and in some ways still are, places were migrant Chinese came together, practiced their culture and helped each other out in business. They were also the official headquarters for the famed ‘secret societies’ that warred against each other for control of trade and business opportunities, and which gave the British administration incredible headaches during the Penang Riots of 1867.

The term secret society sounds ridiculous considering that the clanhouses are some of the brightest, biggest and most heavily decorated structures in Georgetown. Think carved columns with twisting, bearded dragons, bright tiled reliefs, gold-dripped altars and sunny courtyards where the sensation of cold stone on your bare feet mingles with hot light and the sweet bite of incense. They’re impressive sights and hard to miss, but the buildings around them are often just as interesting.

More shophouses

You can’t walk through Georgetown without talking about shophouses, they’re the real key to the city’s charm. A shophouse is basically an urban terrace house, square in shape and facing the street, thin, tall and long at the back, often containing internal courtyards or high-walled back gardens.  They’re classic, colonial and Chinese all at once, decorated with red lanterns and patterned tiles around the doorways. Their plastered exteriors are painted with bright aquatic blues and greens, and sandy yellows, balanced with white wooden shutters, or the reverse, painted in cream offset with coloured columns. A street of shophouses is striking, repeating basic architectural designs with an endless variation in colours and individual decorative flashes.

The third neighbourhood in Georgetown is, like Chinatown and the colonial district, an essential part of a big Malaysian city. But it still manages to stick out like Lord Krishna at a Catholic funeral – Little India. It’s a place full of the smells of Indian food, the pumping sounds of Indian pop, the shouts of street vendors, the holy raucous of temple worship, the sonorous cry of the call to prayer. The mosques and temples here are a mix of styles, again reflecting the diversity of Penang’s Indian population.

Masjid Kapitan Keling, one of the bigger and most beautiful mosques in Penang

As my first real experience of Malaysia, Georgetown, and Penang itself, was something of a miniaturised version of the best of the country. It had all the food, the temples, the mix of peoples, the colonial buildings and Chinese shophouses, which I would see again and again throughout my short trip. I’m not saying Georgetown is the perfect microcosm of the Malaysian city – beware ye traveller’s limited observations. I certainly didn’t really see much of the traditional Malay side, or the natural beauty of Malaysia, until I reached the mainland. But nevertheless, Georgetown stands out as a highlight in a country that has plenty to boast about already.

View from the front balcony of the Pinang Peranakan Mansion

The old protestant cemetery (Catholic section at the back), where many of the earliest white settlers are buried

There are slums in Georgetown too, but even they are brightly painted

A sleepy gun at Fort Cornwallis

A sleepy trishaw driver

Preparing for worship inside the Sri Mariamman temple (photo by Allison Whitten)

Our man in… Malaya

20 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by ourmaninkorea in Malaysia, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

View of Penang from a hillside temple. I stayed in one of those four big towers on the left.

I was excited about visiting Malaysia for many reasons. It’s a nation built on trade and diversity, where the cultures, spices and languages of many peoples mix. It’s a former British colony with a legacy of lovely architecture, calm hill stations and a kind of order amidst the chaos. Yet it’s also a nation with a strong Malay identity, a friendly, generous heart and a conservative mind, and a proud adherence to Islam. Put all this together in a tropical hot, jungle-covered peninsula – and a good chunk of Borneo too – and you get a bowl of curry spiced and sweetened with a rich diversity of cultural flavours.

My first taste of this all was Penang, the lovely island state off the west coast of Malaysia. A historic trading port whose past and importance once rivalled Singapore; a mercantile, multicultural island where varied Chinese, Malay and Indian groups – along with their food, architecture and religion – flourish side by side. And then there’s Georgetown, the island’s capital, and a World Heritage enclave loaded with beautiful Chinese shophouses, temples and colonial relics.

Kids and pigeons outside the Kuan Yin (Guanyin) Temple, Georgetown, Penang

I stayed in Penang with my aunt, uncle and my three cousins – all under 6, and just gorgeous. They live on the 20th floor of a massive apartment overlooking the water. It was a little hazy, and the beaches weren’t quite Australia worthy (like anywhere is) but the views were spectacular. In the afternoon the cool winds picked up over the bay, and in the hill behind, the lanterns of a Buddhist temple glowed red in the evenings. And the food, for which Penang is famous, was brilliant.

From Penang I crossed over to the mainland and into the neighbouring state of Perak, starting in the old Chinese tin-mining boom town of Taiping, now a quiet place with wide streets and a beautiful garden. From there I went up to the Cameron Highlands, the cool, wet hill station with tea plantations cut straight out of the jungle. Then I spent two days in Ipoh, a bigger, but still sleepy old city set amid brilliant limestone karsts full of cave temples, and the neighbouring royal capital of Kuala Kangsar, with its golden-domed mosque and the sultan’s palaces.

The Cheong Fatt Tze mansion, Georgetown, Penang

I never had a bad day in Malaysia. However, it did rain every afternoon, and the service in shops and restaurants in Malaysia is famously, and truly, dreadful. Shopkeepers barely move, watching you with a cold, languid eye, like a monitor lizard on a hot rock. Waiters take your order without even listening, and give you the wrong meal, barely shrugging as they take it back. This was frustrating. But aside from that, Malaysian people, be they Chinese-Malay, Indian-Malay, or just… Malay, are a friendly and welcoming people. Although I’ve been the fortunate recipient – and sometimes, the unfortunate victim – of Asian hospitality in every country I’ve been to, the relaxed friendliness of Malaysian people really stood out.

Malaysia doesn’t rate highly on South-East Asian travel lists, but it really has something for everyone. Culture, history, architecture, food or natural beauty – and a whole lot of animals – Malaysia is triple-blessed in every aspect. And I spent less than two weeks there, visiting only two of its smallest states. It may have been a filling, spicy and diverse curry, and I was certainly satisfied, but really, it was only just a taste.

A hungry monkey in the bin at Taman Tasik Taiping. Kind of sad isn't it?

Market spices, Kuala Kangsar

Courtyard of the Hainan Temple, Georgetown

My little cousin being cute/naughty at Penang National Park

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