Taman Ikan Air Tawar, Kuala Selangor

Before visiting the Kuala Selangor Nature Park the other day I popped into this place since it is located right next door. Taman Ikan Air Tawar translates as ‘freshwater fish park’.

The entrance fee is only RM 2 (RM 1 for kids) so I was not expecting a world class aquarium.  They have a dozen or so fish tanks of various species, the most exciting of which is probably the Toman or Giant Snakehead.

This specimen is a relative baby. Larger ones can reach up to 130cm and weigh 20kg. They are very aggressive and eat anything that fits into their mouths. They are rumoured to attack humans but this may be just a fisherman’s tale.

The aquarium also has a mini-museum displaying examples of fish traps, nets and so on.

Apart from the fish, there are a couple of small aviaries and a large lotus pond which is rather attractive.

I wouldn’t make a special trip to visit this place but if you are in Kuala Selangor it is certainly worth spending half a hour there.

The Kuala Selangor Nature Park next door has a very good mangrove forest boardwalk and is popular with birders. You can read about it on my Malaysia-Traveller website.

Tanjong Keramat, Kuala Selangor

 

At the extreme point of land at the mouth of the River Selangor is a small village called Kampong Tanjung Keramat. Here can be found two of Kuala Selangor’s tourist attractions.

A keramat (or kramat) is a holy place or place of pilgrimage – often a grave but not necessarily so -and there are many of these all over Malaysia. The one in this village is called Makam Keramat Anak Dara (Virgin’s Grave) or Keramat Rubiah.

It sits on a small rocky hill, the sides of which have steepened by quarrying. The only way up to the keramat is via a flight of rickety wooden steps which have seen better days. I risked the steps but I was more concerned about a couple of monkeys sitting half way up.

The gate at the top was padlocked but there was not much to see anyway. The ‘grave’ is the white tiled rectangle inside the walled structure. The signboard outside relates the story of an 18 year old girl, Siti Aishah, who ran away from home to avoid a forced marriage. She was never found but her clothes were left hanging from a tree at this spot and her parents decided to build a shrine in her honour here.

Behind the keramat  is a lake popular with fishermen. It was apparently formed as a result of excavations by the Japanese during the War. This could account for its name, Lake Shima (Japanese for ‘island’).

A stone’s throw from here is the other tourist attraction, Tanjung Keramat Fort or Bukit Belanda (literally ‘Dutch Hill’). This one is a larger hill and the site of a fort originally built by Sultan Ibrahim, the 2nd Sultan of Selangor, who reigned from 1782-1826. It was captured by the Dutch in 1784 who renamed it Fort Utrecht.

Unfortunately the authorities appeared to be behind in their maintenance schedule and the site was in need of a good grass cutting so I did not explore fully (scared of stepping on a snake!).

The ramparts of this fort would once have been bristling with cannons but some of these weapons seem to have found their way to the neighbouring village where they make fine garden ornaments.

Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur

I was recently looking through an old cartoon book by Lat who is one of Malaysia’s most famous cartoonists. He is now semi-retired but for many years his cartoons provided an insight into social and political aspects of Malaysia’s culture. (They are not that funny if you are unfamiliar with the current events of that era).

I had not been to Jalan Raja Muda (depicted in this cartoon) and I was curious to see what was there so I went along to find out.

To be frank, there is not a great deal of interest for the sightseer on this street. There are still a few old hotels but I cannot imagine today’s MPs would wish to stay in them.

On the other side of the road is KL Hospital, the Heart Institute, medical colleges and staff and student hostels.

On the corner with Jalan Pahang is the Institute of Medical Research (IMR). This was set up in 1900 at the instigation of Sir Frank Swettenham who was the Resident General of the Federated Malay States. KL was plagued with tropical diseases such as beri-beri and malaria at the time and Dr. Hamilton Wright, a pathologist from the London School of Tropical Medicine, was appointed as the Institute’s first Director.

His successor, Dr. C. W. Daniels, wrote five volumes of studies on the Malayan mosquito (and you thought your job was boring!).

Subsequent Directors included these four: (clockwise) William Fletcher, Allen Neave Kingsbury, Raymond Lewthwaite and K.Sato. Sato was one of two Japanese Directors during the war years 1942-1945. They needed to keep the IMR going during the War as there was a breakdown in disease control and KL suffered a malaria epidemic at that time.

Since Independence, the focus of the IMR has expanded into other areas such as cancer, stem cell research, allergies, diabetes and genetic diseases in addition to tropical diseases. Many new buildings have been added but one of the older blocks, a heritage building dating from 1928 is now a Biomedical Museum.

Among the Museum’s odd assortment of exhibits are antique lab equipment, reptiles in jars of formaldehyde, stuffed rodents, giant models of mites and even some macabre human foetuses preserved in bottles.

You can find more details about the Biomedical Museum on my website.

MAHA International 2012

 

MAHA International Agricultural Show opens today.

You can find out what is happening there on my Malaysia Traveller website.

Masjid Asy-Syakirin – KLCC

When William and Kate visited Malaysia in September they were taken to see the Masjid Asy-Syakirin. Presumably the central location of this mosque next to Kuala Lumpur’s twin towers fitted in well with other engagements on their itinerary. It also gave the royal couple the chance to do a quick walkabout in KLCC park (from where I took this photo) and allowed the waiting public the opportunity to catch a glimpse of them.

I went along to KLCC yesterday to take a look at this mosque whose name comes from the Arabic for ‘The Thankful’.

The mosque was built in the 1990s with a colour scheme that matches the surrounding buildings.

The design of the pillars reminded me of the old Dubai airport terminal of the 1970s.

Under the canopy of the mosque there are vast expanses of marble tiling and a number of people were sitting on the floor and enjoying this cool and calm oasis.

 

The glass skylights have been cleverly designed to create the illusion of an Islamic horseshoe arch.

Trees, Tigers and Too Many Kids–One Is Enough

The famous author Agnes Newton Keith, who wrote Land Below the Wind and other books about her life in Sandakan, was married to Harry Keith, Conservator of Forests for North Borneo (now Sabah, Malaysia).

A huge log being placed on a railroad car at Batottan, British North Borneo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Harry was a dedicated official and passionate about the need to sustainably manage North Borneo’s forest reserves. The British North Borneo (Chartered) Company, which was running the territory at the time, derived the bulk of its income from the sale of logging permits. No doubt Borneo’s vast forestry reserves seemed inexhaustible but even as early as the 1940s, Harry could see that continued rampant logging activity was not sustainable.

Despite his best efforts however you would have to conclude that he and his successors ultimately failed in their role as conservators of forests because Sabah today is pretty much logged-out.

How can that be you might ask? Isn’t it true that 48.8% of Sabah’s total land area (7,362,000 ha) is classified as Forest Reserve? That is true but of that total, only 342,216 ha (4.6% of Sabah’s total land area) is classed as Protection Area in which logging is not permitted. A further 90,386 ha (1.22%) is considered as Virgin Jungle Forest where logging is strictly prohibited but in practice illegal logging has taken place.  The majority of the Forest Reserve is categorized as Production Forest and can be, and has been,  ‘selectively logged’ under licence.

This WWF graphic illustrates what is happening all over Borneo. (Sabah is in the top right corner.)

When Harry Keith retired in 1950, North Borneo’s forest cover was still fairly intact but by the 1980s logging was at its peak and Sabah was exporting 12 million cubic metres of timber per year, much of it to Japan to be turned into plywood and disposable chopsticks. Presumably  the remains are now lying rotting in Japanese landfills. An ignoble end to once mighty trees!

Some trees have fared better. It is said that logs from Sandakan were used in the construction of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

By the early 2000s, Sabah’s timber exports had dwindled significantly mainly due to depletion of forests and Japanese and other lumber trading firms had moved on to new sources like Papua New Guinea.

I do not wish to sound too gloomy. Forests can recover. If all humans left Sabah tomorrow the jungle would return to its former glory in 250 years or so. But that is too long a time horizon for businesses to consider and as for politicians, they know that future generations do not have a vote so who cares if their world is wrecked?

As for the future of wild animals, I’m afraid I am very pessimistic. They are doomed. Already they are virtually extinct outside of zoos and wildlife parks, not just in Borneo but all over the developing world. The only creatures which can thrive in today’s overcrowded world are rats, cockroaches, flies and ants.

Organizations like WWF are wasting their time. The battle for pandas, tigers, elephants, rhinos and the like is lost. Instead WWF should turn its attention to tackling the source of this and so many other problems, and that is global over-population. This is a glaring issue but no governments, apart from China’s, seem willing to do anything about it. On the contrary, many countries are actively encouraging their citizens to have more children.

In my view the United Nations should set a target to half the world’s population over the next 100 years or so. Every country should adopt a One is Enough child policy and use a combination of incentives and deterrents to achieve it such as:

• removal of child benefits
• free or subsidised schooling for first child only
• lower income tax for those couples with only one child or no children

Ok, I admit I am being hypocritical here as I have three children but I have only recently become convinced that having a smaller world population would solve so many of the problems facing the planet. I’ll encourage my children to have one or less kids.

Extreme Cleaner

While cycling near Perdana Putra (the Prime Minister’s office) in Putrajaya this morning I noticed a speck on the green dome of the building.

On closer inspection it turned out to be a person who appeared to be cleaning the dome while suspended precariously in an abseiling position.

This extreme cleaner was certainly earning his salary today.

Burial of KL654/R Flight Crew at Cheras Road Cemetery

The remains of eight crew members of RAF flight KL654-R were permanently laid to rest on 18 October 2012 in a burial service with full military honours at the Cheras Road Cemetery, Kuala Lumpur, some 67 years after their B-24 Liberator crashed on 23rd August 1945.

The crew had taken off from their base at Brown’s West Island airstrip in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean around 1,000 km south of Sumatra along with four other B-24s from Squadron 356. Sadly KL654 never returned and is believed to have clipped a tree before crashing into dense jungle on Gunung Telapak Buruk (a 1193m high mountain in Negeri Sembilan, Malaya) with no survivors.

The War had officially ended eight days earlier and their mission had been to drop supplies of food and medicine for Allied POWs, still imprisoned and in poor health, in a camp at Kampung Langkap not far from the crash site. They may also have been dropping leaflets announcing the end of the war because although Emperor Hirohito had, on 15th August, instructed his forces to lay down their arms, surrender in Malaya did not occur until 13th September. This was mainly because there were no allied troops on the ground to surrender to, apart from the tiny numbers of special forces in Force 136 who were emerging from their jungle hideouts along with units of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army.

It is thought that the crash site was first discovered in the 1950s by orang asli tribesmen who reported it to the British Army. However no action was taken at the time as the Malayan Emergency was in full swing and the army feared a trap by communist insurgents.

Later efforts to search for the wreck were thwarted by lack of funding and initial reluctance by the UK Ministry of Defence to support recovery of the remains.

In 2006 the Malaya Historical Group, following two expeditions to the wreck site, positively identified it as belonging to KL654. In 2007 MHG organized another trip with involvement of the Malaysian Army and two British participants, former Apache pilot and author Ed Macy and police detective Clayton Ford, and found various personal belongings of the crew such as rings, a gold bracelet, dagger, dog tag, coins, a tiny doll, spectacles and a water canteen. Some 80 bone fragments were recovered over the following years which have since been DNA tested to confirm their identities.

The remains of the 8 crew members were buried in one coffin but have individual headstones. Their names are:

Flying Officer J.T. Bromfield, 166369 from Cheam, Surrey (20 years old)
Flight Sergeant A. Turner, 1621393 from Dewsbury, Yorkshire (21 years old)

Flight Sergeant William Ross, 2213814 from Gateshead, Durham (20 years old)
Flight Sergeant Jack Blakey, 1582692, from Boston, Lincolnshire (30 years old)

Flight Sergeant Raymond Arthur Towell, 1624252, from Wellingborough, Northants(21 years old)

Flight Lieutenant John Selwyn Watts, 158017, from Crofton, Yorkshire (24 years old)
Flying Officer Edward Donald Mason, 166082 from Sheffield, Yorkshire (22 years old)
Flying Officer William Kenneth Dovey, 166352 from Ludlow, Salop (20 years old).

The commemorative service,  conducted by The Reverend (Wing Commander) Jonathan Beach RAF, was dignified and respectful. There were readings from the British Defence Adviser in Malaysia, Captain Kenneth Taylor RN, Wing Commander John Dunne RAF and Warrant Officer ClassII Paul Cross. Pall bearers were from the RAF Regiment and a Gurkha bugler provided the Last Post and the Reveille. Members of the Malaysian Armed Forces and the British High Commissioner were also present.  Around twenty relatives of the deceased had been flown out from UK for the occasion at the expense of the Government (making up for the MOD’s earlier reluctance to search for the remains).  The closest relations in attendance I believe were the younger brothers of Flying Officer Dovey, now of course well advanced in years. It was clear that all the family members found the service moving and beautiful and an appropriate honour for the valour and sacrifice made by their relatives’ generation.

Manju Suddhi Buddhist Organization

When I was driving on a highway near Kajang recently I noticed a large Chinese temple on a hilltop. I had driven on this road a number of times but somehow had never spotted it before. Perhaps it has recently been extended. I thought I would drive up to take a closer look.

From the sign outside I could see that it is called Pertubuhan Budhis Manju Suddhi which translates as Manju Suddhi Buddhist Organization. It is located in Kampung Sungai Chua on the outskirts of Kajang, Selangor.

The complex comprises two large buildings, pagodas, gardens, courtyards and a recycling centre.

There is a large three-sided Guan Yin statue and a Maitreya Buddha statue.

The organization’s website is all in Chinese which does not translate well on Google Translate but from what I could make out the temple’s activities include prayer/meditation, weddings and funerals, education, charity and welfare, recycling,  and celebrations of all the big Chinese and Buddhist holidays.

Leech Beauty Treatment

I noticed this poster in the window of a women’s beauty parlour not far from where I live in Malaysia. It shows four leeches enjoying a meal on this woman’s face.

The use of leeches for medicinal purposes is well known and has been around since the ancient Egyptians. The saliva of leeches contains an anti-blood clotting agent which encourages blood to flow freely. The use of leeches is thought to be beneficial for people with circulation disorders and even to restore blood flow to surgically re-attached body parts.

But now their usage seems to have extended to beauty therapy. It is claimed that they can treat acne and remove ‘toxins’ from the body. What are toxins anyway? Do they really exist or are they just an invention of the alternative therapy industry?

The American actress Demi Moore is said to have tried leech therapy. I don’t know if she applied them to her face.

A few thoughts spring to mind:

• Why would anybody in Malaysia pay for leech treatment (RM120 per session) when they they can get it for free just by walking on any jungle trail?
• Leech bites tend to itch and excessive scratching can lead to nasty infections.
• Whose blood did the leeches last suck before you? Could they transfer diseases?
• What happens if they disappear up the customer’s nostril while the attendant is not paying attention?
• How does the shop feed the leeches when they don’t have any customers? Do the staff have to let the leeches feed on them?

It seems that Malaysians are happy to be eaten alive in the quest for beauty. First it was the fish spa (where tiny fish nibble hard skin from the feet and toes) and now it’s leech therapy. What next? Snake massage perhaps. In Israel there is a spa offering this treatment where customers try to relax while a colourful bunch of lethal-looking snakes writhes about over their bodies. (Just Google snake massage if you want to see the scary photos). There is no shortage of snakes in Malaysia if anyone wants to open a serpent spa. They tend to be rather poisonous though.