A well written article on The Story of Perlama by iGhost(see post)
What I remembered about Perlama, in my youth are the large number of sawmills all situated at the end of Jalan Kem. The road led to a dead end with houses and a temple (which is still standing there) among sawmills. Don’t know why but the place seems a hostile place to a young boy with the close community there staring fiercely at strangers. That was the impression I got. Kurauking may find that place much friendlier than I did.
To go to Perlama, took the Jalan kem road. Kurauking’s shop is at the start of Jalan Kem. When you read the end of Jalan Kem and look back this is what you see. What is most important is that do not take the bridge up the flyover, on the right of the pic because that will take u to West Port. When you’re approaching the flyover, Socoil Oil Palm factory is on your left – just go straight. Look back and this is what u see. There is a very small round-about at the end. The first turn is to Perlama. Take the second turn slightly ahead.
As u round the round-about, this is what u will see. The pic show part of the roundabout. The bridge leading down is if u are coming from West Port way. The small turn is just slightly ahead before the end of the bridge …
Got to go to work now. Will post more later. The computer was freaking slow last night so could not upload the pics. Only manage a few this morning. The story of Perlama to come later. Stayed tune.
The following posts you will see what is left of the town. If you reach the end of the road, you will hit Perlama and you can still see a fishing village there.
Not everyone has deserted that place. A few fishermen have returned after they moved out as they still find love for their old home. They have been paid to move out. But have since return and use this place as a ‘temporary’ base.
They built this hut just under the flyover to West Port.
I asked this fisherman who is cooking fish why he returned. He said he still prefers it here over the new place they moved to. His other friends concurred.
This is the view of the river. The river is not a pretty one. I tried to take it from its best angle but you will be disappointed if you expect it to be as nice as the picture. Still there is beauty in the most desolate scenes as you can see in the couple of pictures below.
The river at low tide and abandoned boats.
Sad picture of decaying boats abandoned long ago. Once they must have rode the waves but now past their usefulness, they didn’t find a proper burial place.
Once a bustling place of activity, now a ghost town full of past whispers carried by desolate winds.
Just a few houses are still occupied. I heard some voices as I walked past this building. Curious eyes viewed me through the gaps of window wondering why I have come a-visiting this forsaken place. Those that stayed behind had their reasons. Why does a stranger comes around?
This empty temple still stands looking as it did those decades ago when I wandered in. There are no incense burning. The inhabitants of this place have deserted it as the gods they were praying to must have deserted them.
I walked to the back of the houses fronting the road. My footsteps the only sound on the wooden platform over the muddy bank. The woods rotting from ages and neglect. I saw an altar tilted on a broken leg. No offering made to the diety that once reside here. Has it died from starvation too? I looked back at the flyover that span the river, with cars speeding overhead. How incongruous it looked amid the depressing scene.
A town at the dead end of a road and a bar across a dirt path leading from it. I bend under it determine to walk until I cannot proceed further…
This sawmill is still being used and timber are stored in neat stacks. But there were no one around. I just walked through it and continued walking…
The roof of this warehouse is on the verge of totally collapsing and the owner has not bothered to repair it for what is the point?
There are still some small businesses that make use of river transportation.
So some of these wooden houses are still standing. But everything is so eerily quiet. It gave one a strange feeling. I had not had this kind of sensation for a long time but there are so little place these days where silence reigned. Yet this is not in the deep forest so the feeling is quite different. I can only described it as the feeling of walking through a dead or dying place.
While here and there you find tenacious clinging on to life, yet you feel it slipping away. The end is near and it is inevitable. A forgotten corner of Port Klang that not many remembered except as memories of the past.
This owner of one of the warehouse had a chat with me. We talked about the town, its heyday, the inhabitants and what is left of it. I asked him about some building at the back of his place that looked like a number of individual classrooms. He told me they are horse stables. He told me of how during a bad flood one year overflowed the bank and drowned all the horses. Standing here on high ground looking at the river at low tide that appeared merely a stream several feet down, it is hard to imagine that the water could rise that high. As the wind shifted through the lalang, I imagined hearing dead horses neighed.
The reasons why I took so many photos of Perlama is because I wanted to capture it before it all disappear. Wished I had my digital camera and had visited the place before a large part of it were gone. Still, no use crying over split milk. At least, I was there in its dying throbs and could hear some of its fading voices. I felt a responsibility to document its dying moments to preserve its memory. It is part of the history of Port Klang. I wanted to capture what is left of it before it is totally erased.
I started my walk that hot afternoon next to the school across the swamp from Felda refinery (which itself is opposite APM for those not familiar with Port Klang/Pandamaran). I thought it will take me half an hour or less. But by the time I was done I was badly sunburned and totally parched as I was not prepared for the nearly 3 hours walk. At a few points in the journey I wanted to turn back but something compelled me to complete the journey as I may not be back or it may have changed by the time I did. That was in 2006. I intended to write it in my blog at one point of time but this look like an opportune time to do a write-up. It is not as good or well organized in the rush as I would like but sometimes timing is more important than quality, I hope.
Certain part of the journey were a bit scary as I was alone in unfamiliar terrain and not sure where the road will lead me or what I may encounter. I was apprehensive of shadows and had to ward off a pack of snaring dogs and tormented by a flock of crows (they don’t like you pointing camera at them). Almost at the end of the walk, I stumbled on the concrete jetty and the Perlama restaurant which led to this post and tonight ’s dinner. Perlama meant more to some of us than others but it deserved to be told as it is the story of all small towns in all parts of the world.
(I would like to document more of the threatened places of Klang/Port Klang. So if you know of any noteworthy buildings/places of interests that deserved to be remembered, let me know and we can take a walk together. Let us try to preserve them, even if only in print. The history of the places we resided in is also our history and something worthwhile to pass down. I cursed myself that I was not aware of the demolition of that historic mamak mosque at the top of the Indian street in Klang. I don’t even have one photo and now it is gone for ever. And for what? To build another shiny mosque in place of the old one. They are demolishing history with bulldozer. Nothing is safe these days. Not hills (eg Klang Hill), not river, not valleys. Before they all disappear in the brutal onslaught of development, let us do something. We need your help. So please PM me if there is anything u would like to save.)
This is the start of my river bank walk.
The side of Sekolah Agama Rendah Taman Kem as seen from the path.
“Why do you take my picture if you can’t give me a copy?” he wisely asked. As I did not want to make a promise I have no confidence of keeping, I just smiled. He was the first person I met on the track and he volunteered much information about this place. He told me about the crowded village that once hugged the bank which have all been demolished and are now just rubbles. He said each hut was compensated RM7,000 to move out within a couple of months. But it has now been years since the destruction and nothing has happened.
Later in my walk, the fishermen told me much the same thing and which was why they have returned to re-colonize the place. That uncle in the motorbike told me of a consortium’s (with local government blessing) plan to develope the whole section into a residential/commercial center. Which was why the village were evacuated but nothing happened. Sounds familiar?
Imagine the hundreds of families living on houses on stilts going about their daily lives in this wasteland. I would think anything would be preferable to this.
Where you see rubbles on mud once stood kampung houses.
The crows didn’t like me or my camera. They harrased me for much of the start of my journey as if they have a grudge against what I was attempting to do. At the end of my walk after 3 hours, I met another flock of crows and they did not like me either. What have they against me? Is it because they “makan cili padi’?
On my left are the destroyed huts with forlorn jetties, abandoned boat skeletons and remnants of human inhabitants half buried in mud and on my right are the crowded quarters of low cost flats judging by the amount of clothings left hanging on the rails to dry. I had my feelings but I will keep them to myself.
The path led me to his bar across the road to prevent bigger vehicles from driving through and a surprise. Beautiful flowering plants grown on either sides of the path. That was the last thing I had expected after the gloomy start…
The path led me to this surprise discovery. Amid the drab surrounding was this brightly painted building standing out with landscape and beautiful flowering plants and trees. What a difference a man can make. I salute this sluice gate master who has an eye for the aesthetic. He made all who crossed the path to pause and admire all the more because of the surrounding.
Some of you may not be aware but a large part of Port Klang you are walking on and driving through today were mangrove swamp once. Which is why the Gate Master job is so important to control flooding. The whole area from Kao Shampoo to Sekolah Menengah kebangsaan Tengku Ampuan Jemaah (opposite Sekolah Dato Hamzah-my old school he he) up to the shell station on Persiaran Raja Muda Musa were all mangrove swamps. This included APM & Felda refinery.
I used to go to the swamp at the back of Sekolah Kebangsaan Pelabuhan Kelang (used the google map introduced by Peanuts) and swam in the muddy water that smells worse than a wet dog. When you walked in the mud your leg will sink into into it to just below your knee. You got the sick feeling of being sucked into it and you thought “quicksand!” Take 10 steps in this condition and you will be totally exhausted. But those days, we have no TV (that’s right – NO TV!) so we play with nature 
and I think the better for it.
There was a huge wasp nest hanging on one of the gantry connecting across the river to the other bank.
They were fed by the fruit trees planted by the Gate Master. I like fruit trees, I don’t like wasps. But one can’t have one without the other, can we?
So the walk already yield surprises. It was getting hot and I did not bring along water or even a cap. I reached a junction where I can walk back to my car but I decided to preserve on…
This was the first of the abandoned boat that I saw along the way.
This is another one half hidden among the mangrove plants. I saw a few people scavenging. What can they be scavenging after so long among the muds?
I walked further along until I came to the back of Socoil refinery. The road ahead is long and deserted and at one stage, I hesitated and wonder if I should continue.
From a distance, I saw these two workers with an oxy-flame. What could they be cutting in this deserted spot?
When I reached nearer, I saw a barge half-buried among the muds. Only then did I realize that they were metal scavengers. With metal costing so much, it was worthwhile for them to dig our the barge and cut them piece by piece. Hot, hard, dirty and especially smelly job.
The river at low tide. And the rubbles was where part of the village formerly stood.
As I round the bend, I saw ahead the overhead bridge that span the river and under which stood the town – Perlama just beyond the builidng with the zinc sheets looking like a patched piece of cloth. This took the story back to its starting point. If you have the time, pay it a visit for it won’t be there for long. Kurau and me went to document the Pulau Ketam jetty two days ago and it was sad to see most of the old landmarks that we knew so well as a kid were all gone. Port Klang is changing and it has lost a lot of its old charm. For old timer such as me, it is all kind of tragic.
“The Sunset On The Railway Bridge.”
Hare some shots from the railway bridge at sunset. There are a few places where you can get good shots of sunset for your assignment but my favorite is the railway bridge you saw from Perlama Restaurant. In fact, I named it “Sunset Bridge“. The first series of photos are some of the things you can see if you go a bit earlier and explore the place. The next series would be the sunset shots. Here goes –
“Sunset Over Railway Bridge – On A Cloudy Evening.”
