Perlama is a small town tucked at one corner of Port Klang, my hometown. The River Aur snaked and curled round it on its way to the sea. In its heyday, it was a busy place inhabited by fishing folks and workers of the sawmill that made use of the river to transport timbers. The timber trade in West Malaysia is practically dead and with that the fortune of the town declined to a sorry state. Squatters started to replace original inhabitants who moved out.
Fishing declined and the town and its surrounding village – Kampung Sungai Keladi fell on hard time. An ill-advised ambitious plan to turn the village into a riverfront development saw its sudden demise. The villagers were offered a monetary compensation to move and the entire village was demolished. Several years later and Perlama is a ghost town.
I had only been to Perlama a few times and did not really have a very strong impression of the place. But it was always there at the peripheral of our consciousness in the years I had stayed in Port Klang as time and again it appeared in our conversation like something that floated up from the depth. I had not visited that place in decades in my growing up, getting a job and moving away. One hot afternoon on a sudden whim, I started a walk along the embankment tracing the river bank from one end to the other. What started as a 15 minutes walk ended up 3 hours later and I did not realize that a place I had visited only so few times in my life had so many suppressed memories. As I have already posted most of my impressions in “Death Of A Small Town In Port Klang” in MyKlang Forum, I won’t rehash them here. Please click on the link to read more.
I have posted some images of my walk here to encourage you to go over to MyKlang to read further. And if you like it there, do register and be a member whether or not you are a Klangites.
The first person I met on the beginning of my walk - "If you cannot give me a photo, why did you take my picture?"
"I return because this is a better place that the new one we had been relocated to."
Fishing declined and the town and its surrounding village – Kampung Sungai Keladi fell on hard time. An ill-advised ambitious plan to turn the village into a riverfront development saw its sudden demise. The villagers were offered a monetary compensation to move and the entire village was demolished. Several years later and Perlama is a ghost town.
I had only been to Perlama a few times and did not really have a very strong impression of the place. But it was always there at the peripheral of our consciousness in the years I had stayed in Port Klang as time and again it appeared in our conversation like something that floated up from the depth. I had not visited that place in decades in my growing up, getting a job and moving away. One hot afternoon on a sudden whim, I started a walk along the embankment tracing the river bank from one end to the other. What started as a 15 minutes walk ended up 3 hours later and I did not realize that a place I had visited only so few times in my life had so many suppressed memories. As I have already posted most of my impressions in “Death Of A Small Town In Port Klang” in MyKlang Forum, I won’t rehash them here. Please click on the link to read more.
I have posted some images of my walk here to encourage you to go over to MyKlang to read further. And if you like it there, do register and be a member whether or not you are a Klangites.
The first person I met on the beginning of my walk - "If you cannot give me a photo, why did you take my picture?"
"I return because this is a better place that the new one we had been relocated to."
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