Travel to Malaysia: KL Take Two: Photo 2

More shophouses, only a block away at the Old Market, now Medan Pasar. The American W.T. Hornaday, for example, visited in 1878 and saw a simpler place. "All along the river bank," he wrote, "the houses of the Malays stand in a solid row on piles, ten feet high, directly over the swift and muddy current. The houses elsewhere throughout the town are walled with mud, and very steeply roofed with attaps (shingles made of nipa-palm leaves), so the a view of the town from any side discloses very little except high, brown roofs slanting steeply up. In the centre of the town is a large market where fruits, vegetables, meats and various abominations of Chinese cookery are sold." (Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle: The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo 1885; quoted in Gullick, pp. 29-30.) Atap was prohibited in 1885 and by 1887 the town had over 500 brick and tile houses. Governor Weld was impressed. In 1886 he observed that Kuala Lumpur was "fast becoming the neatest and prettiest Chinese and Malay town [in Malaya] as, within my remembrance it was the dirtiest and most disreputable-looking. The streets have been widened, metalled and drained, and rows of sufficiently regular, yet picturesque, houses and shops, brightly painted and often ornamented with carving and even gilding, form the streets." (Gullick, p. 45)

View: tiny * small * medium * big * biggest Photo Size

Back to Malaysia: KL Take Two chapter

Short link for this page: http://www.greatmirror.com?justpic=32439