A Road Trip to Kuantan - Day 2

Day 2 - September 29th.

Right after breakfast we headed straight  to Sungai Lembing, a place that I had studied about in primary school, heard about, pass by many times but never once visited it before. Sungai Lembing was the only underground tin mining town and was known world wide. It was a big town in the past, now ...

Yong Tau Fu

One of the attraction now is Panorama Hill, best visited in the early morning to watch a spectacular sunrise and a delicious break fast of "Yong Tow Fu" after that. Nope we did not do that because we have no idea how to get there or what to expect but we had the "yong tau fu" and it was yum!

Anyway when we arrived, a large crowd of tourist had just descended from Panorama Hill and their fill of "yong tau fu" breakfast. We were surprised to see so many people there and we thought we were early.

The main entrance

????

The main road leading to the town have a large
sign board welcoming visitors and along each side of the road there were large round ball like thing. I have no idea what they are and they were made of concrete, I think.

Driving into the town is like going back in time, the buildings were old and the architecture were typical of the 50's except for a couple of newer buildings. Traffic ... what traffic? The cars were mainly parked and the occasional motorbike rolled by.

First stop was at the town square which is the food court and there was where we had our yummy "yong tau fu". I guess this is the busiest part of the town.

Just beside the eating place is a place that sells souvenirs like thing and is called a Local Product Center and there is also an Inn beside it.

The things sold in the Local Product Center did not catch our attention because they look familiar to us. We were surprise to see an Inn in this town and wandered how many people would want to spent a night here.

Country View Inn

We wandered around the town on foot, it was interesting and the mystery of the occupancy of the Inn was solved. We saw a posters providing adventure trips into the jungle.

 

With all those outdoors activity, I guess it would be a great idea to spend a night to make it complete full day before returning to the hassle of city living.

The buildings here are unique, they have facade of wood and walls of zinc, I wonder how hot will it get on a hot day.

Right in the middle of the town is a gazebo that houses the only fuel pump. With the current price of fuel I guess it the deserved to be honoured.

A short distance from the town on top of a hill we came to the once famous underground tin mine complex.

Main Entrance to the mine complex

Some Background Story

This guy looks real from the entrance

Only run in one direction -Forward

The transporter have two engines - front and rear

The other end.

The miners transport had two engines, front and rear or front and front, rear and rear??? Anyway in a tunnel they cannot do a U-turn.

This mine tunnel is open to visitors for a fee I guess, we did not go in.

This is not and it had a permanent grill attached.

This was what that came out of the mine.

Some of the unmaintained display, a lift I believe.

I was glad that we made the trip, the tin in some of the tin cans that we used before could have came from here ... maybe!

Soon we were on our way back to Kuantan to do the next thing on our list, to look for salted fish. Yes one of the famous product from Kuantan is salted fish, not just any kind of salted fish the "Mui Hiong" kind. The flavour of this salted is just heavenly if the dish is prepared right.


Along the way we come across a group of sheep crossing the road, comparing to what we had seen in New Zealand, these sheep are pathetic.

Not long after that we saw a large bird house on top of a hill and there were a few of these structures along the way. These house are for swiftlet that produces the bird nest which is a delicacy to the Chinese when made into a soup. I have no idea how this bird nest culture started but this BBC report will give you an idea.

Bird House

Soon we were back in Kuantan and we decided to go to the Kuantan River mouth to have a look see which I thought would be interesting.

Going to the other side and I remembered that the river was much cleaner before.

Sunbathing cows!

A fishing boat returning from sea.

The river mouth, the thin thing sticking out of the river are markers for boats to avoid the sand bank.

The boat entering the river.

The city side.

Another view.

Back to the other side.

Back on the other side.

Surprisingly development on the other side of the river was like almost none. When back on the this side of the river we headed to the old town area and the main road is "Jalan Besar" or literally in English is Big Road.

Road is not that big but very busy.

But it is very long and we used the over head crossing bridge to be safe.

The road is facing the Kuantan river and there were lots of old shops along the way. We had to walk quite a distance before we reached the recommended salted fish store.

Slicing a salted fish.

We left the shop happy with our purchase and continue to explore this part of the city on foot and it was soon dinner time. Our next dinning place was also a result of some research done on the internet and it was just OK.

Steam egg tou-fu with abalone mushroom slices and beside it is stir fried yam leaves. The yam leaves were good but the tou fu thing was kind of a plain. Need more excitement to it.

Prawn in spicy sauce cooked in coconut. Looks interesting but it was not yummy, prawns was over cooked and lacked flavour.

King boneless ribs in sticky sauce, looks plain and flavour wise was also ok. Overall it was a average dish. This place used to have good ratings but I guess ...

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to spend a quite evening.