Thursday, January 26, 2017

Kuala Kubu Bharu locality and activities





Ampang Pecah River
Kuala Kubu Bharu is also known as ‘KKB’. It is a small town at the foothill of Fraser’s Hill. It’s the mining industry that this little town started in the 18th century. Now, the mining area left behind is the dangerous lake like “still water that runs deep” (not for swimming – a crane might be required to pull the drowned body up). There was a town called Kuala Kubu nearby. In February 1883 the Kuala Kubu town was destroyed by a great flood caused by a broken dam near the town. Many civilians drowned or lost their home. The flood victims included a district officer of Kuala Kubu during the British era named Sir Cecil Ranking. The old town was severely flooded and most of the old town's facilities were damaged beyond repair. A Buddhist temple and a mosque survived the flood. The old town has since been known as Ampang Pecah, or Broken Dam in the Malay language as shown in the photo. The tragedy was probably known as Tragedi Kuala Kubu by local civilians. After the tragedy, the British government decided to build a new town near the remains of Kuala Kubu. The new town was named Kuala Kubu Bharu, with Bharu meaning "new" in the Malay language.

Besides, the known “Ampang Pecah” Dam becomes a picnic area. The pre-war building of the new Kuala Kubu Bharu town has its unique beauty even at night as shown in the photo.


The new Dam on the way to Fraser’s Hill from Kuala Kubu Bharu is a new attraction where you can find eagle flying around while enjoying the breeze. In these areas, there are interesting pre-war bungalows and left over old Pre-War lost train in the middle of the jungle.  The Pre-war lost train was discovered by the Orang Asli (Aborigine) and someone asked me to go into the jungle to take the photo as people wanted to see the photo of it. So, in 1990, we took a full day hiked into the jungle with the “Organ Asli” as our guide, crossing a few rivers, climbing hills, enter into secondary jungle seeing gigantic plants and insects (the ants are bigger than my palm – imagine how big they are) and the worst part is getting rid of the “leeches”. After seeing the photos, some groups started to hike in to see. At one point, KTMB thinking of airlift it out but didn’t materialize. In this case, this area should be proposed to classify under “Heritage site” with Malaysian Heritage Ministry and also with Malaysian Guinness book of record as “The oldest Lost Train in the middle of the jungle” hardly known to many. This will give the locality a new brand image when promoting to visitors.

"Chiling Waterfall - Pertak area"
Besides being a historical site, there are popular activities around this locality are for nature lover with high adrenaline who can go for “white water rafting”. Jungle trekking and visiting Chilling Waterfall - one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Selangor are something not to be missed. Chilling Waterfall can be reached after an adventurous trek along the river, which has to be crossed a few times. Now, you get to cross the 1st river through the newly constructed suspension bridge. We have the adventure when we embarked to search for this beautiful waterfall (don’t even know the name then) in the early 1990s without any trails that we used “parang” to open up the walking trails, make marks along the way for return journey and with ropes that was used for crossing the river since the water is really strong. There is underwater current at this waterfall that has claimed a few lives so we have to be careful. There have been a number of development in this locality cater for the tourists here and this has been a popular destination too. The Chilling Waterfall becomes popular after the dam was project completed in 2003 inundated the valley in which the river used to flow, so that now the waters of Sungai Chilling feed into a lake instead. 

In the evening, there is a nice lake at Taman Milllenium Kuala Kubu Bharu especially the sunset if the weather is good.