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| 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.
