The Last Surviving Tin Dredge and The Leaning Tower of Teluk Intan

Since we had to go back for Qing Ming, the thoughts of going around the area came into my mind. It was the usual of 5am leaving the house and to Ipoh to KK to Taiping. However, this year was quick brief probably due to the super duper hot weather.  Lunch at the Taiping hawker center was a complete chaos and madness with char keow tiao waiting time was 2 hour. Of course we didn't go for it.

So we were back to M Roof at around 4pm after dropping cousins off which took a good 1 hour. The father had to attend a scout reunion so Bao and I had our dinner at the Morning After in the hotel. And we had a very good and relaxing rest at night.

                  
                           It was lamb for Bao and spicy seafood aglio olio for me. 

The next day, we took our time to wake up at around 10am in the comfy bed of M Roof Hotel again since CNY. And spent about 1 hour in the Old Town Grand for breakfast.

          What is different from CNY was that we could request for the White Coffee which I like.                   

Check out around 12, drove towards Tanjung Tualang with the help of GPS.

On the way, stopped by a temple....

                                              Ipoh limestone caves are full of temples.

The drive continued and I enjoyed the country rides with lots of greenery I missed so much. Somewhere along the way, we stopped by for this scenery.

                                                           Lush greenery to cherish.

           

                                      Our country side is really not bad at all.

                                       Let us cherish the little quiet moment once in a while.

                                                                 Near collapsing pillars ....... 

                                                      At the middle of nowhere....

                                          Loving the view.....there are birds flying in the sky.....

                           More greens before we finally reached the Tin Dredge...

79 years old Tin Dredge is huge and massive......

The tour at 2pm is fulled so we drove to Tanjung Tualang town famous for the Udang Galah. Unfortunately we found our stomach still full from the late breakfast. So we settled down in a tiny stall for the ice kacang and fruit rojak which turned out to be very tasty.

At approximately 3.30pm we were back there for the Tin Dredge tour we booked earlier. 

                               This is how it works....digging 30+ meters underground

                                                                          Helmet is required.

                                                                      It is flaoting...

Once inside, the tour guide, the tour guide started to talk.

    The tour guide : "This dredge was built in 1938 in England. It was a medium size dredge weight 4,500 ton.....it was in operation for 44 years till it closed down in 1982....because it was a sunset industry...tin was replaced by plastic and other materials...high operation cost...."

"It cost 2 million back then and it cost 200 million at present day..... Perak car no plate starts with an A because Perak was the first state to have automobile due to tin mining industries producing millionaires..... then came B in Selangor also due to tin mining..... then C....."

"The giant buckets dug as deep as 33 meters to scoop up soils containing tins..... there are 115 buckets all together.... and there were about 60 dredges in Malaysia back then...."

It was 3 storey high but we were only allowed to enter ground floor as the restoration work is still on going.

                                             The massive cables pulling the buckets.....

   Erie idler that went into the water deep into the ground..

The tin collected in giant drums and the soil and the rest were all discard into the lake at rear of the dredge .

    The rear of the dredge floating on a sea of water lotus is a beautiful and enormous sight.

                The tour ended and we walked around it for a while. It was an interesting visit and very informative.

                                                        This is how big a bucket is.

We thought of driving back to Tanjung Tualang for the prawns but changed our mind in the end because we were simply not ready for dinner. So we decided to drive to Teluk Intan for our leaning tower which is 1 hour drive according to GPS.

                                 It was painfully hot and shinning when we were there.

It was closed when we went many years back. This time around we were just i time.

                           

It was built in 1885 making it about 133 years old.

It is definitely leaning as I felt giddy immediately I stepped inside.

And when we saw this only we realized that it is actually a water tank.

Looking up from outside, we could see the tank and the wooden structure.

It is also a clock tower and this is the mechanism.

The structure and design is clearly Chinese here. 

It was a watch tower during Japanese occupation in 1941.

View from the top, the third floor. 

We searched google for food recommendation and ended up in a seafood restaurant for our dinner. Just before the shop closed, we managed to buy some local snacks before we headed home at about 7++. And we were caught at a massive jam reaching home at 1145pm.

Dinner was tomyam fish (very appertising gravy with prawns (for what we missed inTanjung Tuakang) and vege (a must) .

The short getaway was pleasant and interesting. It was really nice to have a drive out of town away from the concrete jungle. Maybe we can have a seafood bak ku teh trip soon.