Sungai Lembing Ride

Faizal in front..

Passing a small town.

Next to it is Gua Charas...

Reaching Sg lembing...

The museum of course...








The final product. A melted bar of tin.


These shop houses must have seen better days...

Sg Lembing is a about 35km from Kuantan. What makes this place special, is that my dad actually lived there during his childhood years. The town had once thrived on the tin coming from the belly of the hills surrounding it. And my grandparents, and most of my relatives, had their roots there.

But it had been eons since I visited it. A good 10 years I guessed. So, when Faizal suggested we ride there, I thought it would be a good way for sight seeing.

Now, the road is not exactly flat. Rolling with some steep climbs is more like it. On the way, Gua Charas, which looks more like Batu Caves stood at least a hundred feet up in the air.

Took us more than an hour just to reach it.

Since we were there, I thought a visit to the Museum would be nice. It's located on a hill just at the end of the town. In fact, the town is pretty pretty small. Think Klawang, and then redial into the 70s. You'll pretty much get an idea. Even the petrol pump is analog, and unbranded.

The museum housed the relics of tin production and its' mine which lasted more than half a century. Looking at all those stuff transports you back to the time where the town had probably a more vibrant economy. Most of the things like lamps, type writers, tools were made in British.

Actually, my eldest uncle had worked in the mine before. It must have been dangerous, crawling hundreds of feet deep. Most of the digging is done using manual labor.

Anyway, then we left for some breakfast. I had roti telur, and surprisingly, it tasted very good.

Then we headed back home, on a faster speed, as we left a town that will most likely be there, but had seen better times decades ago.

As I rode on...a thought went on my mind.

The people of the past had shaped the world as know it. How then, one day, would we be perceived as we leave this world, and time seals us in a frame, for the future to see? What would they think of our lives? And would we really care to reach out, now, to tell them this is who we are, and how we had lived?

The divisiveness of time seems like a wall. Yet we are all heading in the same direction.