Kuala Sepetang, formerly known as Port Weld, is a busy fishing village in Perak. It was once the nearest harbour to the Larut tin mining area and tin ore was exported from here.
Initially elephants were used to transport the ore but a short railway line from Taiping was completed in 1885, which greatly reduced the transit time. The railway cost a grand total of £7,000 to build.
Miners also used the line to travel to work. The railway became defunct when road communications improved and the track was finally ripped up in the 1980s.
All that remains of the line is the old Port Weld station sign (in Tamil, Jawi, Chinese and English) and the ticket office. The street now covers where the line used to be.
Picturesque wooden houses on stilts line both banks of the river and small boats ferry people back and forth as there is no bridge.
Swiftlet farms are beginning to make an appearance here and are changing (spoiling?) the character of the place.
A riverside house was being replaced with a concrete warehouse, and the upper floors likely used for swiftlet farming. Many other people are doing likewise.
There is nothing wrong with swiftlet farming per se but since these windowless concrete blocks are so ugly it would be better to hide them away somewhere remote rather than killing off the tourism potential of a quaint fishing village.
The coastline near the village is thick with mangrove swamps and the town is known for producing charcoal from mangrove trees.
That does not sound very eco-friendly but the small-scale harvesting of mangrove wood by a family business that has been doing this for generations should not be a huge threat to the mangrove swamps.
The bigger threat is the bulldozing of mangrove forests to make way for development, and there are plenty of such examples around Malaysia.
Charcoal made from mangrove wood is supposed to be high quality and produces high heat.
This article first appeared on Thrifty Traveller
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