Balik Kampong for Buka Puasa

With both parents being born and raised in KL, my only experience of a kampung life is when I visited my relations in Kampong Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Being in an urban area, it hardly qualifies as true blue kampong as it’s flanked by the development in KL e.g. KLCC, Vision City and the edge of the Golden Triangle. There’s no stream that you could swim in or bushes where you could play combat in. The Klang River ran beside it, which hardly qualified as a river due to the level of pollution, more like a big drain. You could still have an adventure but it mostly has to be the urban type.

I still remembered my mum’s advise, when looking for a partner find somebody with a kampong so that at least your offspring could experience the kampong life. Luckily my nearest and dearest fits the bill as she hails from The Royal Town, Pahang.

The house was built by her grandfather, being a typical traditional Pahang house. The design has been modernized with zinc sheet roof instead of attap roof, some of the part has been strengthened with bricks but most of the original features are retained. The house is spacious, could accommodate at least two badminton courts in the common area with plenty of space to spare.

The house sits beside the mighty Pahang river, where one could spend an afternoon dozing off in a hammock facing the river with the breeze blowing, watching the river lazily flows into the Pahang Estuary. During the dry season, sandbars would appear and you could actually walk to the middle of the river on foot and the water would only be ankle deep. The atmosphere is calm and cool, with chirping of birds greeting you in the morning and the sounds of crickets and toads could be heard at night.

The compound of the house is big, with parts of it being kebun for variety of plants such as pomelo, dragon fruit, corns, sugarcanes, coconuts, rambutans, durians, mangoes, bananas, quinine, longan etc. There’s a coop for chickens with the big rooster, 1 ½ times bigger than the normal rooster, ponds for fishes such as red tilapia, keli, patin, baung where they would be caught and grilled on special occasions (sadly their numbers have diminished due to theft). The grounds are extensive, and if there’s a get together would be filled by kids running around until they tire and they do not tire easily unlike the adults. My favourtite pastime would be lounging on the hammock facing the river, with a good book in hand and slowly reads and the day would just pass on blissfully.

Oh BTW, they have this wonderful murtabak known by the name of Murtabak Mengkasar. It’s has been featured on Jalan-Jalan Cari Makan previously and several national newspaper. Is been said that even the Sultan buys from there. A word of warning thought, in Ramadahan, you have to call in or otherwise be prepared for an hour wait just to get your orders (walk in). It’s different from what you could get from anywhere, hence made it a point to have it almost everytime we went back to kampong.

Signboard of the place

Customers queuing for orders, have to take numbers

Busy preparing orders