ROUNDABOUT
Of magical caves
BY HUGH AND COLLEEN GANTZER
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Rain and underground streams have, over time, created fantastic shapes and caves in the limestone terrain of Ipoh.
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Today, Kellie's Castle stands glowing, a symbol of rationality weakened by an overarching belief in an ambitious dream.
PHOTOS: HUGH and COLLEEN GANTZER
ANCIENT GUARDS: The temples protect the caves within.
WE sped from Kuala Lumpur down the superb North-South Expressway.
After 150 km of high-speed driving, we turned into an R&R outlet at Tapah. It was a sprawling and beautifully landscaped expressway facility: squeaky-clean washrooms built around atriums, food-courts, shops and fruit stalls. These R&Rs on the toll expressways offer convenient outlets for local produce, spur village economies and make self-drive vacations a pleasure in Malaysia.
The shape of things
We had covered the distance in such good time that, after lunch, we decided to do a little exploring. We left the Expressway at the Gopeng Interchange, drove down Federal Route 1, turned left following the signboards, and into the parking lot of Gua Tempurung. A towering, wooded, limestone cliff soared in front of us, a low-rise reception area stretched on the left. The cheerful girl at the desk told us that "tempurang" is their word for coconut. She assured us that the limestone hills rising ahead of us had the conical shapes of coconuts: "But, maybe, you can't see it because it is covered by rain forests!" We took her word for it: this is karst country where grotesque geological structures are the rule. The limestone terrain is eroded by rain and underground streams into bizarre shapes and carved into caves filled with fantastic rock formations.
We followed our young Cave Ranger up a flight of steps, and into the mouth of an extensive network of caverns. We were in another, inadequately illuminated, subterranean world; a world of fantastic mineral creatures, half-formed, inchoate, menacing and beautiful at the same time. In the moving light of our torch, deep shadows danced and flickered, hobgoblins and monsters emerged, snarled, gibbered and vanished. If our existences had extended over thousands of years then we would have seen the structures change and re-form with the fluid plasticity of melted milk chocolate.
Vast immensity
Our Cave Ranger's voice snatched us back from the immensity of time to the reality of the present. He said, "There are four tours including the tough one that gives you the full-length underground river adventure." His words were almost lost in the great vault of that awesome cavern. We settled for the shortest tour of about 40 minutes, trudging behind him, humbled by the vast scale of everything around us.
We emerged, intimidated by the experience, blinking like bats in the golden light of pre-dusk. We were silent till we drove into the more human dimensions of Ipoh. It's a reassuring little town, genteel and smug in a contented Swiss sort of way. The tiled-roofed houses are dotted amidst spreading trees and green lawns with the forested hills rising in the distance. Ipoh was one of the principal tin-mining areas of Malaysia and its Victorian railway station stands as a reminder of its colonial past. In the 1980s, however, the tin industry collapsed. Now its most valuable asset is its limestone, raw material for the growing cement industry fuelled by the rapid economic growth of independent Malaysia. Many of the limestone hills are being gnawed away, leaving unsightly scars in the predominantly green landscape but not all the karst formations will be destroyed. Some of the more intriguing hills will never be touched. They are protected by the colourful cave temples built into them.
The facades of these temples thrust out of cliff faces and protect the entrances of the caves. Vendors sitting behind baskets, on the path leading to the Sam Poh Tong temple, offered to sell us bundles of a spinach called Kangkon. We bought two bundles, not quite sure of the association between the vegetable and the shrine. The link became clear after a fairly long walk through the vaulted interior of the temple glittering with statues of the Buddha amid the stalactites and stalagmites. There was light at the end of the tunnel-like passage. We stepped through into a picturesque glade under the open sky. The roof of the cavern had, possibly, collapsed an unknown age ago to leave this amphitheatre enclosed by the cave temple. Shrub-covered cliffs surrounded us; an elaborate shrine rose against one of the cliffs; and in the centre of this protected space was a pond full of turtles. They scrambled, glistening, out of the water and snapped ravenously at the spinach offered to them by visitors. Turtles are the Chinese symbol of longevity and if you prolong the life of these creatures by feeding them, you will, presumably, extend your own existence.
Outside we were waylaid by a group of probationary teachers on a research project. They asked us if we believed that feeding the turtles would stretch our life spans. We asked them if they believed that it would; and we added that we respected others' beliefs. It's often difficult to walk the razor's edge between belief and rationality.
Faith and longevity
Clearly the ambitious Scotsman William Smith found it difficult to distinguish between his faith in establishing his non-existent noble lineage and his pragmatism as a major rubber planter during the early days of the Malay States. He added `Kellie' to his surname because he thought that mere `Smith' was too humble. He made and lost a number of fortunes. And then he started building a Moorish castle on his extensive estate using Tamil labour and materials from Madras. When an epidemic struck his workers, he diverted them from his castle and got them to build a Hindu temple nearby. The epidemic passed. His workers returned to constructing his eclectic castle. Sadly, Kellie Smith died in Portugal before his architectural assertion of blue blood could be completed. Today, Kellie's Castle stands glowing, and slowly crumbling, in the Malaysian sun, a symbol of rationality weakened by an overarching belief in an ambitious dream.
But then, come to think of it, though he did not achieve the social stature that he probably craved, he did get a certain measure of immortality. Long after his death, visitors still recall the expatriate Scot whenever they visit Kellie's Castle. And there's no evidence to suggest that he ever fed the turtles!
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