I wandered around Muar on foot again today, and realised it is a large town indeed. I am just an anonymous transient here. Nothing captivated me except some odd details including the conversion of the top floors of many buildings into nesting areas for Swallows. Much easier to harvest the nests than clambering up long bamboo poles in dark caves, this industry seems to have..uhm... taken off.
Some buildings had huge rooftops converted specially for the purpose while others had just their top floors set up. Everywhere I went, the song of the birds was audible.
I also saw my first Mat Rempit type here - a bloke on a small bike, complete with pillion, holding a wheelie for about 100 metres up one of the main streets, in the midst of other traffic. Crazy...
Muar is yet another old town whose charm and old-style beauty has been painfully disrupted by modern erections. I don't understand why we insist on putting up drab, faceless buildings when we could be doing so much better, for not much more. And surely, in the long run, the returns are clear? One example of this, which I still have a chuckle over, was a set of old shophouses, interjected by a bland modern block of three multi-storey units right in the middle. What was amusing was that all the old units were tenanted and prospering, while Wisma Blandsville was empty and shuttered, looking for particularly brave tenants.
The cook at Darul Masyhur is getting used to me. I've had a string of teh halias here, each one no better than the previous. Fortunately his chapatis and curries are palatable. I appreciate the shop for its convenience and the opportunity to sit and watch people coming and going. For the most part, if I cleverly cropped out the image of the Hotel Kingdom from the top of my view, I might just as well have been having my teh halias in parts of Petaling Jaya or KL.
While I'm enjoying life free from nasal occlusion for the first time in a few days, the rain has tried its hardest to put a damper on things, spluttering down for awhile then disappearing only to reappear a few hours later. I didn't mind, really.
On one trip out, I found both a new sarong as well as another Indian restaurant. The fare looked more appetising and I'm sure the teh halias would have proven to be much more authentic too, but by that time I'd had quite enough of wandering the streets of Muar and was more than ready to head out of town.
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Some buildings had huge rooftops converted specially for the purpose while others had just their top floors set up. Everywhere I went, the song of the birds was audible.
I also saw my first Mat Rempit type here - a bloke on a small bike, complete with pillion, holding a wheelie for about 100 metres up one of the main streets, in the midst of other traffic. Crazy...
Muar is yet another old town whose charm and old-style beauty has been painfully disrupted by modern erections. I don't understand why we insist on putting up drab, faceless buildings when we could be doing so much better, for not much more. And surely, in the long run, the returns are clear? One example of this, which I still have a chuckle over, was a set of old shophouses, interjected by a bland modern block of three multi-storey units right in the middle. What was amusing was that all the old units were tenanted and prospering, while Wisma Blandsville was empty and shuttered, looking for particularly brave tenants.
The cook at Darul Masyhur is getting used to me. I've had a string of teh halias here, each one no better than the previous. Fortunately his chapatis and curries are palatable. I appreciate the shop for its convenience and the opportunity to sit and watch people coming and going. For the most part, if I cleverly cropped out the image of the Hotel Kingdom from the top of my view, I might just as well have been having my teh halias in parts of Petaling Jaya or KL.
While I'm enjoying life free from nasal occlusion for the first time in a few days, the rain has tried its hardest to put a damper on things, spluttering down for awhile then disappearing only to reappear a few hours later. I didn't mind, really.
On one trip out, I found both a new sarong as well as another Indian restaurant. The fare looked more appetising and I'm sure the teh halias would have proven to be much more authentic too, but by that time I'd had quite enough of wandering the streets of Muar and was more than ready to head out of town.
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