Category Archives: Kuala Selangor

The Sultan Abdul Samad building

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In 2017, I published a detailed report about KL Heritage. In this report, I give more information about the impressive Sultan Abdul Samad building, the former Government Offices during the colonial era. After the independence of Malaysia, the building housed the superior courts of Malaysia until they were relocated to Putrajaya in 2003. Since then we could only admire the impressive building from the outside. But last year it was refurbished, and a few weeks ago it reopened to the public.

Free access during February, so we joined the crowd to have a look inside. We parked our car under Merdeka Square and walked to the building. The facade must have been cleaned; it looked fresh and wonderful. It was already late afternoon, as we wanted to take night pictures.

We didn’t even need to register; we could just walk in. The building is large, clear ground plans are helpful for your orientation. The group floor has two galleries. We started with the Royal Selangor gallery (number 1 in the plan).

It is mostly a sales gallery. Royal Selangor, world-renowned for its pewter, has its visitor center in Setapak, and has now opened a branch here.

Beautiful stuff, very expensive.

One part of the gallery is the School of Hard Knocks (5), where workshops will be held for people who want to craft their own pewter dish.

There is also a cafe (4) where we decided to have a coffee and cake

Next, we wanted to visit the Kuala Lumpur Gallery(2), but it closed at 6 pm. This gallery about the history of KL will be more interesting, so I have to come back another time. I understand that the exhibits are basically the same as the former KL City Gallery (See my KL Heritage blog), but it will be interesting to see them in this new location

So we walked up to the first floor. Of course we took numerous pictures.

There are more restaurants in the building, on the ground plan I counted six(!). This is a real restaurant,

We could not resist the temptation to take a picture of ourselves.

There were many visitors, both locals and tourists.

At around 7 pm, the lights came on. We went back to the ground floor. This is the backside of the building, a nice, quiet courtyard.

We left the building and crossed Merdeka Square to the Selangor Club. What a fantastic view of the whole building.

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A few more pictures.

The building deserves to become one of the top attractions of Kuala Lumpur.

Before driving back home, we took a few more night pictures of other interesting buildings in the region. Here is the Masjid Jamek, rather dwarfed by the modern background.

Old Railway Station and the National Mosque.

KL Tower and the Merdeka 118 skyscraper.

No idea if access will remain free after this month. For those living in Malaysia, use the opportunity. Open from 8 am until 10 pm, but galleries close at 6 pm.

Kuala Selangor trip

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Rodney, a UK friend of us has been in Malaysia many times, but never visited Kuala Selangor! A good reason to bring him there on a half-day trip.

On our way, near Bukit Rotan, we passed a Hindu temple that I had never visited myself. The present Sri Shakti Temple was consecrated in 2013 and is a monumental building, unfortunately closed during our visit.

The front of the temple has beautiful statues of elephants.

Because of the time of the day (3 pm) it was almost impossible to take good pictures of the temple. We will have to come back another time to visit the interior.

  • Holy Cow !

Our next stop was the Kuala Selangor Nature Park. We were the only visitors, maybe because it was very hot, but also because Malaysians and tourists hardly know about its existence. It is a mixture of secondary forest and wetlands.

After paying an entrance fee of RM 5 at the visitor center, we entered the park.

  • Impressive fig trees
  • Not tall enough

We climbed the view tower. During my last visit you could see a lake, with many egrets, but trees had grown, obscuring the view.

There was another visitor on the top floor, enjoying its siesta. We didn’t disturb it, but we were sure our presence was noticed.

It was a pleasant walk. We crossed a mangrove forest on a concrete walkway. Sturdy, but less romantic than the wooden plankway we remembered from an earlier visit.

It was low tide, there were only a few places where we could see water. The whole walk was about 3.5 km, we were very thirsty, almost dehydrated, luckily the visitor center was still open ,so we could buy some cool drink.

Our next stop was at Bukit Melawati, the main attraction of Kuala Selangor. From the top of the hill you have a good view of the countryside.

The cannons are a memory of the past, when there was a fort here. Of course Rodney and I had to prove our manhood 🙂 .

The present lighthouse was built in 1907, the original one was built in 1794 when the Dutch were still ruling this part of the peninsula.

The attractive lighthouse is a good background for pictures. We met a friendly Malay couple there. Left Rodney and me, right with Zarina and Rosni.

And there are monkeys, a few macaques, but mainly the silvered leaf langurs. The young ones are beautifully golden/orange, Zarina told us that there were no babies at the moment, but we were lucky to find a single one, down the road. Changing into an adult, its face grey already.

Bananas and beans are for sale, you can feed the langurs, and they are not shy, some even climbing on your shoulder.

A hidden, almost unknown, gem is the nearby Bukit Belanda (Dutch Hill). From the Dutch fort Utrecht, on top of the hill, not much is left, but the small lake at its foot is very scenic.

Before dinner we drove to the fishing village of Kuala Selangor, at the other side of the Selangor river. We watched the sunset from the Chinese temple there.

The Kuala Sungai (Ah Yu) restaurant in Pasir Penambang, chosen by Aric, has a splendid view of the Selangor River.

And the food was high quality too. Rodney and I could not resist the temptation of big bottles of Carlsberg.

Here is the food we ordered. Forgot to take a picture of the fish ball soup.

  • Flower Crabs
  • Mantis Prawns
  • Deep-fried Sotong
  • Royale Chives (青龙菜)

After our dinner we visited the Fireflies of Kampung Kuantan, before going home. It was almost full moon and the sky was clear, not a favorable time to see the swarms of tiny fireflies, blinking on and off in a synchronous way. But as it was a first visit for Rodney, still a nice experience.

A rewarding outing!