Brickfields #1

Posted on 03/02/2005

With Christmas around, there’s hardly been anyone home in the daytime as we have been pretty busy. I found an express mail delivery failure note in my post box recently, and gamely went down to the Poslaju office in Brickfields (which opens until 8pm, a very clever move on Pos Malaysia’s part) after work. I was supposed to meet up with a friend, I-Boy, with whom I was to have dinner, in the KL Sentral open car park, next to the Poslaju. I marvelled at how different Brickfields is now, compared to ten years ago. It used to be a quiet (but traffic-wise congested) railway quarters area, with a nice cinema and good Indian food, and interesting places of worship.

The food is still alright (Restoran Seng Kee [?] has some really good Chinese food) and the places of worship are still there. However, some of the old quaint railway quarters, as well as the old cinema, have been torn down to make way for development. Now, the epicentre of Brickfields is the looming Sentral station, and hotels Hilton and Meridian (pic above). New condos have been built nearby (left pic) and most shops have jumped on the bandwagon and renamed themselves to “Hotel Sentral”, “Kedai Runcit Sentral” etc. It’s unsurprising that the little pathway between the monorail and the train station now features little tents selling all manners of wares for commuters (pics below).

A good thing about Sentral’s opening is that the row of shoplots directly opposite have been spruced up, although those just a few metres away have opted to stick to their old world charm. I-Boy and I took a walk south-west towards the old centre of Brickfields, featuring the good old Sinar Kota supermarket and the now busy intersection, with traffic coming from Mid Valley Megamall, Taman Seputeh and Bangsar converging. The great thing is that, during the development, the authorities did not cut down the big beautiful trees right in the centre of this busy junction (pic below).

On the southern side of the junction is an old beautifully green field on which football is played every evening (pic below). The field has beautiful old railway quarters [Ed: I have been corrected; these are old government quarters, the old railway quarters were torn down to make way for the Sentral Station]. on two of its side. I love these old buildings, although they are not much too look at when one drives by. However, up close and personal, the buildings have such character and charm (pics below), it would be a pity if anyone decides to tear them up for condos or some such. Unfortunately, the alley was a bit of an eyesore (and more of a nose-sore – pic below).

We walked a bit further down to Jalan Rozario, where the Vivekananda Hostel (Ashrama) is located (pics below). This building has been beautifully maintained, amidst the dusty developmnent of Brickfields. It is a really old building, 100 years old now, with a statue of Vivekananda (I assume) in front. The lawns are clipped and tidy, and the building painted elegantly.

Further down the road was my old school, Vivekananda. Actually, I should qualify that I was in this school for a total of three days while waiting for my transfer to another school. It was fun though, those three days. Unfortunately, the school is now a horrendous salmony peachy pink (left pic). We turned southwest on the Jalan Sultan Abdul Samad intersection, and headed towards the Lutheran church (left pic below). Built in 1924, it has been beautifull maintained, and is quite an interesting church, with a belfry seperate from the rest of the structure (right pic below).

I decided to take the left turning on to Jalan Berhala. There were some nice old flats on the right side (pics below), looking like they too have had good upkeep through the years. Interestingly, these flats looked busy, with people coming and going and cars pulling up into parking spots almost as soon as they had been vacated. Next to the flats was Lavanya’s Christmas Bazaar. It looked like they were closing for the day, but I could be wrong. Right next to the Lutheran church, and opposite these flats, I discovered that there was a school right there, something I wasn’t aware of up till then. It looked like a private schooled, called “Sekolah Rendah Sri Sempurna”.

The famous Brickfields Buddhist temple is right next to this school. It really is quite a nice set of buildings, with huge domes and statues, and a lotus centrepiece (pics below). We walked all the way to the Klang River (pic further below), where we could see that the Federal Highway was actually quite smooth flowing, despite its being around 7pm, which is still considered part of rush hour. There were quite a few nice houses along the banks of the river (one of which – pics even further below).