Port Weld

Photo by Lee Tai Wah

One Sunday morning, after our usual stroll around the Taiping Lake Gardens, we decided to go to Matang for its famous crab porridge. When we arrived there however, we found that the porridge would only be available at noon and since the other coffee shops were closed as well, we then proceeded to nearby Port Weld or Kuala Sepetang as it is now known, to look for breakfast.

The coffee shops at Port Weld were open and we had a choice of seafood mee, curry mee, wan ton mee, etc. We decided on nasi lemak which was rice (cooked with coconut milk) to which was added curry prawns, fried fish, fried anchovies and sambal (ground chilly). The seafood was fresh and tasty.

After breakfast, we bought some fresh fish at the market which was situated near the site of the old railway station. The original Port Weld signboard was still there. It is the only signboard in Malaysia that is written in English, Chinese, Indian and Jawi! We then went around the village on our motorbike and stumbled upon the stone wharf that I had been to when I was around sixteen.

A few classmates and I had camped in the compound of Jal Prabhan’s house in Matang on one weekend in 1964. On Sunday morning, we had cycled to Port Weld to explore and ended up on this wharf. We spent the morning trying to catch some small swordfish in the river with our “net” which was a handkerchief with the four ends tied to raffia strings. Alas, the fish were either too smart or too fast for us and we wound up empty handed.

Port Weld was once the busiest port in the region. Tin ore from Taiping was transported here, using elephants, to be shipped to Penang for export. Then in 1885, the railway which connects Taiping to Port Weld was built. It was the first railway built in the then Straits Settlements and was thirteen kilometres long. Travel time was shortened to a few hours from two to three days.

My grandfather landed in Port Weld in the 1920s and he might have taken a ride on the train to Taiping but, most probably, he must have made the journey riding on a bullock cart, the main mode of transport back then and cheaper too. Or maybe, he could have ridden on an elephant!

Port Weld is now a small fishing village of wooden houses built close together on the bank of the river, Sungei Sepetang, with several wharfs where fisherman unload their daily catch and where salted fish can be seen drying in the sun. Some years ago, my children, the missus and I had sailed in a fishing boat from Kampong Dew, a village on the outskirts of Taiping, to Port Weld and back at night to admire the fireflies which can be seen among the mangrove trees on both sides of the river. Occasionally, we could see the twin red eyes of the estuarine crocodile too! When we shone our torches onto the river, on both sides of the moving boat we could see shrimps everywhere, hopping out of the water like tiny kangaroos! To this day, I am not sure whether the shrimps were startled by our boat or were racing with us.

Port Weld is also famous for the Mangrove Swamp Preserve Park situated just outside the village. It has a 250 metres long wooden boardwalk built over the swamp whereby one can take a walk through the mangrove forest and also chalets for visitors to spend the night. The mangrove forest stretches for 52 kilometres and occupies an area of about 100,000 acres! One can get a boat ride for a tour of the scenic mangrove forest, to watch cockle breeders harvest their catch or to visit Kuala Sanggar, another fishing village situated at the nearby river mouth, to look at the floating cages used for breeding fish there.

The mangrove swamps form an important buffer zone between the sea and the shore, absorbing the shocks of waves and even tsunamis. It is also the home of the Mangrove Crab or Mud Crab. With its sweet firm flesh and delectable orange-red eggs, I love it cooked any style, be it Black Pepper Crab, Chilly Crab or Curry Crab.