The Ugly Side of Tourism Malaysia

Today, after work, I went to Kellie's Castle with a couple of friends.

I have been there before, when I was much younger.
At that time, we (my family) were told that the place was going to be renovated to make it more attractive for an upcoming visit Perak Year or something like that.
So, I thought - it's been so long. Let's go see what it looks like now.

None of us really knew the way to Kellie's Castle. We decided to just drive up to Batu Gajah, and then see whether we can find our way from there on.
Guess what - right in the middle of Batu Gajah town, there was a signboard directing us to the castle.

When I saw this temple, I knew we were almost there. If you enlarge the picture, you can see that one of the statues on the temple is Kellie (don't remember his real name) himself.

Upon arrival at the place, we saw a few other cars there- not too many, not too few.
There weren't many shops around, just one 'makan' shop, a small souvenir shop and a ticket counter.
The ticket was RM4 - not bad, I thought.

This is the first thing I saw - oooh..1 point for being disabled-friendly.

Not too bad a view, don't you think?

We were told not to miss the bear hugging-tree by the ticket seller. Wondering what it was, we walked up towards the castle.
There was a signboard directing us towards this 'special-tree'.
Nearby the tree is another tree with a few newspaper clippings.

This particular piece said something about a guy walking around and then noticing that the tree trunk was shaped like a bear hugging a tree and that it is a 'miracle of God' or something like that.

This is the tree they were talking about. I looked at it. It looked more like 2 hippopotamuses in the middle of an indecent act more than anything else to me. And what I don't understand is, why the need for the red tape? Are they afraid the 'bear' is going to run away?

The rest of the trip kind of went into a downward, and then plateau phase.
The place was horrible!
There was no upkeeping.
There was bird shit everywhere.
I didn't dare touch the walls because they seemed SO FILTHY!!

Nothing was done to make visitors welcomed.
It didn't seem like a tourist attraction at all!
It was more like an abandoned house!!

It was quite shaming to see a few foreign tourists walking around with camera taking pictures.
Is this what they were going to show their friends when they go back home?
An empty, abandoned, dirty, so-called-castle?

Look at the pictures for yourself -

One of my most 'favourite' shots - notice the Visit Malaysia card? Now, look at the background

In almost every room, there was a white card, saying that 'if only this castle was completed, this most probably would have been....'. Most of it sounded like bull@*&$. This was in one of the rooms.
"What?!"

Another one of the white so-called explanation cards.

What's so mysterious about this corridor? I still wonder.

The view from the rooftop wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either.
The bad point - anyone can just fall off. No railings, no nothing.

There were even holes on the roof top - I can just imagine kids running around and suddenly getting their foot stuck in holes like this!

Nevertheless, we were already there.
We tried to find a few good spots where we could take some pictures.
Here are some that turned out OK..

The last picture of the castle.

It looks quite OK from the outside, but then it can definitely be much better. I can just imagine that if this was a western country, the place would have been probably done up to look like what Kellie wanted it to be, with furniture and pictures and stuff. Sad, really, knowing that this is what our tourism is offering.