Kuala Lumpur
As a mining outpost 100 years ago, Kuala Lumpur is now the
capital city of Malaysia, with a population of 1.5 million people.
Despite all the recent development, Kuala Lumpur retains plenty of
character - a fascinating mixture of old and new, with sky scrapers
and temples, and a colourful scene of multi-racial activity, with
Malay mosques, Chinese temples, Hindu temples, not to mention the
impressive municipal buildings and shipshape British order.
In the middle of the 17th century, the miners and traders who
first came in search of tin poled up the river where the Klang and
Gombak rivers converge. The Gombak estuary was the highest point
upstream that the miners could land their supplies for prospecting
the tin of Ampang, which is a few kilometres further in land. The
first arrivals of 87 to do so, unfortunately, fared badly, and
within a month, 70 had died from malaria and other tropical
diseases. But the tin they discovered in Ampang attracted More
miners. Soon, the place boomed to become a brawling, noisy, violent
town in the 1860's. It was imaginatively named Kuala Lumpur which
means "Muddy Confluence" in Malay, for it's located at the meeting
point of the Kelang and Gombak rivers. Kuala Lumpur map
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