Paloh

After the meeting with the Lai's, we drove to BP, my wife's home town. With the spare time available, we decided to select a nearby town in Johor to explore. We chose Paloh.

 

Paloh which is 60 Km northeast of BP is indeed a very small town judging by the less than twenty thousand inhabitants living there. Yet, I believe it was probably because of the substantial output of rubber in the old days that convinced Malaya Railway to have the rail line constructed through this little town. Today, practically all rubber plantations have been replaced by oil palm plantations.

 

The only place we stopped by in Paloh was Ling Nam Kedai Kopi, an 85-year old Chinese coffee shop which I came to know through a blog in the internet. Mr. Wong, a Hainanese who now runs the shop with his wife and son is the third generation since his grandfather set up the business in 1929. He was exceptionally proud of his coffee shop when the Malaysia Tourism Board included this outlet in the Booklet published to promote famous Chinese Traditional Coffee Shops in Malaysia.

Coffee, tea or whatever drinks made in this outlet are prepared from water drawn from a 60-ft deep well dug at the back of the shop. His kaya toast is unique. Home-made kaya is squeezed into pocket cut in the slice of white bread after the toasting.

 

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Mr. Wong also keeps all sorts of can openers and he has no hesitation when asked to demonstrate his can opening skill. He could open a can in just 3 seconds, blind-folded and using a type of opener people found least likely to achieve the feat. So far, his 3-second record has not been surpassed. His closest rival managed to open in 5 seconds.

 

Mr. Wong is also an avid antiques collector. He keeps a stock of old drink bottles. He was thorough to talk about this particular olive-shaped bottle which also resembles a hand grenade. According to him, this bottle was made in Hong Kong more than a hundred years ago!

 

Mr. Wong is also a sharp shooter. He used this "bullets" rolled from old cigarette boxes and rubber band to get rid off the home lizards in his coffee shop. Old timers who are familiar with this gadget would remember its name - "Lastic". His shop is now lizard free. But he said he had faced criticism from animal lovers for such act. His answer was: "Do you like to eat in an environment where there is a chance of having animal droppings landed on you of your food items or otherwise?"

 

On our way out of this town, we were held up for more than 5 minutes just to wait for this goods train to pass through.