Photos

The Sg Lembing River off Kuantan Pahang.

Reza Azmi once wrote "There are a few places left in Malaysia where a visitor feels as if you have stepped back into an entirely different era. That is the impression I have taken back with me from visiting Sg. Lembing (sungai, Malay for river), a small township about 40 km from Kuantan on the east coast of Malaysia. Sg. Lembing is a small mining township that developed some two hundred years ago. The name probably honours one of its earliest pioneers, a migrant Chinese called Ah Lim Beng. But the history of mining in this area extends much further back, to prehistoric civilisations. The Sg. Lembing town, which developed in the late 1800s, is a reminder of the lengths the British would persevere in order to make some money from the hinterlands of their colonies."