Free Walking Tour of Brickfields

Almost by accident we discovered that KL City Hall Tourism Unit sponsors a weekly walking tour of Brickfields Saturday mornings at 9:00. (The available information about frequency, registration, and start times varies; our impression is the tours have evolved to weekly, with no preregistration required, but an 8:30-8:45 arrival to complete paperwork. Non-Malaysians will be asked for their passport number!)

Brickfields is one of the older areas of KL. It originally is where the city's bricks were manufactured. In October it was re-branded as Little India @ Brickfields.

The tour started a the Y, which is easily seen from KL Sentral. The Y is a center of the community with a hostel, cafe, and barber shop. It give language lessons, provides a number of activities for hearing impaired, and hosts the senior center. The walk started with a historical presentation - partially a KL then and now. The shop houses and coffee shops which gave Brickfields its character are being replaced.


To us three aspects of Brickfields stood out. An impressive number of religious bodies - Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Lutheran, Methodist, Syrian Christians, and Catholics. We went into a Hindu temple and Buddhist Community Center. Both were very clean, in contrast to India, and serene in contrast to the general busyness of the KL. Second, the raised tracks in the sidewalks to guide visually impaired walkers and the number of people with white canes (mostly men) signal this area is a center of services to the blind. The Malaysian Association of the Blind is large and airy. According to their website the association offers training in a number of skills, but blind masseurs is either the profession of choice or a strong stereotype that persists. (In 2008 I visited the Malaysian Society for the Blind - in the same neighborhood, in more modest quarters, and no training in massage. "Society for" signals that a group is run by the specific disability group.) The area has 100 shop houses for civil servants. Our guide stopped and asked a man who was washing his car about the house. He said that his monthly rent was RM300 a month (about USD100), equivalent housing would run RM1000. Once he retires or gets new employment he will have to move.

The weather was iffy (potential rain storms) so we were a small group
- Doug, me, Happy Yen, and our guide. Happy runs waterfall tours that we may test out some day, perhaps when we have a house guest. We were all about the same age and a group of four made for easy conversation. At the end we were met with a representative of the Tourism Unit.