Property value

Many landlords have (indirectly caused) lowering the property value at Le Town Apartment by renting out their apartments to persons of unknown standing. Many of these tenants share the 3 room apartment with their friends, some occupying each apartment with as many as 10 friends. These apartments are quite comfortable if shared, say ,with 2 persons to a room but by having more persons living in each it makes life less comfortable, and with a higher occupancy per apartments making the place like a slum. And resulting in lowering the rentable value of the property. A pity, as the apartments are situated in a very good location in Kuantan Town.

It is not cheap to maintain an apartment at Le Town. It annual rentable value payable to the Kuantan Municipality is over RM 1000.00 a year, which is expensive for an apartment of floor area of just over 1000 sq. feet in a town outside Kuala Lumpur. Its maintenance cost payable to the Apartment Management is RM 150.00 a month. Agreed that up todate they do quite a good job at maintaining the apartment complex. But their shortcomings are also glaring. The apartments complex now needs a new coat of paint after being here for about 10 years; this they have not done so. Security to the apartments is questionable, they employ cheap foreign labour as security guards, except for one old Malaysian who has been employed as security guard for quite a while now. These foreign labourers are not really ‘security guards’ as such, they seemed more like general workers. These ‘guards’ lack the local language knowledge and the lack the understanding of local customs of living in such a community as those living in the apartments. And there is no control of access to the apartments, free access seems the rule of the day (and nights) to any of the apartment. Thus security is compromised.

All in all, the property value of these apartments have been lowered (and compromised) due the landlords not being selective of their tenants, neither controlling them nor really care about the maintenance of their apartments. And due the Management not being really concerned about access and security.

MPK is going to town at TC

Majlis Perbandaran Kuantan MPK (the Kuantan Municipality)is going to town at TC (Teluk Cempedak) beach.

They are building a new seafront low stone wall, and even the old Japanese machine gun emplacement pillbox has been repaired.

And towards and near the existing wooden walks they are building new walks. (But the old wooden walks really needed maintenance, some of the wood are missing or rotting, perhaps they will be repaired or replace in the next phase of the MPK development.)

Reminder of Japanese occupation

Crossing the Kuantan River on the bridge from Kuantan Town on the road to Kuala Lumpur, at Jalan Gambang, one will not notice the gun placement pillar box unless one stops and go down to the river bank on the right, in front of the existing eating stalls, close to the boat cruise jetty. From there one can prominently sees it. But if one goes on the Kuantan River Cruise one will not help but notice it when one goes under that Kuantan River bridge. Its there, left unrepaired but seemed to be maintained in considerable good condition.
Its part of our Malaysian history, also the history of Pahang State, though one may wish to forget that part of our history where the Japanese committed quite a number of atrocities to our people when they were in occupation in Malaya then.

A new resort

I have herad so much about this new resort, so today I decided to visit it. It was a sunny day, and being the fasting month I did not worry about meals. So my wife, my 1st grandson and I decided to drive to this 'resort' which about 20 odd km from Kuantan Town towards Kuala Lumpur.

My impression? Its not ready! But for the benfit of doubt, the management must be trying its level best to make it ready for visitors.

Its expensive to enter. Its new, but its expensive. About RM20 for adult and RM13 for children, don't you call that expensive? maybe not when its fully ready. But is it fully ready now? Don't look it.

The resort accommodation? Seems alright from the road. I did not go in, so I have to presume that its ready. Its a sort of condo/hotel arrangement. I saw some accupants inside some of them.

The water park seems alright but its quite small compared to some I have seen in Malaysia. See video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUM3MJzqLWw


Other facilities? There is the coach/horse ride at RM10 per head, riding just around the 'corner'. A few quadbikes for rental. And a 'kiddie train' to go from the water park to the 'hotel' and back. All at a fees of course. I did not ask how much.

As usual, one will find a souvenir shop in the complex. I suppose for that sort of a place, the shop was quite adequate.

The workers? I met a few young hands whom I must say are very friendly. They being young, they do not ask for much. The older ones also seemed quite satisfied with their assignments.

There was this Chinese violin player playing at the entrance to the water park which caught my eyes. (The video was taken at a different angle, he seems shorter and fatter because the video had to be turned 90 deg to make him vertical,....sorry!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmhFguXVKdI


Give the Management a chance to prove themselves. But to my mind, there is a lot of room for improvement.

Notice board

These notices I observed are posted at the bottom of the stairs. Self explanatory really. I am just wondering why the Management does not have a central noticeboard where they can post their notices and the residents can also post theirs.

Sometime in Kuantan during Ramadhan

What is so different about being in Kuantan during the month of ramadhan? It’s the ,ramadhan market’. What one gets here may be different from those gotten in other places.

There is the ‘gearbox soup’, the soup of all the cows joints and cartilages.

There is the ‘pudding raja’, very famous in Pahang State. I do not know much about it but I found that it’s a combination of sun dried ‘pisang emas’ combined with a sort of yellow egg net on top, topped with dates and cherry and eaten with vanilla cream. Just my impression I suppose. But when I mentioned in my groups that I think that its just an ordinary sweet, not really to my taste, I got ‘booed’……… I must have said something wrong.

There is the ‘kueh akok’, sweet cake sort of made of eggs, sugar and flower of some sort beaten together. Very sweet but very delicious.

And in Pahang one cannot do without ‘ikan patin’, a sort of river catfish. And best cooking method is in ‘tempoyak’ (fermented durian flesh). Cooked with the right combination of spices, its an acquired taste. But many people inside and outside Pahanag State like the stuff.

And of course freshly caught ‘ikan kembong’ barbequed.