Loctor Mayat’s Autopsy

So after the delicious Mee Udang, we headed straight to our last destination of the day which is the famous Kuala Sepetang Charcoal Factory.

The place is actually very near to Mee Udang Mak Teh, say.. maybe 2 minutes drive.

There are several Charcoal Factory within the same area but the only one that we wanted to visit is Mr Chuah’s one. When we arrived I gave Mr Chuah a call so that he can meet up with us.

While waiting, we started shooting whatever we can find there…

One thing I noticed is that there seem to have lots of doggies around that place…. and most of them are dark brown of black. LOL…..

Around 15 minutes later, Mr Chuah arrived in his pick up truck and all of us quickly walked to his factory which is located quite far from where we park our cars. Ha ha ha….. oh yeah.. it’s quite hot that time too.

Mr Chuah started the introduction and begin to tell us the story of his Charcoal making business

From there, I realized that all along, I was wrong in the sense that I thought charcoals are actually burnt mangrove wood. LOL….

According to Mr Chuah, the mangrove wood are SMOKED… not burnt! hahhaahha…. who teach me they go burn it one ah?

So Mr Chuah brought us into his factory to see the Kilns and how the mangrove wood is smoked. It was an eye opening experience

We can see rows and rows of stripped mangrove wood being stacked together getting ready to be smoked. Some of the kilns are empty while some are still being used.

The best experience is when Mr Chuah led us INTO one of the half-filled kilns to see how the wood are being stacked together. The insides was only lighted up by a dim spot light so photographing Mr Chuah was a huge challenge..

Here he looks like he’s frantically asking for help… LOL

WOAHAHHAHA….

but of course, in such situation, Mr Rear Curtain Sync will save the day… oh yeah.. even with onboard camera pop-up flash…

(noise? What noise?)

It’s interesting to know that in each of the kilns, Mr Chuah’s workers is able to stuff 40 tonnes of mangrove wood into it before smoking ‘em. WOWSHH….

Once the kilns are filled up, they will use the lousy wood (e.g. maggots infested) as fuel to get the fire burning. The smoking process takes 10 weeks to complete. A couple of weeks in high heat and few weeks more at lower heat (85 C) and few more weeks to cool down.

Very long and tedious process but once they’re ready, each kilns will produce about RM14k worth of ‘black gold’. Ha ha ha…

During the smoking, there are small holes at the side of the kiln which will release the water vapour. The cool thing is, the vapour is collected by a funnel, condensed and the water flow back into a barrel. The water is then sold to the Japanese as fertilizer water and other usage too. VERY INTERESTING!

According to Mr Chuah, if you have mosquito bites or acne, applying some of the water will immediately cure it. WAH LAU…… don’t know how true is that….

After that, we were brought to another building where a kiln was in progress of being built. It is interesting to know that cement is not used to hold the bricks together. Only pure mud is used and they ‘harvest’ it right there next to the kiln.

Each kiln will last about 8 years before being torned down and rebuilt again. And each of them will cost RM16k to construct. Not bad for ROI eh?

After that we were brought to the packing department where we witness several makciks packing the smoked charcoal into paper bags before being sent to the hypermarkets, grocery stores, etc.

The makcik doesn’t like us taking their photos so I also hushed the rest of my team to leave them alone.

With that, it was the end of the guided tour by Mr Chuah who has been very patient and kind to us. He taught us about the process of making good quality charcoal and how the workers toiled day and night producing one of the world’s best charcoals ever.

As a token of gratitude, each of us paid Mr Chuah RM5 which he happily accepted. After that, we were given permission to go around his factory to shoot photos.

Well.. that’s the end of our 1-day trip to Taiping.

For full set of photos taken, please visit my flickr gallery HERE

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 3:41 pm and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.