dayas's hometown

Hometown is a beginning place of a life. Hometown is a place where somebody has born and grown up as well. Hometown will be convergent place when public holiday and celebration season is come up. I also have my hometown which name Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad.According to history, Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad has gotten its name from the person has opened that village who name Haji Muhammad. And the word ‘‘Sungai’’ has gotten from the Malay word referred to the river that flowed in that village. So, the village got its name Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad. Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad is a very peaceful place. My village is one of the villages that joins Homestay program that organizes by Ministry of Tourism Malaysia. Many tourists from the others country have came to my village to enjoy the village life. For this program, the foreigner will stay with my villagers in a wooden house. They will eat according to Malay food like “sambal belacan”, “nasi lemak”, and so on. And they love them so much. About a few kilometers from my village, there is a beach where located fisherman village. Almost of them are Chinese. They work as a fisherman. During the Tsunami, the fisherman village is the one of the places in Malaysia that effected by that disaster. There were many boats that belongings to them have cracked and destroyed. They were lost around thousands Ringgit after that disaster.Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad is a very nice village. Once, my village won a competition for ‘Kampung Indah’. Before the day of the competition, we all together have cleaned up the surrounding of my village. We won quite a lot of money. Our leaders have spent that money to build a shop, bought the lands and so on as an investment for our village future. Kampung Sungai Haji Muhammad is situated not to far from Teluk Intan town. One of the buildings at Teluk Intan is ‘‘Menara Condong’’. “Menara Condong” is a Malay word and it means “Slanted Tower”, just like the PISA at Italy. In Teluk Intan, this is the only landmark that they own, and it has been already about a decade of history since my grandmother is in the Primary School. While the engineers and contractors were building this in the year of 1885, it was meant to be used as a Clock Tower with a water tank on top of it. Due to the weight of the water tank and also the softness of the base, the tower has begun to slant at one side and that is why it was well-known as the 2nd PISA after Italy’s. The contractors who was in charge of building this, has a name called Choong Cheong / Ah Cheong and he got his inspiration because of the Pagoda’s in China. His original plan was to build a water tank as a solution to emergency fire cases, also to provide water when there is no water supply. In between the year of 1889 and 1895, the entire building was being sunk into a flood and that is why it has become even more famous with the name of “Menara Condong Teluk Intan”. During the world war 2, the Japanese use this tower as the Headquarters to watch the enemies from far, and they’ve broken some small part of the building especially the 3rd floor. From the outside, you see that it looks like having 7 storeys but inside of the building has only 3 storeys. It takes about 110 steps to go up the 3rd floor. In the year of 1997, the Perak Authorities took the initiative to build a plaza surrounding the building, to allow it to become a tourists spot. There are a lot of nice story about my hometown. I love my hometown very well.