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The album

Every photograph the house owns, in one place — numbered, captioned, and openable at a touch. House photographs are real and untouched; anything generated sits in the last chapter and says so.

I

The hall and the stair

The living hall: terrazzo floor, vaulted timber ceiling with black-framed clerestory, a wall of framed photographs, a teak lounge suite with marigold floral cushions. — PL. 01The hall, double height under the clerestory. The teak suite in marigold floral is the 1970s Malaysian sitting room done properly; the books are real.

The double-height entry hall: terrazzo floor, timber chick blinds, a round marble-top table, the stair rising along an olive-green wall. — PL. 02The stair, original and steep, as 1920s stairs are. The marble table catches the afternoon through the blinds.

A wall of framed black-and-white photographs of old Bentong above a dark cabinet. — PL. 03The photograph wall — the town keeps its own record inside the house.

The entry at evening: lamplight on the camphor trunks, the hall opening beyond the doorway. — PL. 04The entry at evening. The black camphor trunks that serve as tables carry their original hand-painted lettering.

II

The rooms

The king bedroom: dark timber floor, blue-and-white floral bedding, ornate red-framed window grilles facing the street, a vintage Shanghai print on the wall. — PL. 05The King Room, street side. The window grilles are the original medallions; the Shanghai print came with the family.

The twin bedroom: two single beds under a three-panel Chinese painting of cranes and pines, warm lamplight, a high clerestory band. — PL. 06The Twin Room, back of the house — cranes and pines over the beds, and the quiet the light sleepers ask for.

The queen bedroom: teak wardrobe, dressing table with a green banker’s lamp, blue floral bedding on dark timber boards. — PL. 07The Queen Room — teak wardrobe, dressing table, the green banker’s lamp. The seventh sleeper’s futon lives on this floor.

III

The air well

The air-well courtyard: white ventilation-block walls in two patterns, timber chick blinds, a young frangipani through a circle cut in the deck. — PL. 08The air well. The restoration opened the roof here; the frangipani grows through a circle cut in the deck, and the house breathes through it.

IV

The kitchen and the long table

The kitchen: a monolithic polished-concrete counter with twin sinks, white subway-tile splashback, mesh-front crockery cabinets stacked with plates. — PL. 09The kitchen — poured concrete, twin sinks, and everything a cooking family needs down to the chopsticks.

The dining room: a long table under the vaulted ceiling, four-panel Chinese botanical scrolls and six framed sepia portraits on the walls. — PL. 10The long table seats the whole house under the botanical scrolls and the portrait wall.

V

The bathrooms and the terrace

A bathroom with white subway tile, black-and-white patterned cement floor tiles, a concrete vanity, and a window of Chinese fretwork grilles with circular medallions painted red and blue. — PL. 11The finest of the four bathrooms keeps its Chinese fretwork window — circular longevity medallions painted red and blue.

The upstairs terrace wrapped in geometric perforated-aluminium screens, sunlight striping the floor through the slatted pergola. — PL. 12The terrace, wrapped in perforated screens that turn the low sun into stripes — the place for the gold hour.

VI

The town, as found

Real photographs of the streets the house stands in.

The shophouse row on Jalan Loke Yew with Bentong Gallery occupying Loke Yew’s former shoplots at Nos. 17–18. — PL. 13The neighbour: Bentong Gallery, in Loke Yew’s former shoplots at Nos. 17–18 — three free halls of the street’s own history.

The 1914 Chinese Assembly Hall of Bentong: an ornate cream-and-gold facade with Chinese lettering across the parapet. — PL. 14The Chinese Assembly Hall, 1914 — five minutes on foot, and older than the house.

A painted wall mural celebrating Bentong ginger on an old town shophouse gable. — PL. 15The town paints its own crop: Bentong ginger, famous enough for murals.

Chamang waterfall near Bentong: white water over broad granite ledges between rainforest banks. — PL. 16Chamang Falls, fifteen minutes by car — photographed, not imagined.

VII

Study frames, honestly

Generated impressions — the album says so plainly. They stand in until the town can be photographed in every light; none depicts the house itself untruthfully.

A shophouse street at first light, wet from night rain, lamps still on. — PL. 17Jalan Loke Yew at first light, as the fable sees it.

A five-foot way in raking morning light, columns striping the walkway. — PL. 18The five-foot way — the covered walk every shophouse lends the street.

Morning market stall: heaped old ginger under tarpaulin light, a hanging spring scale. — PL. 19The wet market’s old ginger, an impression of 07:00.

A kopitiam marble table with black coffee, iced coffee and kaya toast. — PL. 20Kopitiam marble, kaya toast, two kinds of coffee.

The air-well courtyard with a small twig nest set in the young frangipani’s fork. — PL. 21The courtyard again — but with the storybook nest the homepage keeps, the robin’s stage, added by hand.

A slate-green storm swallowing the light over old clay-tiled shophouse roofs. — PL. 22The four-o’clock storm arriving over the roofs.

A sea of clouds filling a rainforest valley at first light. — PL. 23The sea of clouds above the town — an hour’s climb, most clear mornings.

A rainforest waterfall in white sheets over dark granite. — PL. 24Falling water, the sound Bentong keeps behind every hill.

The free kampung hot spring at dusk: two steaming pools under one bare bulb. — PL. 25The kampung hot spring at dusk — free, unpolished, twenty minutes away.

A Musang King durian opened on newspaper at an orchard table. — PL. 26Musang King at the source, June to August, honestly.

Three rescued elephants in a shallow river at Kuala Gandah, keepers on the far bank. — PL. 27Kuala Gandah’s rescued herd at the river — a working sanctuary, not a show.

Alsatian half-timbered towers rising out of Malaysian rainforest mist. — PL. 28Colmar Tropicale — a piece of Alsace nailed to a Pahang ridge, played straight.

Two cable-car gondolas over unbroken rainforest canopy with cloud pouring between the ridges. — PL. 29The Awana Skyway riding over 130-million-year-old rainforest toward Genting.

The Sungai Benus at Janda Baik: clear water over boulders, a washing line across the river. — PL. 30The cold river at Janda Baik, thirty-five minutes and ten degrees away — the album closes where the guests cool off.

Chapter VII’s frames are generated impressions, marked as such wherever they appear on this site — the same rule as the sources page.