Having been with my female tiger together for the past 14 years, it appears that going to Penang Island for celebrating St.Anne feast become one of our yearly renewal honeymoon week.
This year is a little different. Despite we have booked our hotel way earlier, like half a year before the actual St.Anne feast at Bukit Mertajam, due to the pandemic, the official celebration has been cancelled. Since there is no celebration, we decided to cancel the accommodation. No point to travel half a day just to pay and stay in a hotel at different state? We have have a honeymoon suit here in Kuala Lumpur. And during this date, we decided to go to a nearer place, to visit a different St.Anne church for the first time since our relationship.
We attended morning Sunday school with the kids at home, on line. After that, we arranged the kids to go to their grandparents house so they can have all the freedom to play with their electronic gadgets. And the both of us drive down south to visit St.Anne church.
It was a leisure 45 minutes drive headed south. Since it's Sunday the traffic is clear. We have no problem driving into the land of Bak Kut Teh. You'll probably be wondering what the heck is a BKT? We will come back to that later.
After some 45 minutes drive, finally we arrived at the church. Well, it wasn't so bad as we usually drive 4 hours to go to Penang for the similar reason, to visit the church, make a few prayers and that's about it.
The earliest known history of this church dates back to the late 1920’s when the spiritual needs of the Catholics of this church were catered for by visiting priest who said Masses in a shop house along Jalan Camp. St.Anne’s Church, Port Kelang was at that time known as Port Swettenham.
https://www.localprayers.com/MY/Pelabohan-Klang/1623711011201279/Church-of-St.Anne-Port-Klang
During the early 1960 the catholic establishment of Malaya was under the responsibility of His Grace the late Monsignor Rev. Fr. Olcomendy, then the Archbishop of Malacca & Singapore diocese, His Grace purchased a piece of land (the present site) for the catholic community of Port Klang And in the year 1961 the new St.Anne’s Church was built along Jalan Samy which is now known as Jalan Tengku Badar, this was with the help of Rev.Fr Rigllot and the Lay ministers.
And the Church was officially declared open on 30th July 1961 by His Grace Tan Sri Dominic Vendargon Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur. Ever since then the Church has become a place of pilgrimage during the feast of St.Anne. The new Church was at first left in the care of the Capuchin priest –Rev. Fr. Denis and Capuchin Br.Athanasius from 1961 to 1963.
https://www.localprayers.com/MY/Pelabohan-Klang/1623711011201279/Church-of-St.Anne-Port-Klang
I am not a Catholic, my home minister a.k.a female tiger is. During my high school time, I think I manage to read through Bible one time or probably twice, but never had I pay attention to who St.Anne was. Until I started to travel, started to go to visit historical sites and churches, and then only I realized how important religion and history were tied together. One can spend all day looking at the building, but one can never understand how the building called church of they do not understand the religion. Now I can least to say, I know St.Anne is referring to mother of Mary. I'm not giving religious crash course here, and you should start to do some reading on your own, if you wish to learn more.
Not the oldest building you can ever find here in Malaysia, as many of the older churchest here were found in the early 1900s. But still, we can hardly see much of these 50's and 60's design building nowadays.
We spend about an hour at the church, did some reading, prayer, donation, light some candle and that's about all. Short but nice visit. We still prefer the Penang Island church, but I guess this will do since we're still in an inconvenient situation and there's no celebration there
Just before we end this marvelous short journey to the south, we decided to checkout their infamous Bak Kut Teh dish. There's this shop called 4 eye bakuteh. Avoid peak hour if you have no passion in waiting for famous food.
The name Bak Kut Teh came from hokkien, a Chinese clan from the southern ethics. Bak(read as Bach) means meat, Kut(read as koot instead) means bones, and Teh(read as Tae) means tea. Sound as it named, it's a pork in herbal tea. Usually it came with pork belly, pig stomach, intestines, mushrooms, bean curd and lettuce. We ordered an extra pork knuckle to it so we can have more to eat.
Its amazing that these pot of herbal soup and extra pork knuckle, and also we have added another bowl of extra mushrooms to go with, it cost is RM20.50. Dude, that's like less than 5 dollars, for 2 person. Can you imagine that?
That will be all for this short but marvelous journey. I hope you enjoy it and if you do visit Malaysia and in Kuala Lumpur, take a few hours off, have a quick tour and enjoy some old school local cuisine, visit some old church and experience the local attraction.