At some point in every courtship — usually on a lazy afternoon amidst snuggles and happy talk — your sweetheart will ask to see photos of you as a baby. You may moan and groan, but eventually dust bunnies will be swept aside as old albums are unearthed and gingerly flipped open.
This is when people usually go a bit berserk.
“Oh my god is that you?”, “Oh my god your mum was so hot!”. “I cannot believe how short their skirts were.” “Your dad looked like Bruce Lee.” “Is that a real life cow walking around the city? Get out.”
There’s just something about old photos that universally triggers the urge to slow down and scrutinise. To reflect and reminisce. To wonder and wow.
There is a Tumblr called Vintage KL that rubs that exact sweet spot. Attracting a steadily growing number of followers since starting in 2012, the blog hosts a collection of photos spanning the late 1800s to the 1980s of life in Malaysia’s capital city.
Circa 1888 – Volunteer fire brigade, High Street, now Jalan Tun HS Lee.
Vintage KL hosts photos of every sort, from official publicity pictures (Nixon’s wife visiting the Methodist Girls School), to old buildings (the customs building in Sungei Besi Airport was a wooden shack with a tin roof!) and snaps of everyday life (trishaws and pink mini buses).
A bike, a beca and a bus, 1963
“What an amazing photo. I got this one from a New Zealand source,” says Wong.
The blog was started, and is now being curated, by a school librarian named Gabrielle Wong. She lives, oh, a bit of a distance away from Kuala Lumpur – about 11,529km as the crow flies. What?! Yes, the owner of this quintessentially Malaysian blog lives in Casablanca, Morocco.
Wong was born and raised in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, and had, in her own words, ‘a great, but typical childhood’. At 18, she left for America to study History.
Wong started Vintage KL after a particularly nostalgic evening.
There, she experienced a different approach to education – one which took learning beyond the four walls of the classroom, and that taught critical thinking skills rather than just slogging for exams.
1975, Subang Airport.
“Although not technically KL, Subang Airport is something I feel is closely tied to KL life. This photo of a no-hippies-please sign is all at once perplexing and amusing,” shares Wong.
1960 – Kampung Baru – Ladies on the first day of Hari Raya.
Deeply inspired, Wong decided to become a librarian. To that end, she went on to obtain her Masters in Library and Information Science. Not many people know that that you need a Masters degree to be a librarian. Heck, most people think that all you need to do is stamp the right dates onto the books and collect 50 sen for every day the book is late.
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“I don’t know if I even care what people think,” laughed Wong when interviewed over Skype about what her family and friends thought about her vocation.
Miss Malaysia 1976, Cik Puteh Naziadin and her Datsun 120Y.
“I feel that this is my calling, really. A librarian is the connector of information to people who need that information. And we teach people what to do with that information.” Before moving to Casablanca, Wong worked in Kuwait for three years. She doesn’t have family, friends or any connections whatsoever in Kuwait or Morocco. So why pick those places to live?
“Why not?” is her spunky answer. “I like going out to see the world. How many people can say they’ve lived in the Gulf, or Northern Africa? I feel that being in different parts of the world, away from everything I’ve grown up with, makes me a better person.”
Cool stuff. Now let’s get to the blog.
1929 – “Typical scene on No.4 platform, Kuala Lumpur Station”, The Railway Gazette.
1982 – Worker handling 7UP bottles at the Kuala Lumpur Glass Manufacturers Company plant.
Our intrepid librarian travels back to Malaysia at least once a year. Every trip, she gets a bit emotional when she sees the buildings and people of her childhood disappearing. The Jaya Jusco in Taman Tun is one such building that is long gone, now replaced by a college.
Sungei Besi Airport customs, 1948.
“My brothers and I used to go there a lot. Lots of childhood memories there. There was a games arcade at the top floor, with like, these huge inflatable bouncy castles,” she shared. One night, after a particularly nostalgic evening spent reminiscing the good times they had in Jusco and other places that are no longer, she started browsing the internet for old photos.
And then, Vintage KL was born.
August 19, 1972 – “RTM Orchestra performs for a TV Malaysia programme, “Keroncong Merdeka 1972”.
The photos are sourced from every corner of the internet, but strangely – or perhaps predictably – most were found from non-Malaysian sources like the National Library of Australia and expatriate blogs. The biggest untapped resource, says Wong, are photos from the personal collections of Malaysians themselves.
1965 – Tugu Negara being assembled
“As a kid I just always assumed it’s been there since the dawn of man,” says Wong.
She hopes to encourage submissions like one depicting a young Chinese woman sitting with her back to a mirror, dressed a simple cheongsam. “Here’s an old photo of my grandmother in the 50s. This was taken in Klang, during her wedding day,” reads the accompanying text. So lovely, right?
1950s, Klang
Circa 1960 – Two buses travel on Jalan Sultan Sulaiman by the railway station.
“I grew up with the Intrakota and pink mini buses. I’ve never seen these sleek silver ones, so it’s cool to imagine them going around KL once upon a time” says Wong.
1988 – view from Merlin Hotel (now Concorde) in direction of what is now KLCC.
Circa 1995 – Pink Bas Mini turning into Petaling Street.
So the next time someone cajoles you into hauling out those bulky old photo albums, don’t just chuck it back into its dusty hole after you’re done. Why not share it on Vintage KL? It would make those precious memories just that little bit more immortal.
Do you have photos of bygone Kuala Lumpur you’d like to contribute? Check out Vintage KL at http://vintage-kl.tumblr.com/ or follow on Twitter @vintageKL.
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