Our prime reason for visiting Kuala Sepetang was to visit the Khay Hor Charcoal Factory. It is possible to arrange tours here, but we just turned up and wandered around freely.
You cannot escape the smell of wood shavings here and it is always interesting to see the manufacturing process of everyday items. The techniques for producing charcoal haven’t really changed over time; just the scale of the enterprise. This wasn’t the only charcoal factory in the area, but I think it is the only one to allow visitors. Kuala Sepetang is surrounded by mangrove forests, and these provide the logs, shipped via the canal at the back of the sheds. The logs are put into these igloo-shaped kilns, heated to 80C, and left to smoke for several weeks.
I reckon this place has become part of an Instagram destination in Taiping. There were a group of young ladies taking photos of themselves all around this factory. We met up again later with them by the Taiping Lake. As you can see, Lawrence has been appearing in a lot of photos today as he’s caught the bug too!
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