Kellie's Castle

While not motivationally inspired to write about food recently ( been going to the same few restaurants of late, does not warrant picture taking again), i decided to actually post up pictures of Kellie's Castle in batu gajah. Imagine in all my life, this is my first time here! I about travelled to about 30+ places around the world -except locally. ;) Goes to show how much i like my own country. - Please don't start arresting me now.

This was a trip some time back in Jan with my cousin Flea and Lil' Bro. We went back to Ipoh and wanted to see where our dads lived and check out some historical places in ipoh. It's about 45 minutes drive from Ipoh to Batu Gajah and 4 bucks a piece per person. Anyway, it was a good chance to flex my camera again. I love my Canon Powershot S3 IS ( but i heart a nikon dslr even more hehehe ) and have not been using it as much as i can since coming back from Austria.

What's the story behind this place? Apparently, it was built by this guy called ... William Kellie Smith. It's also known to many as Kellie's Folly. Why he built it, not a lot of people know, apparently it was a gift for either his wife or son. Click here to read more. He never really finished it and died before it could be completed. By the way - did you know the Kinta Kellas company started from the Kellie family? i didn't know that....

Anyway, many years back the ruins were cleaned up and turned into a tourist spot. I don't get malaysia. I feel there a lot of nice places we can turn into tourist attractions - cue Europe and their castles, so why can't we do something similar.. good money ya know...........

Well, back to Kellie's. What do i think about the place? Hmm... i think the designer was having some moroccan or middle eastern faze. It looks moorish to me from the outside but inside, you can sense the english touch is still there.

Moorish or not?

Nice wall deco - along with cobwebs and all

Along the walls of the castle, the caretaker decided to put some dos and don'ts in the castle ground. No drugging, no smoking and no making out in the castle compound. Hmm........... i wonder what had happened here before this place got commercialized.

What is a castle without ghostly stories..... Well Kellie has her own ghosts as well. Rumor has it that Kellie was never happy his castle is not finished and he roams the corridors of the castle at night. That is my brother at the end, we were yelling at each other to get out of the picture. Did not happen. But this is the corridor where mr kellie is seen roaming around.
I decided to ask the grounds keeper if he has seen anything in all his years working here. He says so far no, but at night, there has been strange sounds in this place. So, adding up to the "scare" factor here. But to be honest, the place is a bit too quiet for me and a bit unnerving in certain parts. Like the next picture... the underground cellar or was it the dungeon. ( Dungeon ??? ) I was thinking of going down to check out what was there - but one look at the darkness, got the heebie-jeebies, i changed my mind. Just take picture at the top enough lah.. ( *chicken* )
We had a great time exploring the ruins though, and anyone interested in checking out more pics - click here for my flickr set.