Back Lanes | The Long and Winding Road

Kuala Lumpur’s lorong-lorong

8 01 2020

Not always the tidiest of places, the small lanes and back streets of old Kuala Lumpur (KL) are more often than not, places to be avoided. There are however a number for which exceptions can now be made – such as the attractive mural decorated back lanes of Bukit Bintang and more recently, the area known as Kwai Chai Hong off Lorong Panggung and Jalan Petaling in old KL. The latter saw a charming makeover and is now a well-visited instagram-worthy tourist draw.

Kwai Chai Hong

Necessary for sanitation and for fire-fighting in the overcrowded urban centres of Malaya and Singapore, the requirement for back lanes was written into town improvement and planning regulations and by-laws in the early 20th century. They thus became a feature of the shophouse dominated landscapes of Malaya’s and Singapore’s urban centres. Besides spaces in which drainage, access for removal of refuse and night soil, and for fire-fighting, the back lanes became social spaces as well as ones in which trades – legal or otherwise – could be conducted.

A mural in a back lane in the Bukit Bintang area.

Unveiled in early 2019, the Kwai Chai Hong project involves six shophouses on Jalan Petaling and another four along Lorong Panggung and offers quite a delightful take on the back lane as a social space through a series of murals. The monicker Kwai Chai Hong translates into “little ghost lane” or “ghost child lane” is perhaps a reference to the activities that went on whether it may have involved (naughty) children or perhaps gangsters – or even both.

Lorong Panggung.

More on Kwai Chai Hong can be found at:

The bridge to the past, with a view to the future (in the form of the yet to be completed tallest KL building, Merdeka PNB 118 (Menara Warisan Merdeka).