THE lookout tower operated by the Civil Defence Department caught my attention when I visited Pantai Kelanang in Selangorrecently.
Having found Morib beach packed with busloads of factory workers on an excursion from Negri Sembilan, I was advised by a stall owner there to go to the less crowded Pantai Kelanang, a couple of kilometres north of Morib, accessible via an unnamed coastal tarred road.
I had seen signboards pointing towards the location of Pantai Kelanang previously but it did not occur to me that the beachfront had been developed for recreational purposes. The last time I was there was more than a decade ago and I had totally forgotten about it. My impression of this lesser known beach was that of a mangrove swampland.
But to my surprise that Saturday afternoon, Pantai Kelanang has been transformed, with shops, stalls and a huge parking area. Several shops were openas I made my way to the beach. A few families were having a get-together under the shade of casuarina trees. I learnt that they had arrived the previous day and had camped overnight. The huge parking lot was still not filled with cars.
According to an elderly camper, Pantai Kelanang owes its name to Kampung Kelananglocated a couple of kilometres away. There were huge tracts of wild rattan vines known as “lanang” which were harvested for sale.
However, on the beach, the only vegetation I spotted along the water’s edge were small clusters of mangrove trees. Towards the southern stretch, some land has been lostdue to erosion, despite the authority having laid a giant tarpaulin filled with sand to serve as a wave breaker.
The waters off Pantai Kelanang are not exactly inviting but it is the silty grounds at low tide that draw beachcombers in droves. With their pants rolled up to the knees, they head out to the vast expanse, hunting for bamboo or razor clams, known locally as pepahat, a species of bivalves that looks like cut bamboo.
That afternoon, I was introduced to a local from Kesang, a woman in her sixties who claimed to be an expert pepahat-hunter and her bragging rights were two paint buckets filled with the greenish bivalves.
“To catch a pepahat, you only need a lidi (spine of the palm leaf) and a cup of kapur (cooking lime),” she explained with pride. “Dip the lidi into the lime and head out to sea. Look out for wet mud where bubbles emerge and insert the lidi into the hole. If there is a pepahat inside, it will start squirting water and crawl out of its lair once it tastes lime. All you need to do is to catch them.”
To cook them, she explained, first soak these bivalves in fresh seawater for six hours to get rid of the dirt and silt.
Although Pantai Kelanang has its fair share of shops and stalls, and a public toilet for holiday makers, there are no fancy hotels within walking distance, like its neighbour, Morib. During the school and other holidays, Pantai Kelanang’s flat terrain and well-foliaged beach draw quite a crowd of campers who prefer to rough it out under the skies.
Anglers also frequent this area to fish, either from the beach or charter a boat at the Pantai Kelanang fishermen’s jetty located a kilometre inland.
HOW TO GET THERE:
If you are coming from the Klang Valley, use the South Kelang Valley Expressway and exit at Telok Panglima Garang Toll Gate. There are a few roads that lead to Pantai Kelanang from here and most of them take you through a maze of plantation and narrow village roads before arriving at the beach.
I recommend using Waze, Google maps orGPS once you exitSKVE.