Essay About Terrapuri

“Kak Em, there is one place called Terrapuri that you must visit because I know you like architecture so much,” a friend told me when we discussed about places that we had and have not been and of course, I was surely enticed. One day, I was invited to join Gaya Travel team to stay at Terrapuri. I jumped at the opportunity and said yes.
My family and I travelled by car to Kampung Mangkuk, Pantai Penarik, where Terrapuri is situated. Upon reaching the place, the gate was closed. But silly me, I didn’t know that I had to pull a string at the gate to ring the bell. “Kak Em, you have to pull the string to ring the bell to call someone to open the gate,” Sham told me on the other end of the line when I called him to ask how do I enter the place.
Agaped mouth with wow sound— was my second impression. And the rest was history. I feast my eyes on what I thought as a very beautiful heritage village with houses that were built some 100 to 250 years ago. This also means that I got to travel back through time and experience some forgotten architectures all over again.
Brainchild of Alex Lee, Terrapuri Heritage Village is a conservation and restoration project of Terengganu Malay Classic houses. There are total of 29 antique houses that dated back 100 – 250 years back. These houses were collected by Mr. Lee for over the period of 18 years. According to Mr. Lee, the layout of the resort is inspired by the 17th century Terengganu Palace and its surrounding.
The antique houses manifest creative and aesthetic skills of the Malays. The houses were built using chengal wood with triangular shape, steep gabled roofs and odd-number staircases. The houses were also built on stilts (8 feet) and employed the tebuk-pasak (mortise and tenon) technique at the joints. The roof was made from rhomboid-shaped Singgora roof tiles while the walls were made from timber panel walls slotted into grooved frame (what the Malay calls Dinding Janda Berhias). The upper part of the walls, windows and doors are decorated with screen with beautiful woodcarving work (Kerawang or
Although it is old, I had the benefits of the villa’s refurbished splendeour and unique traditional batik (with Nibong patterns) décor. For a hot and humid weather, air-conditioning was a heaven-sent. My husband said he prefer the old ‘kampung’way and said that adequate ventilation of the house system will allow cooling and reduction of humidity. I agreed but with the temperature of more than 40°C, I doubt that cooling will take place. I respect his wish and switched off the air-con and opened up windows and doors. After few minutes, my husband started to sweat a lot. He finally gave-in to the idea of switching on the air-conditioning. He switched on the ceiling fan in