Sitiawan's Swift Inns

A different kind of hotel, where the patrons are little birds; swifts or a distant cousin to the swallows. However, these hotels are not really your regular nice-looking hotels; marked by cheap bricks, poor workmanship, in short not much aesthetics into it. Sitiawan is in the migratory path of these birds and a few years ago, the birds started to migrate and settle in Sitiawan. I think partly it was due to the spate of fires in Indonesia. Anyway, these birds have brought many changes to this once sleepy town. It has changed the town's skyline and brought about a property boom and at the same time lining the pockets of many with wads of cash. After all 1kg of good quality clean bird's nest can fetch about RM1 000.

And the owners go through great lengths to ensure that their investment is secure.At this particular building, the owner has put up plants all around the building with buckets of water surrounding the whole perimeter. When you walk past it, the surrounding area is actually really cool. You can really feel the cooling power of the plants here. I once read some where that one big tree's cooling power is equivalent to 10 units of 1HP air-cons. It is definitely quite true.The foliage is really dense. It probably serves as a deterrent to those who might think of making a quick buck. And who knows what other creatures lurk in there too?
These are the buckets of water outside which I supposed are placed there to help cool the building even more so that the birds are really comfortable inside. The water looked clean when I walked past. But the green algae in the pail probably also indicates that there were times when these pails were not really emptied that regularly.

I've never been inside a building such as the one above but I can imagine that it must be a dark and damp place; cave like environment. The owners fixed up sound systems which play all these recordings of the bird sounds with the hope of enticing these birds to make their home there. Back here in Alor Star there are already building owners doing that....fixing up such sound systems so that their buildings will turn into swift inns. I understand that some of these recordings cost quite a bit!

Though this industry has brought wealth to this town, I wonder whether it is worth it. We know that birds bring diseases. And in Sitiawan, these swift inns are located right in the town. It is unhealthy to have the eateries so near their dwellings. In Kampong Koh, you can actually find eateries on the ground floors while the top floors were dedicated swift inns. Building by-laws seem to have been bypassed. Political leaders and bureaucrats pooh-pooh the worries that have been highlighted. Dengue cases have been on the rise. And these inns probably have a big role in it. What are the authorities going to do to regulate this industry? What if one day, a major health outbreak similar to the avian influenza happens? The town will be a ghost town....but before that there will be many told and untold anguish and heartbreaking tales. Do we want to wait for that day to come? This will indeed be one of man's greatest folly where this town is concerned.