Kellie's Castle

Of all the things I had expected to see in Malaysia - temples, mosques, tea plantations - this was not one of them. We had come to the most unexpected attraction in Ipoh: an abandoned half-finished European-style castle sitting in the green hills just outside of the city.

In 1890, a 20-year-old Scotsman named William Kellie-Smith arrived in Malaysia to work as a civil engineer. Determined to bring a bit of "civilization" to this faraway country, Kellie-Smith purchased a plot along the Kinta River near Ipoh, where the tin mining boom was transforming jungle into industry.

There, amid rubber estates and limestone hills, he began constructing what would become an ambitious, unfinished mansion blending Scottish and Indo-Saracenic design and a symbol of both colonial optimism and a personal obsession with raising the statue of himself and his family.

Kellie-Smith ultimately died before the completion of what would be called Kellie's Castle (or Kellie's Folly by those less charitable). The unfinished mansion fell into ruin, and Jaiye, my guide for the day, told me that growing up, he and his peers used to refer to it as the Ghost House. It's definitely got a bit of a spooky feel to it.

Though never furnished during his lifetime, the castle is partially decorated with period-accurate furniture to show what it could have looked like had it ever been completed and inhabited.

The castle is built in an eclectic mix of architectural styles taking inspiration from Indian, Moorish, and traditional Scottish baronial architecture. It's arched colonnades, domed towers, and intricate details create a structure that is grand and hauntingly out of place in the Malaysian jungle.

Kellie-Smith was a successful businessman and had become quite paranoid later in his life. His castle was full of secret passages leading to escape tunnels. Many of the tunnels, if they were finished, have been filled in and lost. Others have been bricked up to prevent people from exploring them. Some have never been found.

In 1926, Kellie-Smith traveled to Portugal to complete the purchase of an elevator to install in the castle. It would have been the very first elevator in Malaysia. Sadly, he caught pneumonia on his travels and died before returning to Malaysia. His wife and son moved back to Scotland, and construction on the castle was halted, never to be finished. Today, the empty elevator shaft is still visible in the abandoned castle.

The family ultimately sold the castle, and today it's become a popular quirky attraction for people visiting Ipoh or passing through Perak State.

Kellie-Smith may have died before completing his castle, but his legacy lives on and he has been immortalized in a surprising way.

In 1918 the Spanish Flu struck the Indian workers who were on the construction team building the castle. They approached Kellie-Smith for help building a temple nearby, and he readily agreed, funding its construction. To honor him, a statue of Kellie-Smith in his Western garb was built on the temple wall alongside Hindu deities and other mythological figures.

The legend even says that one of the lost secret escape tunnels even ran from the castle to the temple, but to this day it hasn't been found.