First, the wife-mandated spoiler alert that I might have taken too many photos… Sungei Plaza mall is, I believe, the second oldest surviving mall in Malaysia (oldest if you consider the rebuilding of Campbell Complex post-fire in 1979 to be disqualifying). Even before Covid, it was a dying mall, populated by budget stores as all the branded stores moved out to nearby newer malls, and a haven for pickpockets. Covid can only have accelerated the decline.
However, one part of the mall has been refurbished and rebranded as Jumpa, an attempt to bring it up to date. To be honest, that must have suffered from opening just before the pandemic, and quite a lot of places are boarded up with hoardings reading along the lines of ‘opening in March 2020’. It looks like under 30 of the 100 plus spaces are open. One place that did open is the slightly annoyingly named MinNature.
This is a model village style representation of Malaysia’s landscape and culture. It was in a different location previously, but made the move to Jumpa from Subang Jaya in July 2020. It uses traditional methods of clay and papier-mâché modelling, plus more modern 3D printing.
It starts off with a fun idea – a world map on which visitors can place a sticker on their hometown. I was pleased to see that the highest concentration outside Malaysia was on the UK! We do love a model village.
After a brief history of the idea and its execution, you move into the Taste of Malaysia section, which has lots of miniature stalls of the food available here. They’re really impressive!
Next is a selection of dioramas of Malaysian life, including a bridge catastrophe in Sarawak, a cave I have visited (but not, it appears, documented) in Sabah, and scenes of urban and rural life. These are augmented by QR codes to online videos to play the sounds of the scene, little stories about the characters in the scene, and educational questions to spark discussion for students.
The largest section is the Heritage Architecture which spreads across 3 big rooms. Penang, Kedah, Perak, Pahang, Johor, and Melaka all get decent sized areas, while KL gets about double, but Terengganu, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak are rather squeezed in; Selangor’s port and…German fun fair (?) was one of the bigger models but perhaps had less to see.
In here, there are also more than a hundred hidden items to find, like a 3D Where’s Wally. These included several superheroes neatly inserted to the scenes. Look out for the little sign boards with humorous messages, too. Fun.
The Dataran Merdeka scene has a light and sound show (as does Penang), and shows the area in excellent detail, but I was amused to see they have a miniature version of the KL City Gallery, itself a miniature KL display. The same goes for Mini Malaysia in Melaka, high on my to do list.
At the end, there’s a small gift shop, including expensive miniature railway stuff and NFTs. MinNature is still partly under construction, so there is more to come, but we definitely felt we got more than enough value from our RM25 each.
Address: MUF1, Level 1, Sungei Wang Plaza, Jalan Sultan Ismail, 50250 Kuala Lumpur
Telephone: 01110099374
Website: https://minnature.com
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