Big longkangs

When I first arrived to London many years ago, I remember saying to a friend: “Tak de longkang ke kat London ni?” (“Is there no sewers in London?”). I have been so used to seeing sewers around me. Sewers in my hometown in Malaysia are so big, a child could drown if he were to fall into one. Even an adult could get seriously hurt. The main danger is the fact that they are open sewer. The sewers are not covered up and some of them look like mini rivers of liquid (and solid) waste. There was one time – years ago - when both back tyres of my brother’s car were stuck in a sewer. I did not realize there was a massive longkang behind me, I reversed right into it. I blame DBKL. They should have put a cover on the sewer. But you hardly see any sewers in London. With nearly 8 million people living in London, surely there must be a massive sewerage system somewhere. And, rightly so, a massive sewerage system it is indeed. But they are underground. Apparently, each tunnel is almost the size of the tunnel for the London Underground. And the underground sewerage system stretches all around London. It has been there since 1865 thanks to Sir Joseph Bazalgette. He was commissioned by the British Parliament in the late 1850s to create an alternative sewerage system to replace River Thames, which was basically a very big open sewer during that time. I hope engineers in my hometown would one day come out with a similar scheme to move the big longkangs underground, or at least to put a cover on them. My brother nearly killed me when he saw what I did to his car.