When someone you love walks out of your life or just disappears, what do you do? Keow Wee Loong, 32, threw a few essentials into his backpack and started walking North, to Ipoh. Perhaps going the proverbial south was too much for him. But he just had to go somewhere - away from the house that reminded him of her voice, her smell, her laughter, her affections for him which were now just painful memories.

The Star’s article titled “Caring M’sians the remedy” (Nation, 14 Sept 2020) by Mohd Izzat Mohd Khalizan documented how Wee Loong had kindness shown to him by ordinary Malaysians along the six day solo journey till he arrived in Ipoh. It reminds us that at heart, minus the politics and ugly greed of some, Malaysians are an amazingly caring lot. We are warm, sentimental, easy going, funny people and we love food – each other’s food especially. Take away the bigots and the idiots. The majority of Malaysians are kind.  

The article is not just about our kindness. Wee Loong is sad and lonely. He has been abandoned by the person who means the world to him, and is by self confession, depressed. “My depression caused her to run away and I don’t know how to look for her.” He must have tried hard enough. Having lost hope of finding her, he felt he could no longer stay another day at the house they shared. He had to get out and walk away. Where will he go? North. To Ipoh. Then what? Does it matter?  

Six days he walked. Slept in a tent under bridges and by the highway at night. What was he thinking the first day, the second day, the third day.............? Did the walking heal his brokenness? He must have teared much because he remembered how she stuck to him through thick and thin until she could no longer take it. She just left. “I want to apologise to her and hope she forgives me,” he told his interviewer. It was a public apology and the intent is clear – he wants her to know he is sorry and he is asking for forgiveness. The media is the only way he could somehow get his message across to her. Someone who knows her would have read this article and contacted her. Surely someone would do that, is his silent cry. Someone must do that. Please.  

Wee Loong needs to deal with his depression before it pushes him to the edge. Will a good Samaritan professional counsellor offer to talk to Wee Loong?

Who is Keow Wee Loong?  

He is a brilliant photographer (kiwikeow on instagram) and is otherwise known as the Malaysian Spiderman. He climbs skyscrapers, descends to volcanoes or nuclear abandoned zones to take pictures. Wee Loong’s evocative photographs of the Fukushima Exclusion zone (largely abandoned areas) after the 2011 tsunami went viral shortly after he posted it. Talented, fearless to a point of carelessness, Wee Loong lived and did what he believed. In December 2016 Wee Loong proposed to his Polish girlfriend, Marta Sibiealak, on top of the highest bridge in China with a placard that read “Will You Marry me?” They met at a convenience store in Japan. Wee Loong later formally proposed to her again on Kuta beach in Bali.  

Will she come back?

Read more

1. Mail Online. 2 December 2016. Sophie Williams.Is this the most dangerous wedding proposal you’ve seen? Daredevil man scales the world’s tallest bridge to ask his girlfriend to marry him. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3990702/Say-ll-Photographer-scales-world-s-tallest-bridge-ask-girlfriend-marry-him.html
2. Says. 11 July 2016. Samantha Khor. Malaysian Photographer Tells Us Why He Did Not Wear Protective Gear In Fukushima. Daredevil Keow Wee Loong's haunting photos of the Fukushima exclusion zone, left abandoned after the 2011 nuclear disaster, recently went viral within hours after they were posted on Facebook. https://says.com/my/news/malaysian-photographer-takes-risky-trek-into-radioactive-fukushima-red-zone