Sunday 8th February, Taiping + Kamunting

I decided to go to church, for reasons of faith and familiarity, but also because churches have local people who will want to chat! All Saints (Anglican) Church is likely where my Grandparents attended, if ever they attended anywhere. The few chinese and indian Malaysians and 3 Europeans sang heartily and listened faithfully to the goings-on, The service was unremarkable but pleasant enough; the coffee time much more fun, when the conversations got going. Two of the British men have/had lived in Taiping for years, so they were at least au fait with some of the local scene, even if most was not relevant to my story. But one told me that Maxwell Hill, now renamed Bukit Larut, might be accessible again, after its many-year closure following a landslide in 2019. Worth looking into ....

First however had to be an exploration of the site of the Taiping Swimming Pool, which Mum has memories of visiting on Sundays to be with the other Europeans. See the cute pictures of her in the water! The reports that it is now derelict proved correct. But there is no doubt of its existence here. The walk up from the bottom of Maxwell Hill was quite short, along a forest-lined tarmac road, where monkeys lolloped and swung here and there, right and left, and unseen forest-dwellers screeched and chirruped about us. I approached 2 men with a huge bird-spotting camera, out of interest to know what they were hoping to see ('birds' ... duh) and to tell my story, of course, and they gave me the suggestion of a local historian to contact, Siew Suet Fun ... another lead, for another day ...
You can see the extreme dilapidation of the pool, with almost no evidence of any buildings apart from pathways, steps and pool structures. Obviously time would have destroyed the wooden buildings, although we don't know when it was abandoned - possibly the late 1950s. A bit spooky, but great to see!

On the way down a car stopped, a smiling man asked us where we are from and what we are doing, and when he heard about our mission he promptly offered to take us wherever in his car. Jason, a retired computer expert, had worked in the US for many years and recently returned to his home town Taiping; I think we made his day. This is where it gets exciting! My internet scuba-deep-sea searches had taken me to a government website giving access to scanned newspaper articles of the early 20th century. It had been exciting enough to find my Grandfather's name mentioned - mostly formal reports of his Board appointments, or his travels in and out of the country - but these were not exact to geographically locate him. But under the name of the company he managed for the latter years, Changkat Serdang Estates Ltd, I got more joy. Ask Google to locate 'Changkat Serdang' and you get sent to several locations in the region, but none close enough to Taiping to be accessible for weekend jaunts for the family. But one article from 1910 cited the purchase of an estate north west of Taiping, near the village of Kamunting, with specifically mentioned road and rail connections. And and and: BINGO! A 1926 map of estates popped up, showing 'Ct Serdang Estate' exactly there - not where Google proposed - barely 10 miles out of Taiping. Luca superimposed the old map on today's map, showing that the lie of the land (river, road, rail) is largely unchanged. And Jason wanted to take us there! Turned off the main road, past this and that more or less occupiable/occupied building, and an old tamil temple (built perhaps also 100 years ago?) and came to large gates set into pillars in an old wall. We peered over: house, garden, ostrich (as you do), yapping dogs, but no human interest in their warning. But Jason saw someone working in the garden, shouted out in Malay; he summoned the house owner and there we were, talking to Balam whose father and grandfather both worked for the Changkat Serdang Estate. His mother was sitting on the veranda, but I gathered it would not have been helpful or appropriate to include her in the conversation. He is around our age, a retired government electricity advisor; we met his adult daughter too. Have you ever been threatened by an ostrich? We wanted to walk into the garden - grass under foot, some various trees at intervals, don't know what - but his hissing put us off; and Balam wanted to drive us all over the estate, to show us the extent of the land. He works his farm there, growing among other things the famed love-hate marmite-Malaysian durian, but the estate, now totally given over to palm for oil, is managed by others. Not much to see apart from winding mud tracks amongst palm trees of various sizes, but let's say the space, and the view onto the hills, was 'ours'. Let's assume this is The Real Thing, may we? And see if more research discloses more as yet unrecovered secrets ... but the location of this thimble was 'burning!'. He told us that there would have been 80-90 families working the rubber plantation; the palm industry is managed by 2 men.

Dinner in a Chinese restaurant recommended by Jason. Suffice to say, of the menu items you see here, I only chose the coconut drink. But the other items should really be dared on a day where energies are high ... perhaps.

What a day.Read more