Tales from Serdang

Serdang is a small, laidback town in Malaysia.

It's so small that there's only one main road passing through the town and possibly less than 10 or 15 smaller roads that are lined by residential houses or terraced shophouses. None of the shopping centres that you see in the cities. It's so strange to walk along a road that's fully residential and then you turn a corner and there's a row of old shophouses.

It's a quaint little place where everyone knows everyone else. The moment a stranger walks into town, all eyes are on him. The locals will want to know what's his business is to be here. Are you visiting someone or are you going to the Chai Sin Yah temple nearby?


The temple is quite popular, especially during the Chinese New Year period where people come by the busloads to ask the local deity for some good luck. For a ringgit, you can make a lucky dip and pull out a small, folded strip of paper written with a four-digit number. Surely, many people would have struck it rich sometime in the past or else the temple's reputation would not have spread far and wide.


Not quite so long ago, someone came to the town and borrowed the statue of the deity. That's quite unheard of. It created such a stir. Luckily, the statue was returned days later. It came back as mysteriously as it went. Perhaps the deity went on vacation, a little break from the hard work of dishing out luck to people 365 days a year even though it's only a numbers game.

The other attraction in this small sleepy town is the Serdang lake. I'll just offer you two photos of this place. It could have been a former tin mine but now it is a scenic spot for people to come and relax. A bit of a nonsense, actually, because everyone in Serdang relaxes 24 hours in a day. You can either retire to your beds at 9pm or join the men in some coffee shops to drink the night away and tell tales of who have come into the town today.



Anyway, back to Serdang lake. Really very quiet and scenic, isn't it? I loved it. Oh...now you know. I have been to Serdang and back. And yes, I was at the temple too. And yes, I invested RM1 and I'm still waiting to collect.