As far as I remember, I have never visited Seremban as a separate destination, it was always part of a trip. In Linggi adventure, 15-7-2008 my friend Liz Price and I ended our trip in Seremban, where we spent only a few hours before returning home. And in 2019, during a Trip down South, Aric and I visited the Centipede temple in the suburbs of Seremban.
Looking for heritage information about Seremban I found online this map, where the heritage points of interest are marked. There is quite a lot to see.
So we decided to visit Seremban on a 2D1N trip, similar to what we did recently in Melaka, starting on Friday, coming back Saturday.
One week before this trip, my laptop crashed. Aric did his best to repair it, but could not, it might be the motherboard. We brought it to the ASUS service center, where they said that it would take a few days to check what was wrong. Friday afternoon they messaged that they had replaced the motherboard, but that they needed more time to test the system. As I was worried about possible data loss, I was not in the best of moods when we left for Seremban.
Aric had booked a room in the Seremban Inn, in the center of the old town. A basic room, not even supplying a water cooker. Good that I had brough a bottle of whisky for my pre-dinner drink 😉
We had a seafood dinner in the Seremban Seafood Village. Delicious Seremban Baked Crab and Rice Wine Prawns. With Mouse Tail Noodles, Young Long Beans and Tea the bill was RM 203, a bit expensive, but really worth it,
We had heard about the Luna Lights Wonderland, held in Seremban until 24 September and decided to have a look. Supposed to be the biggest “light festival” in Malaysia. it was located in the Malaysia Park and very popular, it was not easy to find a parking place for our car. And even at 10 pm we still had to queue to get tickets.
Almost one million of led lights have been used to decorate the park. Here is a collection of photos.
There are different themes, fish, animals, space travel.
And romance 😉
A large part of the park is covered with lights, it took us almost two hours to explore everything.
The photos do not show that the lighting is dynamic, the colours are changing all the time. So I also took numerous videos. Here is a compilation, made with the iMovie app of my iPhone..
The next morning we went for breakfast to the Warung Bambam, which had positive reviews. Quite far from old Seremban, actually more in Rasah. Rural surroundings, we were surprised that it was very popular, we even had to queue a bit.
It was a pleasant surprise for me to find on the menu Roti Goyang with Kaya, which I had tasted for the first time in Kota Bharu. Of course we had to order it.
After breakfast we drove back to the old town to start our heritage walk. First we stopped at the Railway Station, constructed between 1904 and 1910, with its nice clocktower.
Next the Seremban Lake Gardens. A miniature copy of the Taiping Lake Gardens. I could not find information about its history. Not sure if it was in the past a tin mining lake, because the center of tin mining was Rasah.
We walked around a bit, not too long because it was a hot day. To me, the shape of the lake doesn’t look like the result of tin mining.
Next we drove to what is called the White House of Seremban, the former State Secretariat, a design of famous architect Arthur Benison Hubback (1912)
It housed later the Public Library and it now abandoned but still in good shape. Opposite the attractive building there is a nice fountain.
That it is in good shape can not be said of the District office and Surveying department, almost next to it. Also built in 1912 and the design looks almost identical to the State Secretariat, but I didn’t find any mention of Hubback being the architect.
It’s clearly in decay.
Although in 2006 the building got an official plaque that it was National Heritage! Reminds me of Taiping. Malaysia Boleh.
We continued to the Church of the Visitation, a Catholic church in the center of the old town with an interesting history. The building dates from 1934, but the parish is much older, 1848, long before Captain Murray started as the first British Resident in 1875.
We had now visited POI 1, 5, 8, 9 and 12 from the heritage poster (see above). many more to go. But the ASUS center messaged us that my laptop would be ready around 3 pm! And it was a very hot day. So we decided to cut our visit short, have lunch and then drive back.
For lunch we went to the Lee Koon restaurant, with a reputation for its fish ball noodles. Nice food and a very friendly staff.
On our way back home, we got an update from ASUS that it would be more like 4 pm, they had to do more testing on my laptop after replacing the motherboard. We passed the time at a nearby McDonalds , went to the ASUS center at 4 pm, they were still testing and it was only at 5:30 pm that we could collect my laptop.
It was a relief that basically everything worked, no data loss.
It was a bit of a funny trip, here is a GE screenshot with the places we visited
I have to go again another time 😉