Baling

Baling sits in the east of Kedah, hemmed in by hills, with Perak to the southeast and Thailand along its northeastern edge. Gunung Baling stands over the town, 546 metres of limestone rising out of flat padi land. The climb takes about 2hrs and ends in a scramble over sharp rock, past a cave called Gua Kambing and up a wooden ladder through a hole in the peak. From the top the view runs from Penang in the west to the Thai border in the east.

This is fruit country. Baling is one of Kedah’s main fruit-growing districts, and durian, rambutan, langsat and duku come off the orchards around the town. The border is close enough that Thai fruit turns up on the stalls alongside the local crop, which is one of the things that makes a market here worth stopping at.

Twenty-two kilometres out of town at Ulu Legong, hot springs feed a set of tiled pools running from around 30 to 70 degrees. The recreation centre is open around the clock, and people do turn up at midnight to sit in them. The water is sulphurous and mineral-rich, and the site has chalets, camping, food courts and a women-only pool.

People have lived in this valley for something like sixteen thousand years. In the late nineteenth century Baling was where tin ore from Klian Intan was gathered before going down the Sungai Ketil. But the thing that put the town in the history books happened on 28 and 29 December 1955, when Tunku Abdul Rahman, David Marshall and Chin Peng met at Baling English School to try to end the Malayan Emergency. They could not agree terms and the fighting went on for decades. The Galeri Rundingan Baling, opened in January 2024, tells the story on the spot.