"My Home Town....." a Baling Travel Page by lukluk_wal_marjan

Baling is one of the district in Kedah which is located North-East on Penisular Malaysia map.

It was where my father was born, where he first met my mom - got married and have their 1st son, where he drove all of us back during all the major festive holidays, where I learn to swim in the river,where we finally move and settle down after his retirement, where all the happy and sad memories created....and all sorts of other uncountable moments!!!!.

Its also a place that I called "MY HOME TOWN" ever since we move there in Nov 1990. Urggghhh...am I that old???? LOL

Ever since then, it has gone under tremendous changes in terms of development.

In the 80s we still under curfew out of fear from the communist activities in the neighbouring forest. On the Malaysia history map, Baling is where Tuanku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj had the Peace Meeting in 1955 with Chin Peng, the Communist Party Leader.

Above all, most Malaysians should be able to relate to Baling existence & histories but most are also yet to travel this far.....

Directly translated, in English Baling means throw but based on story related by my late father and also my late grandma; the word Baling originates from Thai words. It was initially called as Ban Ling i.e 'Ban' which means mountain and 'Ling' which means monkeys.

After such time, due to pronouciation, the alphabet 'N' is no longer heard. Even now, if you want to test the originality, you can say the word Ban Ling over & over again and you will definitely and finally end up with saying Baling.

When I was young, I have seen a lot of monkeys at the root of the mountain. They some times invaded the hospital compound. The hospital has since been relocated to a new area. I have rarely seen the monkeys nowadays.... and I guess that is the price you pay for the sake of development.....

Another version of how the name came about is related to the story about Raja Bersiung (The Fanged King).

It was told that he thrown his fang from Baling. His acts when he fled from his palace gave names to a lot of places such as Siong (Fang)- the place where the fang was believed to have landed.

Weng was given after the sound of the fang when its 'travelled' through the air after being thrown from 'Baling' before its landed in 'Siong'.

Coincidently, these places are in sequence up to the north from where the palace once was.

You can read further about them by clicking here