Back to Nature : Sekeping Serendah

It took me awhile to  get all these pictures sorted out which is why this post is about 20 days late.
As some may have already know, Fatty and I had a short getaway at Sekeping Serendah on our 14th months and also using Valentine’s Day as an excuse.

2 days before our short getaway, we went for grocery shopping because I want to/ have to/ need to bring our own food to this place called Sekeping Serendah which is located at Rawang.
Reason being is because Sekeping Serendah is not a resort and they do not provide meals.
It is a “Back into the woods” kind of thing so please don’t expect fancy restaurants all around.

As you can tell, I’m really fine with this fact for giving me a reason to get my hands dirty while preparing food.
I prepared two meals, cooked our lunch and marinated meat and seafood for dinner.

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Peeling and deveining prawn, as easy as ABC.
If you still don’t know about this, it’s okay because you’ll know 3 seconds later. Every prawn has this ‘black line’ at the back of the prawn and this ‘black line’ is actually called intestinal tract.
Most of the restaurants do not devein their prawns because it can be time consuming but if you intend to cook prawns at home, you should really devein it.
Not exactly harmful to eat but definitely better off without. Just use a sharp knife and cut along the “black line” (do not cut too deep) and you can easily extract it with the tip of your knife.
Tadaa! Learned this from my mom.

And as you can see from the picture above, the intestinal tract is full and disgusting!

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Hi Kampung fish.
Fatty hates dealing with chicken but I figured I hate dealing with seafood even more.
It just seems so ……. (not exactly disgusting)……..geli. Yes, geli!
What’s geli in English?

I asked my mom, what do I have to do with the fish.
And this is what you have to do.

fish_gill.jpg

Open up the gill cover and you’ll see red coloured gill waiting for you right there. Stuck in your finger and pull out the fish’s gill.
Once you pull it out, most of the unwanted intestine and what not will come out together because it is link together.
This part seriously scare the crap out of me. I stand by the sink, looking at the fish not sure how to do the first step.
Geli maximum!!

Almost on par with Mr. Squid damn it.
And here’s the bloody intestine, must share it with you guys!

Okay, enough for the food preparing session.

Back to Sekeping Serendah, the journey to that particular place is quite a pain in the ass when you have an impatient boyfriend (when it comes to driving) right beside you.

The traffic at Rawang is pretty bad and traffic lights everywhere did not help on the situation.
Fatty got more and more impatient because of this and keeps complaining.
He can be this annoying sometimes!  

sekeping serendah entrance

The whole journey took us about one and a half hour and this is what greeted us once we arrived.
Sekeping Serendah’s entrance.

You’ll see this big black symbol thingy after you passed through the entrance, right in front where you’ll park your car.
And yes, it was raining the whole day. ):

There are 3 different sheds you can choose to stay in Sekeping Serendah.
Glass shed, mud shed, or timber shed.

I booked mud shed from Agoda and it costs us about Rm400+ including the tax.

Rm400 for a night and just for the two of us is actually really pricey but at that moment there was no better choice so we paid anyway.
Expensive because it’s a Saturday and just the two of us. If you go on weekdays and you have more friends, it’ll be much cheaper.

sekeping serendah mud shed

The first sight that greeted us at mud shed, the living area and kitchen.

sekeping serendah mud shed

This wire chair is one of the thing that attracted me to choose mud shed. :D

sekeping serendah mud shed kitchen

There’s everything you need in mud shed’s kitchen. From utensils to kettle to oven and there’s also Milo and Nescafe sachets waiting for you.

sekeping serendah mud shed

A tree trunk in the house!! I love love love having tree trunk inside a house, just like the picture shown.
It’ll be totally awesome if I can have a tree trunk in my future house! :D

sekeping serendah mud shed

Mud shed can fit in 4 person. There’re bunk beds at the side and a queen bed in the middle of the room.

sekeping serendah mud shed

And a mosquito net that didn’t quite work because it’s too small for the bed but we used it anyway.
There was quite a number of flying insects and they’ll just land wherever they want randomly, so mosquito net to the rescue.

This is where we showered. :)

sekeping serendah bunk bed.

This is not the ordinary bunk beds we see everywhere. It’s a built in bunk beds so it’s really high up if you compare.

sekeping serendah bunk bed.

Took me awhile to climb up.

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Out of the blue I spotted this dog with puppy eyes laying right at the corner.
Not harmful at all, so don’t worry. The dog just need some companion. :)

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This is our lunch, which I cooked. I might just do a recipe post next.
Sauteed mushrooms, poached eggs in tomato sauce, and garlic chicken with white wine sauce.

sekeping serendah mud shed

Oh ya, you actually share the living area and the kitchen with somebody else because there’s 2 rooms. Unless you book 2 rooms together then you can have it all by yourself.

sekeping serendah mud shed

It was just the two of us during noon and we kind of messed up the place a little, haha.

sekeping serendah swimming pool

After we had our lunch, we decided to go check out their swimming pool  area.

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Shorty!

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It was actually drizzling but we kind of fucked it and walked to the pool anyway. Thank God we did because it rained the whole friggin day!

♥ :)

Crazy couple is crazy.

We threw in our bottle of wine and that’s Fatty acting funny with the wine.
I did not really jump in and join, I just went halfway.
The water was too damn cold for me.

I don’t know how to swim but I’m actually not afraid to jump into the pool. What I’m afraid of is jumping into a friggin cold pool.  Which is why swimming always is a pain in the ass for me.
Plus my asthma always attacked me if I caught a cold while I swim. It is also a phobia thing. :(
Trust me, I’ll be the first to jump in if there’s a warm or hot swimming pool. Pfft!

We were both tired and ran out of activities to do (IT’S RAINING), so we took a nap.
Sleeping with trees in the woods really has a significant difference compared to sleeping in an air-conditioned room in the city.
That nap and that night’s sleep was one of the best sleep ever which we both agreed.

sekeping serendah barbecue

After our nap, it was dinner time and the guy who worked there prepared the barbeque pit for us.
It is really easy to barbecue at Sekeping Serendah because all you have to prepare is just the food alone.
They have everything else already.

Fatty doing his job, barbequeing chicken, marinated lamb from jusco, prawns, and the kampung fish.

Prawn and fish tasted the best and they’re super easy to prepare.
Almost hassle free, just marinate the prawns with salt, pepper, and black pepper 10 minutes before you barbecue.
As for the kampung fish, what I did was chopped some onions and some garlics and then combined it with asam sauce or curry sauce.
Then, marinate the kampung fish with the sauce and tadaa!
You can basically choose any sauce you wish from supermarket. Those small curry packets or belacan packets which are made easy for cooking, take those.

Even people who cant cook can do this I believe. :)

After our hearty meal we went back into our room and tried to enjoy the remaining hours.
We listened to love songs, then clubbing songs. We danced, we cuddled, we laughed, and we talked.

And I played sparkling fireworks or ‘dik dik gam’ as we called it in chinese.
The last time I had fun playing with these was on 2009’s Christmas, which was pretty long ago.

I told Fatty I wanted to play sparkling fireworks and I want a few packs but he bought the entire box with I don’t know how many packs in it!
How can I even finish that, I’m not sure.

Maybe I should plan on doing another light painting with my sparkling fireworks since there’s tons. :D
I miss playing light painting!

After all the mini activities in our room, we showered and get going to Poh Juan’s birthday at Phuture.
Sigh, bad timing. We have to drive all the way to KL to club and then all the way back to Sekeping Serendah at 3am.
It was tiring!

Woke up the next day wishing that we could sleep longer but we cant because we have to check out.

sekeping serendah waterfall.

It was still early so we drove to the infamous waterfall nearby and there were lots of people enjoying their Sunday that day. Adults and kids having fun all together.

We could have done so much more if it weren’t for the rain.
Maybe in the future if my friends are interested, I will go again for glass shed.

This short getaway was  weird, with the rain and clubbing half way but I still enjoyed it.
It definitely feels good to take a break from the city and embrace the nature with the one you love.

No air conditioner, no television, no computer, no internet, and no signal!

Getting There

From Kuala Lumpur, take the North-South Highway (NKVE) north and exit Rawang. After the Rawang toll gate, turn right and head north via old trunk road. Pass busy Rawang town and head toward Serendah (10km). Turn right at 1st set of traffic lights after Serendah Police station. Next, print out and view the local map (600KB pdf) to reach the retreat.

Sekeping Serendah Retreat Homestay
Jalan Ipoh, Kg Orang Asli,
Serendah, Rawang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Tel No: 012-3246552(Christina)
Email: bookserendah@gmail.com

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