We boarded the landing craft at about 11pm to sail up the coast to Seramban, there were about two dozen of us, we were given a food parcel each containing sandwiches and a couple of sachets of instant tea. All the landing craft provided was hot water for the tea which turned out to be undrinkable, but the sandwiches were OK. After a sleepless humid night we arrived in Seremban where we were met by a bus to take us to Port Dickson.
Port Dickson itself seemed to have been a quiet resort before the war with a small village and a country hotel, a nice beach and small islands offshore which were reachable by canoe. It had been converted to a rest centre for British troops and most of the lads with me had like myself been away from home for two years and therefore qualified for this leave. It was really a very relaxing time, most of our time we spent canoeing and rowing round the small uninhabited islands and at night we went into the hotel which was renamed the White Horse Cabaret, they possessed a small band and held dances on some nights with local girls attending and sometimes a bus from Seremban. We had some good nights in there, one night I remember I had a few too many and I finished up trying to play the trumpet in the band- I was awful. During my fortnights leave we went into Seremban a couple of times, this was a small provincial town but a nice change from Singapore.
After the fortnights leave and feeling very refreshed we set off back in the landing craft for Singapore, it was the same routine with a packed lunch and that terrible instant tea, the only different was we travelled by day which was much better and I enjoyed the views and scenery of the coast of Malaysia.
We arrived back in the dockyard that same evening and found the ship almost ready to come out of dry dock, after a couple more nights in the barracks ashore we were recalled to the Belfast and the ship sailed to Sngapore harbour prior to sailing on its next assignment.
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