I was coming back from teaching a c

I was coming back from teaching a class in Seremban with a girlfriend. It so happened my car wasn’t available at the time so we took a taxi. As we were passing Cheras at about 7pm, some Chinese guy suddenly started waving our taxi down. It was the taxi driver’s friend, also a taxi driver, who told us to not go into town, saying there was a curfew due to trouble.

“What kind of trouble?” He asked.

“Killings.”
The taxi driver told us he was going to turn around and head back home to Kajang, and his friend offered to let us stay with them. We didn’t know what was going on… we didn’t even know what a curfew was! I was only 20 la!

When we got there, we saw his children sharpening knives. Suddenly, we heard drums from the Malay kampung nearby. The villagers shouted in Cantonese “Lei la! Lei la!” [“They’re coming! They’re coming!”] and we all ran in to hide. Then there was silence. Nothing happened. The drums went on and off for a few times that night.