And so we were in Ipoh! Minimal planning (those work the best!), shift dates around a lil (to suit everyone), accommodation booked (eenie meenie minie moe...), travel plans checked... off we went!
First stop, Kellie's Castle, - done!
Arrived, hungry, eat/ate! ....Ipoh food - yummm! But that's another post, or two.... (yeah yeah, part two is.... coming.... soon....)
So, what's Ipoh all about....?
Ipoh is the capital of the state of Perak - literal translation: Silver! However, it wasn't silver that was found there but tin! Tin was a big deal there over a century ago, and was what made Perak, and Ipoh! Huge and deep tin mining pools remain til today (one might get a kick flying over them as the varying shades of the pools make for interesting shots) but you don't get to see the monstrous tin dredges from days gone by any more. And then the tin deposits depleted, and the glory days were over. People from Kuala Lumpur (KL) just bypass the town on their way to the more popular Penang up north. Lately though, Ipoh has become trendy for locals to visit... Street art, restored and revived old colonial buildings, some converted to hipster cafes, etc, and all sorts of "Instagrammable" locations has made it a trendy place to visit! More on Ipoh
Me? I had never ever visited, or rather, toured, Ipoh 'properly'... Or visited the cave temples there either. Or enjoyed their much-publicised food.... So it was time to go visit, since we are now allowed to travel domestically, why not?
Let's start from the ground up (literally) - look what I found!
Upon arrival and right after dinner, we walk out of the shop and took a walk around the busy 'Gerbang Malam' or 'Night Gate(way)' area - a kind of night street market - one of the popular areas for visitors to Ipoh. A light drizzle brought up a pretty double rainbow complementing the twilight sky.
We weren't really interested in the goods being sold as they were the normal 'pasar malam' (night market) stuff we could find back in KL; I was more interested in the manhole covers... I discovered they were all different and decorated four corners of the inter-section. See...
I managed to get these three before the raindrops got bigger and threatened to drown us all! Off to the car, we went. On leaving the place, I saw there was another inter-section with another set of covers.... Shucks! Missed those!! More excuse to go back again....
Next day...
A walkabout in the town centre, and a blur of places, and food... and more places (and food!) Let's just have shots of some of what I feel were interesting captures. Picture story, if you will, so as not to bore you... ;)
First, to start off the day... We started from ground up, right, so now, we look skyward...
Ipoh is surrounded by beautiful limestone hills of the main range of Peninsular Malaysia; so goes without saying, we could see hills, hills and more hills all around.... And surprise, surprise - we woke up and found ourselves looking at the dawn of day! A beautiful sunrise in the making.
Somewhere in town later...
...and we found ourselves down a lane, with some interesting features...
I had covered about half of the place when the rains came crashing down in buckets! Being part open air in the tropics, that's the risk you got to take. We managed to find a shop to sit at, and ate shaved ice balls! 😊 (ahaaa... pics in next Ipoh food post! cominggg...)
This post got longer than expected... more to come, later...
Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎅🎄