Way back at the end of June, right before we left Pangkor after our boatyard stint and our week of having the awnings made, I finally fulfilled a promise I had made to Karen. That we would have a chance to go visit the capital of Perak (the state Pangkor resides in) – which is called Ipoh [eee-poe]. It is the 2nd or 3rd most populated city in Malaysia. Karen had done some research, and it was only a 45 minute drive away. I kept saying we would take the time, but we were so busy doing the boatwork it kept getting delayed. This was our last chance.
We visited a museum about the history of Ipoh and the state of Perak. Then we visited a famous, and quite well-maintained, clock tower with a nearby Mosque. We visited “Old Town” – which is a quaint section of town that supposedly has lots of good eateries and social activities. We stopped at the “Old Town” white coffee house and tried some of their white coffee. Not bad actually – although I got a root beer float there. They also had A/C and free WIFI.
Next we visited the old train station there, with a nearby Hindu temple. There is a plaque dedicated to the “Death Train” – the story of a train track put in place by prisoners of war of the Japanese during World-War II. Many thousands of asian and allied POWs died in the making.
After driving more through the city, we ended up at the famous cave temples. We visited two of the 4 or 5 temples nestled into the limestone caves there. We first visited a chinese buddhist temple with lots of statues. Then we visited a Malaya buddhist temple which had an impressive interior built into the rock of the cave. While walking between the two caves, we saw a large (6 foot) critter – either a small crocodile or large fast-moving monitor lizard – jump out of sewer water and into a pipe that seemed too small for it. Karen really enjoyed taking pictures of all the statues and interesting architecture of the caves. We were lucky we got into the second temple just as they were closing down for the day. So, we had the place to ourselves for 30 minutes or so.
Definitely worth a 1-day visit to see the sights in Ipoh.
Here at last are the photos from that trip:
