My brother and his new wife from the US came back to Malaysia a couple of weeks ago to visit and have their customary Malaysian Chinese super-indulgent wedding dinner (since they had their actual wedding in the US). And before I continue with anything else, may I just say that helping to arrange other people's wedding dinners are quite a bit of work, so when or if I get married, I'm going to try to make sure other people to do the work for me as much as possible. Bwahaha.
Anyway, after the wedding the 3 of us together with our dad took a short 2 day trip back to my parent's hometown in Ipoh, Perak. We used to go back pretty often when we were younger during Chinese New Year to visit the grandparents and other relatives, but as all my grandparents have passed away, we no longer go back to Ipoh very often. Usually the trip back is a rather mundane one for me... I was the typical kid who wasn't much up to staying at grandma's less-than-fancy house with the freezing showers coz' they had no heater.. and I would have to go with mum and dad to visit all these people whom I can't really speak to well coz' they mostly speak Chinese and I am quite the banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Go figure). Then I would forget about them for the rest of the year until the next CNY when I had to go and visit them again. We would go to the same places, visit the same people and eat the same food... but coz' Ipoh's food is dang good, that's the one part of the routine that I was totally cool with.
This time around was interesting though, coz' we hadn't been back to Ipoh in ages, and it wasn't the same routine as before.... except for the food, which is pretty much a mandatory thing everytime we go to Ipoh (we always go to the same food places!). This time was more like a trip down memory lane as we visited some old haunts, and also visited some new places in Ipoh too. And since I have a tonne of wonderful photos and stories to share, this shall be my first of three parts on my story of our Amazing Ipoh Trip. Part 2 will be about our trip down memory lane and Part 3 (which I'm sure you'll all be waiting for!) is about the FOOOOOOD. Hmmm....
I shall start off with the new places we visited that we don't normally go to, coz' I've just gotta tell about the freaky hotel we were almost going to stay in. Actually, my bro and his wife wanted to stay in a colonial-like hotel coz' they thought that would be interesting. So they searched online and found a place called the Majestic Station Hotel, located at the same building as a KTM train station. It seemed pretty colonial, but my dad kept on saying it was a crummy place, which kinda annoyed the rest of us who hadn't even seen the place yet. Anyhow, we went there to check it out and decide if it was worth staying.
The building on the outside did look pretty colonial. We took a walk around the train station just to have a better looksee.
There was a nice little park outside with the Ipoh tree where the town got its name from.
That's me being a camwhore!
The hotel was on the right side of the station, and soon as we saw the staircase leading up to the hotel, with a really old-style and creaky elevator right next to it, my bro and sis-in-law had their doubts about this place.
They decided we were probably better off staying off somewhere else and they were ready to leave. I, however, thought since we were already there, we might as well go all the way and make doubly sure the place is as crummy as it looks on the outside. So I put on my 'muka tebal' (thick face), marched right up to the receptionist and asked if we could have a look inside the rooms (my bro and sis-in-law were following behind and somewhat embarassed, I think, coz' apparently this is unheard of in the US... but I figured since the place looks dingy and unpopular, they probably would be happy to show us around for a chance at us giving them some business).
And indeed, the guy was most happy to show us a room, which looked every bit and crummy and we imagined. And from this pic, a little bit spooky too.
I snuck that photo while walking out. Thank God I didn't see any strange things in this photo. On the way out, we actually were brave enough to try the dingy elevator, which is one of those old versions where we have to open and close the door ourselves!.
The whole dang thing creaked as it started moving, and creaked even louder when it stopped at the bottom floor. I think that was the deciding factor for all of us to run away as far as possible form this hotel and never look back. We ended up staying at the Grand View hotel, which is not particularly special, but certainly a lot better than this place.
Next interesting but less freaky place we had a visit at was the Perak Cave Temple. Actually, it's one of many cave temples in Perak, but for some reason, this one has the honour of getting this name.
Some of the elaborate paintings they had on the cave walls. Technically still counts as graffiti, right?
As with most caves, they make us walk up a whole bunch of stairs to see more cool stuff, and so we did and this is what we got.
I was thinking the Chinese word meant 'Congratulations!' for those who made it all the way to the top, but apparently it meant 'Buddha'. Oh well, a banana wouldn't know any better. I still think it means 'Congratulations!". Especially since we also had to do some hefty rock lifting.
Oh yeah, all that working out at the gym seems to be paying off. Lol! My bro's been working to. See, he does rock climbing good, yes?
Well, it was supposed to look like he was rock climbing but ended up looking like the top half of his body was growing out of the rock. Ah well.
All in all, the temple was pretty ok, though not the most awe-inspiring temple I've seen. On the way out, I gave a scare to one of the many mongrel dogs outside the temple who seemed to have made their home in this place. It was looking away while I snuck behind it to take a photo, and just when it saw me I caught it's picture and the priceless-"What the $@#??"-look on its face!
I really should learn to stop traumatizing the animals. Anyway, that's all for Part 1. We didn't really visit a lot of places, but hey better than nothing, right? Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Amazing Ipoh Trip!
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