Hot in the City

I have always wanted to go to Ipoh, Perak to try out the rafting there. But the long bus ride has always deterred me. Last weekend, I finally took the courage to endure the long bus ride to Ipoh.

The bus departed from New Park Hotel on Kitchener Road. It's in the heart of Little India. I never knew such a hotel existed and it's a pretty big building too. Oh, I happened to see lots of their guests were Indian. Kekeke! The coach I was taking was a Super VIP bus but the seats didn't come with individual TV screens but each of us had a blanket and a bottle of water.

Eight hours later, we finally arrived at the sleepy town of Ipoh. It was only 5am. AFter washing up at the hotel, we proceeded to the nearby dim sum restaurant for breakfast.


Here's the view from my hotel room. Ipoh's landscape looks like Singapore but 20 years ago. That's our dim sum restaurant. It opens at 6am and there were many tables filled already. Amazing! Not very appetizing dim sum though.


We went to the town of Gopeng for our rafting. Here're our guides. They look so tiny. The surrounding was so serene. The rapids were Class III but I have had worse so it was fun but not too challenging. This annoying guy kept telling me how to row. It seemed that he kayaks so he 'knows'. It was his first time rafting. Blah!


AFter a delicious Malay lunch, we proceeded to Gua Tempurung. It is the largest limestone cave in SEA (I think). From the outside, it looked like any ordinary hill. However, once we were inside, it was a big hollow cave. We took a guided tour that took up up and down the steps in the cave. The guide pointed out the stones that looked like objects. zzzz...I nearly feel asleep because it was kind of boring. But we weren't prepared for the second part of the tour. The guide then guided us beyond the railing into the crevices and that started out River Adventure tour in the cave. We went through narrow gaps, crawled under low-lying rocks on all fours in the water, all the while holding a tiny flashlight! We also had to slide down steep slopes. It was like in an Indiana Jones movie! It was so much fun. My legs and knees were so sore from crawling in the cave!

In the evening, we returned to Ipoh. For dinner, we had Ipoh Hor fun at a local restaurant, which was packed! It cost me about 7RM. So cheap! I had a drink which was barley with corn. It was so delicious!



The next morning, we went to the hot springs at Sg. Klah, near the border of Perak and Selangor. I love hot springs but somehow, it seemed strange when the weather was already so hot. But it was still enjoyable to soak in it for a while.

We had some free time in the afternoon before heading back to Singapore. So we went to watch a Malay horror movie, Jangan Pandang Belakang. We checked that it had English subtitles before purchasing the 8RM tickets. So cheap! It was those pontanak kind of horror movie. Quite exciting. It was reportedly one of the popular movies in recent Malay movie history.

So it was a fun and relaxing trip. My legs are still sore but it was a good trip and the 8-hour bus ride didn't seem that long after all. But doubt I would go back to Ipoh again in the near future.