Taiping

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David here...

We walked to the train station from our hotel and caught our train to Taiping with no problems. We then made our way to the New Champagne hotel on foot. This turned out to be a good 30 minute walk and when we got there the room was not great. Clean enough but it smelt of cigarette smoke and was very basic. We got settled in and aired the room out and then headed into town. The main town centre was pretty much your typical Malaysian town. With Hawker stalls and restaurants everywhere, spilling out into the street. It was very much like the rest of Asia accept that the driving was better and more courteous and there was no honking of car horns all the time. We wandered round for a while, just looking around, seeing what the town held and came to the conclusion that there was not much more to see, so we did what all the local Malaysians do in Taiping...we went to the shopping centre. There was a very good reason for this actually as in the last hotel we were in, we got a free local English paper which had cinema listings for the whole region and we knew that Harry Potter was being shown in Taiping Sentral, so we made our way there, bought 2 tickets (£1.80 each...bargain) and then settled down to 2 very big Starbucks coffee's (£2.50 each) to pass the time away. We then went and watched the film. I have to admit to getting a bit emotional when the film started, hearing the theme music and seeing all the English locations and the film itself is quite sad, but we loved it. We then looked for something to eat. At this point I would like to point out that it was my turn to suffer with travellers tummy so really didn't feel like normal Malay food as that normally consists of cold, bony curry and my tummy just couldn't take it. So our only option was...you guessed it...McDonalds. Now, those people who know me will immediately say that I am scathing of McD's and would much prefer Burger King, which is true. However we didn't have much choice, and that is what the locals do. So we both had a Big Mac meal and I have to say, it was glorious. It rounded off the cinema brilliantly. The meal deal only came to £2 each as well. It really is surprising the difference over here for the same things at home. We then went back to the hotel and downed a cheap bottle of brandy (£1.20) before bed. This was also the first time, not including the sleeper train to Hanoi, where we have had a 'guest' in our room. By that I obviously mean a cockroach. He popped up onto the bed, saw us and ran off again. I wanted to name it so he would be our pet but Suzanne was not impressed with this. We didn't see it again for the duration of our stay though.

The next day we made our way to the Express bus station to the North of town in Kemunting to book our onward travel to Alor Setar (or Star) as the little local bus station did not handle coaches. We jumped on the local bus number 8 and got there easily. We found the right stall easily and booked our tickets for the next day (we have since found that all this advanced booking of tickets we have been doing is not necessary really). We then hopped back into town with no problems. At this point I would like to mention the very friendly bus staff that we have come across al over Malaysia. They have made travelling around so easy. Even staff in the bus stations themselves have been so eager to assist us at every opportunity. In fact, I would say that anyone in the service industry that we have interacted with in Malaysia has been an absolute dream...except for shop assistants though I'll leave that to Suzanne to explain in another blog.

We then went to the Taiping Lake Gardens for the afternoon. A big park with, you've guessed it, lots of lakes. Unfortunately, just as we got there, it started to rain again so we ended up seeking shelter under a pagoda and played charades until the rain abated. We then wandered round before heading back to the hotel. That evening we went to Taiping Zoo for their famous 'Night Safari' which consisted of being driven round the zoo in a tourist train to look at the animals and then wandering round by yourselves in the dark. It was a quite surreal experience though we didn't see much more than you would during a day at the zoo. We saw Lions sleeping, Bears pacing round their cage, some Pythons sleeping despite a chicken running around them. They must've been full from previous meals. The best bit was seeing the Fruit Bats feeding and some rather playful Otters that kept swimming up to us against the glass and jumping up out of the water. They were so cute. Overall it was a fun experience but didn't really add much to a trip out to the zoo. We than made our way back to snuggle down for the night, ready for our next bit of travelling.

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Photos

Taiping
Lake Gardens

Taiping
Lake Gardens

Taiping
Lake Gardens

Taiping
Lake Gardens

Taiping
Leaf it!