Ipoh

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David here...

We set off from our wonderful Hanoi hotel at 05:20 and made our way to the Vietnam Airlines office where the $2 bus to the airport departed from. This was much more preferable then spending $15 on a taxi to the airport. We are on a budget after all. We arrived at 06:45 and checked in successfully and bought a a few things to use up our last remaining Dong as you are not allowed to take Vietnam currency out of the country. The flight left about 20 minutes late, but it was no big deal. The flight lasted 5 hours but felt much shorter than that and was quite comfortable. I felt quite sad about leaving Vietnam. It wasn't because I had loved it so much and didn't want to leave. In reality I liked Cambodia much more, however I think it was the finality of getting on a flight and leaving the ground and arriving in a different country, which is the first time we've done it since leaving on this trip. It doesn't seem to be as much of a wrench when you cross a border by train or bus as the scenery just carries on flowing. Yet on a plane you leave one country and arrive in another, and there was just something quite sad about that. Both Suzanne and myself felt a little travel weary at this point and weren't really looking forward to Malaysia, our 5th country on this little jaunt. I think it was because we had travelled through Vietnam in 27 days, stopping in 9 places in that time, which didn't give you much time to stop and relax as we were pretty much constantly on the move. Normally stopping for only 2 days at a time before upping sticks and getting a shift on. When we landed in Malaysia though, we felt like we had come home. It is so much more modern, clean and organised than anywhere else we had been on this trip. It came as quite a shock to us. We found buses to Kuala Lumpur easily and were met with pleasant smiles and helpful people everywhere we looked, and this was just at the airport. We had not got our act together and booked anywhere in advance in KL, as we had only decided at the last minute to stay there as we had originally planned to move on from the airport straight to Ipoh, however we could not find anywhere to stay on-line for the 18th Dec there so decided our best chance of finding decent accommodation would be to go into KL. We had tried the YMCA near the KL Sentral station but they only had a triple room. After checking at 2 more hotels we found one we liked called the Hotel Mexico. The room was a little old and shabby but it was clean, spacious and had a fridge, and it was fairly cheap at £15 a night. We got settled in and then went back to the station to book our onward travel for the next day to Ipoh as we had managed to book a hotel on-line for the 19th and 20th.

We didn't want to see any of the sights in KL at this point as we are coming back here for 4 nights over New Year so we stayed in the area near to the station. Fortunately it had everything that we could want, with a coffee shop on the corner next to our hotel, restaurants and something that we hadn't seen since for a while...mini-marts. It's surprising how much you miss being able to walk into a shop with real prices labelled up and not having to haggle, or pay a premium for a bottle of water. As we were not far from the Little India area of KL we decided to eat Indian and found a little place round the place round the corner from our hotel called Gem. The food was alright, nothing special, but nice enough. We thought we might buy some beer from one of the mini-marts and take it back to our room seeing as we had a fridge however due to the duty that the government has placed on alcohol, beer in particular is very expensive. This has the subsequent effect that as it is so expensive, Malaysian shops mainly stock super-strength beer. The only beer that is normal strength is Skol and Carlsberg. I ended up buying a carton of orange juice and drinking that while watching the Sunderland v Bolton game live on TV. Who says we don't know how to live it up?!

The next day we got to the station and onto our train with no problems. We arrived in Ipoh and found our hotel, the Ritz Garden, with no problems. This was a lovely hotel with a spacious room, lovely bathroom (very important) for the price of £15 included breakfast. We settled in quickly and then headed back to the station to book our next onward travel to Taiping and also to find out about getting further North to Alor Setar, the jumping off point onto Langkawi island. The only train to Alor Setar from Taiping is at 03:08am. We'll look at taking the bus for that leg then. We then wandered around Ipoh to see what it could offer us. Not a lot really. It is a normal Malay town with not much to recommend it really. It is surrounded by hills which makes any direction you are looking at lovely, in fact the view from our hotel over a football field was really nice, with fog shrouded mountains forming the background. We ended up going into our first Western chain for food, Pizza Hut, as we really fancied pizza and that was the only option. We ordered the Pepperoni and it was very nice. The only difference was that the pepperoni was made from beef and not pork, as Malaysia has a high percentage of Muslim people so we presume that Pizza Hut doesn't want to alienate a large group of people as customers or staff by using a meat that they find offensive. That hadn't occurred to us before arriving in Malaysia. It would also explain the strange looks that Suzanne got while she was browsing the spirit aisle in one of the mini-marts in KL. We then went to the main shopping centre just outside of town as that was where the only internet access was. The shopping centre was huge, with a cinema and bowling alley on the 3rd floor and hundreds of shops. It was like stepping even further back into a Western world. There was even a giant supermarket in the basement of the place, so we bought some bread and cheese spread to take back to the room for a late tea/supper. We also bought some cans of Skol as it was cheaper here and some crisps to enjoy later on. We then spent the evening reading in our room, listening to music and munching and slurping our way through our wares.

The next day we decided to do the 3km walk to one of the cave temples that are dotted around the outside of Ipoh, however after walking for about 45 minutes we had to admit defeat as we could not find the place we were looking for. we did find the local bus station however so jumped on a local bus back into town. We had decided that we would go bowling however we got back to the shopping centre only to find that the bowling was completely booked up. The only other option we had was to go to the cinema, however the next film that was due was Tron Legacy in 2 hours so we didn't bother especially as we weren't that fussed about seeing it. If only it was Harry Potter. Never mind. After sitting down and weighing up our options we went back to the hotel to relax for a few hours before setting off in search of some nice Malaysian grub for tea. While we were relaxing the heavens opened and it chucked it down for about 30 minutes. This was just a prelude to the rain that came down later on. We wandered to a food court and looked at some of the food there and none of it jumped out at us so we made our way over to some Hawker stalls. As we made our way there the rain came down again and didn't stop for the night. We had managed to shelter in a covered walkway, which most of the town had over the pavements and finally got to the hawker stalls. Again, none of the food leapt out at us though we did get to see a troupe of 4 girls on stage do a really bad cover version of Lady Ga-Ga's Bad Romance. We finally ended up at a Lonely Planet recommendation that served the best 'chicken and bean sprouts' in all of the region. It has to be said, the staff were extremely friendly, the chicken was extremely succulent and the bean sprouts plump, just as the guidebook had said. It's not often that the Lonely Planet is right, so we were quite surprised, though it was only chicken and bean sprouts. We then made our way back to our hotle to settle in for the night, ready for our next stop-off, Taiping.

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Photos

Ipoh
Meat pick n' mix

Ipoh
Pringles?

Ipoh
Yep, you're reading that right

Ipoh
And these ones as well.