🇲🇾 Ipoh (5th stop on world trip)

In less than two hours bus ride from Lumut to Ipoh, we arrived in Ipoh. (Our bus driver was in a hurry... red lights didn't bother him and his driving left much to be desired 🙈). Ipoh is the capital of the state of Perak.

A Grab Taxi then took us from the bus terminal to our accommodation: an Oyo Hotel, in an area just outside the city (2-3 kilometers), we knew that beforehand, but the looks we received here indicated that Europeans are rarely or never seen here 😂. It's a miracle we didn't cause a rear-end collision on the road, with so many people turning around to look at us. In the restaurant and supermarket, for example, people showed a lot of interest in us and were very friendly.

Punctually on the 1st of January, I suddenly got a bad cold, so the "big" sightseeing tour in Ipoh had to be canceled. Nevertheless, we were able to take away a lot: we saw the old town with its street art and colonial buildings, the Heritage Trail consisting of: the railway station, town hall, Birch Memorial Clock Tower, and the Sultan Idris Shah Mosque.

Ipoh is also famous for its cave temples. We visited the Ling Sen Tong Temple, right next to it is the Nam Thean Tong Temple, unfortunately, the third one in line (Sam Poh Tong Temple) was closed. The Grab took us to the Kek Look Temple, very impressive with its huge limestone cave, the large garden with a pond that awaits you when you reach the end of the cave. We were in Ipoh during the week, which turned out to be very pleasant because there were few to no tourists in the city and during our temple visits, so we had peace and didn't have to wait anywhere. Our Grab driver said it can be different on weekends. Besides, the school holidays had just started in Malaysia, lasting for 3 weeks. So, we were lucky with the timing. Otherwise, I tried to rest as much as possible. Sun and heat plus a cold with sinusitis is not a good combination.

We were in Ipoh from January 2nd to January 6th, 2023. We can only recommend it to everyone and could imagine coming back again. We would book the next accommodation a bit more centrally :)

We continued our journey to Penang-Georgetown by bus, a place we have visited for the second time.