Part 2: Land of the Mines

Gua Tempurung - the cave meanders under the limestone hill and forms a tunnel of wondrous and endless rock formations that runs from east to west, nearly 2 km in length...the long distance walking I had in my life...hahahaha...a breathtaking gallery of stalagmites and stalactites and amazing rock formations.Its so beautiful and worthy 2 half hours of the puffing and energy in making through the adventures along the river, crawling through the stalagmites...yes...crawling,sliding downhill, slipping thru narrow opening in accessing to the riverbed... we didnt take the camera with us as advised by our tour guide saying we will be drenched wet once out of the cave....;) see more beautiful images as this site http://www.guatempurung.com/main.php?display=home1 . Scenery surrounding this cave is also breathtaking..tracking the cave has been made easy,walkways have been installed throughout the caves and visitors are able to appreciate the surroundings without having to compromise on tiredness and exhausted from the walk. The cave expedition is very well managed and I guess outsourcing works better rather than leaving it to the local authority to manage ...hmmm.....

Since all of us are drenched wet, we decided to cool down at the nearest waterfall...take the left turn to Jeram and you'll see Hutan Lipur Sungai Salu...its just about 10 mins drive from Gua Tempurung. Lata Kinjang is quite a distance but Sungai Salu is just as good...

and as usual, the boys were experimenting their skills on the rocks....




We headed back for Ipoh and had good half afternoon nap. In the evening, Ashraf plan the outings for us...a place to explore his parkour skills... he just cant miss doing it... similarly when we were back in Taiping, he did it again at the youth sports complex...

... and Aiman, mastering his skills on the skateboard......









Its good that the sports complex was assessible during our stays for boys who are extreme games fanatic....

Part 1:Land of the Mines

The state of Perak amazes me with her legends and historic memoirs. When I was in the early 20’s, I used to commute between KL and Penang where I always landed myself for my first job after each academic graduations...gosh, still wonder why my first job was always Penang. Anyway, back to the commuting thing, I would take the express train that cut thru’ the lake...such a serene view ... it was last year that I came to know it’s called Tasik Merah (the Red Lake) where the amazing arowana fish breeds and having spent my vacations on this land. We’ve been coming back to Perak for the last 2 years and still find more places yet to be explored.

Ipoh, the capital city of Perak is not as elegant as KL ... hahaha...sorry to say this Ipoh folks. It is said that Ipoh get its name from the name from the Ipoh trees that was once found abundantly in Ipoh some time ago. One thing Perak folks could be proud of is the numerous historic buildings left during the colonial time. This Majestic Hotel stands grand with it’s beautiful scripture and detail works on its finishing. Even the antique open elevator still works...though we prefer taking the stairs... The Ipoh tree stood with such elegance in front of this hotel.

Taiping has been named as Heritage Town and the town really looks old. I think the town council should put more effort to brighten and brings life to this town rather than relying on its popular spots like the Taiping Lake and Zoo.

There is this coffee shop run by an elderly Chinese couple, maybe the 3^rd generation. I assumed they let out the front portion to this mak cik who sells her daily breakfast, lunch and tea. The walk-in customers are from all races ... hahaha ... the 1Malaysia has been there for such a long, long, long time. Well, the setup is not the kind of environment that you have at the modern Kopitiam ... no white coffee, no Astro, no WiFi ... its purely a lepak place where unofficial meetings were held on how to run the state, securing government contracts/projects, etc... And there’s this swing door just like the one as seen in a cowboy’s bar ... such a cutie view .….

The weather doesn’t favour us when we were in Taiping as its raining cats and dogs. It is known that Taiping receives some limelight for being the wettest town in Peninsular Malaysia. The average annual rainfall is about 4,000mm in Taiping while the peninsula's average is 2,000mm – 2,500mm. Its unusual rainfall has also led to a fertile collection of flora and century-old rain trees in the Taiping Lake Gardens...there were words going round that the women were fertile too...but I guess the men has no where to go when it rained except to lepak at home with their wives… hahaha.

We decided to drive to Kuala Gula, the bird sanctuary. Though the weather doesn’t permit us to take the boat ride to the islands, at least the gallery and the milky stork viewing ease us, giving us a good feeling after having the long drive.

We took an inner ride to the fishing village and we saw baskets of cockles that have been harvested and brought to shore. We didn’t pack them though since its cheaper to buy it at the fresh market...these fisherman sold them in bulk.

On the way back, a few blocks from the village, we saw flocks of eagles flying and looked like they were having a great time teasing and being playful by flying into each other.

>>> part 2 …. tune in for more extreme adventures