Ipoh, Malaysia

Ipoh is a city in northwestern Malaysia, just over 100 miles away from Kuala Lumpur. We decided to stop here for a couple of nights on the way from Penang to the capital.

After checking-in at the hotel (and requesting a room change due our original being dirty), we headed straight back out to explore. Like George Town, Ipoh has lots of interesting street art to take in as you walk around the city. 

In the evening, we had dinner at a Chinese-Malaysian restaurant. The place was absolutely packed when we arrived. We had to wait about 10 minutes to be seated and then around an hour for our food to come out. It was pretty tasty though, and cheap too.

We started the next day with a trip to the Japanese Garden in the centre of the city. It was nice and peaceful here as we were basically the only people around.

We chilled for a while watching the fish swim underneath the bridges before catching a Grab to go and visit some of the temples in the area. 

Perak Tong Cave Temple was first on the list. The temple itself is within a huge domed cave and consists of large golden statues and beautiful murels. Standing in the centre of the main chamber, and largest of all the statues, is a sitting Buddha. 

Delving further into the cave, we came across some stairs which led part way up the mountain. Around 450 steps later and we were gazing out across Ipoh from a pretty cool viewpoint. 

Next: Kek Look Tong. This cave temple sits on the edge of a scenic garden with ponds, paths and pagodas. We were so surprised with how beautiful it was here. There were little sculptures lining the paths around the pond where the fish and turtles were swimming about peacefully. Walking along the bank, we almost stepped on a big lizard who quickly scurried away. 

The final stop on our temple tour was Ling Sen Tong. We didn't spend much time here as there wasn't much to see; one area we went to check out was actually closed when we arrived. The grounds were full of large statues and colourful flowers of different varieties (my mum would have loved them). 

We rounded off our stay in Ipoh with a trip to Pizza Hut where we ordered a family set meal for 4 (as it was basically the same price as just ordering 2 pizzas). We actually had to turn down some of the food to avoid wasting it. Siwan was happy with her four large scoops of ice cream at the end though.