We had 6 nights total in Kuala Lumpur, but only 4 in Ipoh. There isn’t as much to see in this smaller town.
On our final full day in Ipoh, we thought we should see the Perak Cave Temple, as we were in Ipoh, which is the capital city of Perak… It just made sense. Also in that part of Perak is the Gunung Lang Recreational Park, so we did both in one day.
First, the Gunung Lang Rec Park, completed in 2000 and covers about 75 acres of space, 35 of which is lake. Apparently they are working up to being able to offer hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, canoeing, etc but my guess is that is still years out.
There was a big IPOH Wow! sign placed in front of a (not real) waterfall with the name of the park up on top in big white letters like the Hollywood sign or something. Despite the obvious & desperate attempt to lure in the tourists with picture-perfect-posing-points, we still enjoyed the visit for the most part.
We paid 6 ringgits (~1.30 EUR / 1.47 USD) for two round trip tickets for the little pontoon boat which brings you over to the actual park. The boat ride lasts about 2 minutes and then we were on a little spit of land with lots of different kinds of birds and other animals in cages much too small for them and a walkway leading you around. Curly haired pigeons, some kind of peacocks and even a North American duck… 2 spooning porcupines the size of beagles (apparently these are native to Italy?) … some deer-like animals standing about… a large water buffalo…. and 2 ostriches biting at the fence they were in. That’s what was in the cages… We were just really not so sure about it all. The local group (tribe, herd, troop, barrel?) of monkeys were not nice and actually HISSED at us when we tried to go down one of the paths that they apparently had jurisdiction over. So we were unable to see all of the pathways. Anyway, after about an hour of wandering around, we got back on the boat for the 2 minute journey back to the man-made waterfall area and that was that. It was an interesting experience…
We were not expecting all that so we were already pretty exhausted. We continued anyway to the Perak Caves down the street about 25 minute walk with no sidewalk and along a very busy highway. The good news is that we came across some super cute little street puppies playing and I was of course SMITTEN! And I wanted one if not both of them forever. But because I have a realistic (and sometimes puppy-dream-killing) German at my side, we left puppyless. 😦 Here is a glimpse of what my life would have been like.
So we finally made it to the Perak Caves after a long and slightly dangerous walk along the busy highway. This part of Malaysia does not see alot of tourists and I suppose that is why sidewalks are not yet high in demand. The caves were pretty cool, but we must admit that we have seen so many cave temples over the last few days…
But this one was cool because it has stairways leading up and inside and around the caves, back out the other side and up the outside leading to a nice lookout point over Ipoh. That was cool.
And last but not least, here are some more pictures of the food we have enjoyed in Ipoh! I might have already posted them but twice is nice. 🙂
Claypot Chicken & Rice! 
Left: noodle soup with little dried salted fish ((yummm) and fish balls (meatballs made of fish) Right: noodles dry with a spicy sauce and an egg! 
Chicken Hor Fun (thick eggy consistency soup with noodled and all kinds of flavor!)
So, that wraps up Ipoh. Next post will be about Penang, our favorite by far! We are already in the Philipines now, so there is alot I need to catch up on! Hopefully will get on that soon! 🙂
Stories of Exploration and Travel 
Love the pictures. Can’t wait to see Penang!
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