So here I am, back from the sleepy (yet peaceful) town of Ipoh! It was my first time back in Ipoh after 8 whole years, and I had loads and loads of local Ipoh food with my mum and cousins! There was chicken rice, Ipoh hor fun, dimsum, wat tan hor (rice noodles cooked in starchy egg sauce), and loads more! Time for me to go on diet.
Ipoh's also famous for its limestone caves and hills. There were many...so many limestone hills, and at one point I nearly belted out... "The hills are alive....with the sound of music...with songs they have sung for a thousand years........The hills fill my heart with the sound of music...my heart wants to sing every song it hears..." We all know which musical these lyrics come from!!
On a more serious note...the whole point of this trip was to pay respects to my paternal grandma, who passed away at a ripe old age of 86 this year. I couldn't make it to her funeral as it happened so suddenly, so I went to pay respects to her. The temple where her remains were placed was under one of the limestone hills, and it was a very, very peaceful place. We gave offerings, burnt some joss papers and said some prayers. I haven't seen her for around 8 years (the last time I saw her was the last time I came to Ipoh), but I am relieved that her soul is off to a better place. A much better place.
The temple where Gran's remains were placed was next to a famous tourist attraction - the San Bao Dong (三宝洞) temple. This was a temple built within a limestone cave, and was really beautiful, surrounded by lakes and stone sculptures. It is at least 100 years old!
In one of the stone sculptures was a sculpture of the lovely Goddess of Mercy. She looked really beautiful, as always. In fact, she is always beautiful! She's a guardian angel in the Buddhist way of life.
And...the interesting thing about the San Bao Dong temple lake is that it looks different from different angles.
A while back, my cousins alerted me about a naturally-carved Buddha face on the side of this limestone cliff. Can you spot it? It's such an incredible work of art! Mother Nature, you're most incredible!
Here's the temple right in front of the limestone cliff with the Buddha face.
Our next stop was the famous Gua Tempurung caves - a major tourist attraction in the state of Perak. Gua Tempurung is actually a limestone cave standing at 497 metres, and is near the town of Gopeng. It consists of five major caverns (Golden Flowstone, Giant, Tin Mine, Universe and Fallen Warrior & Battlefield), of which we went to the first two. There is a river running through the cave. The cave was discovered in 1887, but the formations inside are at least 250-400 million years old. Absolutely mind-blowing! The stalactites and stalagmites were formed slowly through natural water flow which shaped the rocks via erosion.
Our tour guide pointed out some interesting formations, but before we start, here's the special path built for us to enter the cave. Oh - and there was lots of climbing to do. The whole walk took about 2 hours, and there were lots of slippery areas, so we had to hang on TIGHT. I really admire those who built the special path for us tourists, and am really grateful that they did so.
2 formations which wasn't pointed out - a crocodile head (front) and the side view of a skull (in the background towards the left). I took a close-up picture of the skull...and was pretty spooked!
All these, including the cave lighting, really played with our imaginations! But it was pretty fun guessing the shapes of the rock formations.
This is how the cave looks like, from the starting point. The texture of the cave walls were really interesting. At one point there were rocks that were tiered and had regular, parallel lines. All from a steady, regular flow of water that shaped it.
Looking back, we could see light coming in from the window of the cave.
From this point onwards, there were lots of upward climbs. We were sweating buckets as we made our way up to the highest point of the cave. There was a spot where we could feel cool air coming in from outside, and we stood there to cool down for a while before going on.
After that? No more cool spots. Lots of people were giving up and coming back down. But we decided to go through the whole route, no matter how hard it was. Trust me, the steps were uneven, the climbs were steep...but it was all worth it!
Check this out - the endpoint of our climb!! It was pretty scary to look down as it was pretty high (say around 8-9 storeys!), but it was a wonderful sight. Oh, and the orange light isn't the light at the end of the tunnel although it seems like it. The orange light is from one of the lamps. The cave goes for quite a distance, but that's in another tour package altogether.
The highest point in the cave marked the end of the trail, and all we could do was to walk back. So we did - and walking back was definitely easier, as the slopes mostly led downwards. The stairs were steep though, and lighting was scarce, so we had to be extremely careful.
We had a massive sense of achievement when we saw the light at the end of the tunnel and the faded sign marking the entrance towards the cave.
Had some ice cream from a roadside stall, then drove through Gopeng. Along the way we could see kampong houses in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours.
We also drove through the main town area, before heading to another nearby town - Batu Gajah.
Batu Gajah's main highlight - Kellie's Castle, opened in 1915. It was named after the Scottish town of Kellas, and was initially known as Kellas House. The castle...or rather mansion was built by a Scottish planter known as William Kellie Smith. Unfortunately, a while after construction of the mansion began, Kellie and many workers succumbed to Spanish flu, and the mansion was never fully constructed.
Now part of the mansion lies in ruins, while another part remains pretty intact. The mansion has quite a number of interesting features, like a bucket lift to bring people from the first to fourth floor, an intended indoor tennis court and so on.
Here's part of the ruins from the intact area, along the ground floor corridor, and here's the ground floor corridor (below). Also stepped into one of the rooms for a look - hence the picture of the doors.
William Kellie Smith had a son and a daughter, and this room belonged to his daughter. We even heard that the daughter's spirit still roams about in the mansion...gosh I got freaked out big time! Anyway the ghost stories of Kellie's Castle are described in this blog. I'd never ever go to Kellie's Castle at night!
On a less spooky note, there's a tunnel leading the daughter's room to the son's room.
The rooms were on the second floor, so we climbed up to the third floor for a better view of the main building. The view was pretty good! We even climbed up to the rooftop (fourth floor) and the view got even better. The highest floor was meant to be a rooftop courtyard for parties, for the wealthy people in (then) Malaya.
It got quite scary when we stood on the highest floor - because there were no barricades! Any wrong move would send us plummeting down...and there was no way I wanted that to happen!
So when I went to take pictures of the ruins from the fourth floor, I had to be very, very, very careful. It paid off though! After taking pictures of the distant hills, we decided to call it a day.
Back to the ground floor where we explored the ruined area a little more. Initially one of us wanted to go to the basement but my mum and I strongly objected! My intuition told me that the basement would be a dark, eerie place.
While leaving the compound. Here's a picture of the ruins and the intact building. The building wasn't well maintained either - when we walked around, there were lots of cracks and algae. Looks like they have to do something about it, if not the building will just topple to ruins like its neighbour. I heard that the ruins formed part of the unfinished mansion.
After leaving Kellie's Castle, we went for some chicken rice, and I took some pics of the streets in Ipoh. The old colonial buildings were still intact, though a little run-down, but it's definitely a different sight from what I usually see in Singapore.
The next day we went shopping and I got lots and lots of food! Coconut sweets, biscuits, cuttlefish etc etc., you name it! We were totally exhausted by the time we finished. As we were driving back I noticed the Hirojaya Piano School...I usually look out for piano schools and anything to do with piano!
Had delicious home-cooked soup and food, and the next morning we boarded the plane. The plane we flew was a 1988 style ATR 72-500 propeller plane. When coming into Ipoh, we flew at about 500 km/h, but when going back to Singapore, it was only about 400 km/h. But the journey took an hour and a half. Anyway the flight to and from Singapore was smooth, service was good and it was fun watching how the plane slowly climbed up into the clouds.
Landed in Singapore and went for some Nyonya food.
And that marks my third trip out of Singapore this MONTH!!! The first one was to KL, the second was to Phuket and here's the third one. I just realised I haven't put up pictures from KL or Phuket, but I'll do so pretty soon! Do stay tuned!
Meanwhile back in Singapore...I'm enjoying some Karen Carpenter music!