Kejor Yop Kejor Perak

Most of the pretty girls in Malaysia come from Ipoh. That’s what the old folks used to say. However, Myolie Wu told me that in this world there are no ugly girls, only lazy girls. I agreed. Full-stop. Actually, I’m not interested in Ipoh girls. I’m more interested as to why they labelled Ipoh with the most pretty girls around. There is one myth which says that it is due to the fact that the water at Perak is much cleaner and clearer there. Ironically, there are a lot of Ipoh Mari ladies in my office. Whether they still carry on the tradition is beyond the thoughts of the male counterparts in my office as all of them are unavailable. Perak used to be a rich mining state. Tin mining is so famous that it was one of the reasons why our ancestors set their feet into this country.

Having dropped by Bidor a few times to taste the culinary there, I decided to visit Perak this time around. Actually, there are a lot of attractions here. For instance, there is a leaning tower of Pisa look-alike in the shape of Teluk Intan Tower (GPS: 4.023324, 101.020317). We all know that it was an engineering blunder that caused Pisa to lean but here is different case. Pisa needs to be anchored to prevent it from tumbling, but Teluk Intan Tower does not need any anchorage. There’s no limit to the amount of tourist that can enter the tower at a go. What surprised me is they even provide free Wi-fi service. Funny huh?

This trip to Perak is my first journey without relying the “ever reliable” map reader beside me. That’s because we have a sweet-sexy-gentle and soft spoken voice of a GPS as our blind man’s stick. If they asked me to rank the most innovative creation of the century, GPS shouldn’t be outside the top ten for sure. It’s certainly a relationship protector! It makes quarrelling due to getting lost in direction trimmed down to almost zero! Guys, if you don’t want to end up at Johor instead of Kedah, you better go get one. It costs roughly RM500 and I can assure you it is worth to starve for one month in order to save money to buy it. It pinpoints us to the location with ease. During this Perak trip, there is never a single moment it gets me to the wrong destination. This is mainly due to the fact that all the roads in Perak are old and for that reason, the map inside the GPS is still up-to-date.

We had our brunch by grabbing the famous rice flour roll in Teluk Intan which was recommended by one couple we met inside the tower. Another thing I like about my GPS is that it not only shows you road but also the attraction like hot spot for food. Initially, my GPS pinpointed me to a place “Liew Kee – Teluk Intan Famous Chee Cheong Fun” (GPS: 4.028405, 101.014628). Upon reach the location, I was a bit dubious whether the device had disappointed me by bringing me to a dilapidated wooden house. However, when we asked one lady in front the patio, we were assured the effectiveness of our device.

One thing I like about driving instead of flying is I get to stop for a detour upon seeing something nice. There’s no chance you can do such a thing in plane or train. Along our way to the Ipoh town, we saw one gigantic abandoned dredging ship beside the road. We decided to stop by. The secluded place turns out to be a museum! Tin Dredge Heritage Museum (GPS: 4.396856, 101.052187) Well this big grey machine has been moored at the makeshift pond. Getting inside the ship is like entering a haunted ship. Seriously, you never know if there’s any hidden soul like strayed cat or dogs jump out from no where when you are to open certain doors.

With no guides or caretaker around besides the one collecting the entrance fees, you can virtually do anything on the ship. With all the machineries still intact, one can barely see how advance the technology it was in the golden days. At one stage, I was wondering whether this dredging ship is actually one of the Autobots transformations. Who knows I might be the actor in the movie who have this so-called connection with Autobots. I just need to say:

“Autobot, transform yourself!”

And the dredging ship transforms into “Optopus Crime”!

Soon we headed to the mythical castle in the name of Kellie’s Castle (GPS: 4.47754, 101.087351). This castle was so famous that it was shown in Discovery Channel. It is famous because it was rumoured to be haunted by owner. But don’t worry. There is no brutal killing or murder happened. It is just the owner, Mr Kellie himself passed away without seeing the completion of the castle. It is being seen as an incomplete mission because he built the castle as a dedication of love for his wife.

Many of the tourists claimed they saw Mr Kellie himself and came up with all sort of eerie encounters. We too have our own creepy moments in this castle even though it was a short period. Two of them to be exact. First was when we entered one chamber on the first floor. There were a few other visitors there that time too. Then, we heard a knocking sound. We ignored it initially. But then the knocking sound kept repeating. I was looking at Han Ching. So haunted even on the day time? Shiver crept into our spine. Hair straightened. The sound was getting nearer and nearer. We decided to escape from the room to the corridor.

We realised the sound actually came from the room next to us. There was this old man. The sound came from his makeshift walking stick. As there is a raised wooden platform in that room, the knocking actual come from his walking stick hitting the floor. Phew … Much to our relief.

The second came when I was in my room at night trying to edit the photos of our trip. Upon reaching the photos at Kellie’s Castle, I was a bit scared at the beginning. Who knows what I might capture in the background of our photos? While I was moving on one by one of the picture, I came to this picture of Han Ching at the corridor. Well, we read of one write up on the wall at Kellie’s Castle which states of many people witnessing “weird” encounter along the corridor. Behind Han Ching, there was this one black figurine at the other end of the corridor in the photo. I quickly deleted the photos and switched off the laptop.

The next day, I opened the photo again at day time with a lot of people around me. I put on a brave front. I restored the photos from the recycle bin. This time I zoomed at the “object”. Again, I breathed sigh of relief. It was actually a Muslim lady with black clothing covering from top to bottom. With her walking the opposite direction, it looks like those “thingy”. I gave a quick thought. I remembered on that day, the lady came from the same family of the walking stick old man in our first scary encounter. I guess she is his wife. OMG! We have been frightened by the same family twice!! Mr. Kellie was so famous in the society around there that even the Indian community still treats him as God. There was one temple nearby with his statue being erected alongside the deities.

We stayed one night in Ipoh town. During our short trip, we tried the famous chicken rice with bean sprout at Jalan Yau Tet Sin (GPS: 4.596523, 101.086619). Service was poor. Chicken was oily. But still there are a lot of people. Sorry I think it’s not good to put the name of the shop but I give you a hint, there are only 2 shops there. If I saw this earlier on, I would not have step into the shop.

The next day, we headed to Foh San restaurant (GPS: 4.596523, 101.086619) for dim sum. The place is very clean and spacious. There is a lot of variety of dim sum to choose from. As we came in two, there was not much we could order. Everything was nice except the price as it was a bit expensive. To make matter worst, we were conned of our parking fee. The story was when we arrived at the area before 8am, we decided to park at one parking field. We paid this one guy who came to our car. We thought he was the ticket officer of that parking area. After we had our breakfast, we saw our car’s wipers being pulled up. There was another guy claiming he was the “ticket officer” of that parking area and tried to collect the parking fee from us.


I told him that we had paid to the first guy. He told us that the guy is not the real ticket officer and showed us the official receipt on his hand. To our anger, we tried to overlook the situation with us questioning why he was not there before 8am. Han Ching was flabbergasted by this misfortune but then I pulled up the socks and accepted our luck. I decided to pay the fee with the objective of not spoiling our day over small matter. Yes, I was dumb to be cheated by first guy but I’ll just accept the faith that we were unlucky. So, people reading this blog, the next time you are at Ipoh on weekend, please get a receipt from anyone who claimed to be the “real” ticketing officer there. Take his picture too so that if you want to report to police you have evidence.


Putting this aside, we channelled our anger into energy to look for the origin of Ipoh Old Town coffee. With so many Old Town coffee shops mushrooming in KL, it’s time to trace the background of that coffee shop. Thanks to our trust on our GPS, we found the original coffee shop which is located at the junction at Jalan Bandar Timah. There are 3 coffee shops there.

Nam Heong, Sin Yoon Loong and Sun Yan Foong. Nam Heong (GPS: 4.59406, 101.077985) is the original shop of which the owner established Old Town chain Malaysia. One can see the newspaper cut-outs inside. Our finding was further confirmed when we chat with one of the locals there. Coffee has never been my cup of drink may it be black, brown or white! But this is different. It’s worth to give a try for those coffee lovers or even the haters.


At the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that one of the reason there are many pretty girl in Ipoh is because of the water. With crystal clear water, it only makes a good choice to make good bean curd, one of the famous foods in Ipoh. We headed to this famed bean curd stall called “Funny Mountain” (GPS: 4.594237, 101.084486). It was so famous that there was a drive thru with staff running up and down to take order, serve, collect money, return the change and collect the bowls and sometimes tips too. With this kind of explanation, need I say more about the quality of the dessert?

Before we called it a day, we headed to the Ipoh Railway Station (GPS: 4.596488, 101.075018), which is part of the historical monuments in Ipoh. One can see the influence of British colony on this town with some of the buildings reflect the culture of Britain’s ruler. The next time if one were to visit Ipoh, I would suggest staying at the Ipoh Railway Hotel itself. Though I didn’t stay here but it is worth to experience the upper class treatment of the “gwei los” in JWW Birch’s era.

Sam Poh Tong Cave Temple (GPS: 4.563933, 101.113583) is another attraction that we stopped by. Though it is just another temple but seeing how one makes their way into the cave by blending the manmade creation with the wonders of the universe is a sight to behold.

Perak is a certainly another gem that’s worth to pay a visit again. A state that is famous for it past is now living through the post era of mineral mining. One would wonder how a once giant of tin mine would now deal with the now defunct business.