Balance

Actual location stops: (in that particular order)
KL - Ipoh - Georgetown - Batu Feringhi - Teluk Bahang - Seberang Perai - Sg Petani - Lembah Bujang - Alor Setar - Jitra - Gurun - Sik - Baling - Pengkalan Hulu - Gerik - Lenggong - Chenderoh Dam - Kuala Kangsar - Taiping - Kuala Sepetang - Ipoh - KL

Total cost of trip:
Petrol Consumption : RM244.02 Highway Tols : RM97.70

Morals learnt from trip:
1. Life is a winding road, but eventually you will get there. (the winding trunk roads between towns)
2. When you reach a dead end, don’t be afraid to turn back. (there’s always a reverse gear in the car)
3. When you feel something is not right, don’t be afraid to ask. (not getting lost … for more than 10 minutes)
4. Give clear indication to others on what you intend to do. (car signals la …)
5. There are things in life which you can and cannot do. (such as tresspassing into a hidroelectric dam)

Reason why so few photos taken:
1. It was a driving trip, not a photography trip.
2. It is very hard to hold the camera while driving.
3. Remembered to take all my chargers except my camera charger. So need to control camera battery.

Monday (11 August 2009)
Gerik
8.00am: Woke up excitedly to continue on my journey southwards. Got prepared to drive on, but was greeted by the signs of early morning mist of Gerik.
I didn’t expect to see such a thick mist. I didn’t even know that Gerik is on such high altitude to have this mist.

Gerik

Lenggong
9.00am: Reached the Kota Tampan Archaeological Muzium. Here lies the remains called ‘Perak Man’, the only prehistoric human remains finding in the world which shows deformities. There’s also pictures and displays of other prehistoric findings around this area.

Perak Man

Tasik Chenderoh
After that, it was time to head down south to Kuala Kangsar. Along the way, I drove past the Chenderoh Lake. There’s even a rest area on top of a hill overlooking the lake.

Tasik Chenderoh View Point

Empangan Chenderoh
A short journey down the main road later, I saw a sign to Chenderoh Dam. Being curious to see how the dam would look like, i took the turning to the dam. About 15mins or 9km through winding kampung roads later, I arrived at the power plant. Seeing an open gate without a guard in the guard house, I drove straight in to find a good view to have a picture. On my way out, I was stopped by the guard who insisted that I was trespassing. My argument was there wasn’t anyone in the guard house and the message written on the wall is to ‘report to the guard post inside’.
In the end, I was permitted to leave after agreeing to delete the picture. Well, I deleted only ONE picture of the dam … I still have two pictures…

Empangan Chenderoh - Forbidden Picture

Kuala Kangsar
My next stop is Kuala Kangsar. BY then It was about 11am and I was getting hungry since I didn’t have anything for breakfast. I intend to go to the landmarks and not stop for long before heading to Taiping for lunch. Stopped by at Masjid Ubudiah, the Royal Palace and the Kuala Kangsar Bridge and proceeded to Taiping.

Taiping
I realised I didn’t do my own research on where the famous wan tan mee stall was. I was spending about 15 mins turning round and round the town looking for what would seem like a ‘famous wan tan mee stall’. In the end, the stomach won over curiousity. I just stopped at a random chinese coffeeshop where I can find parking space and had a plate of wan tan mee there.
Next, moved on to drive around the Taiping Lake Gardens and its attractions in the vicinity, foot of Bukit Larut (Maxwell Hill), Taiping Zoo and War Memorial Cemetary.

Taiping Lake Gardens

Kuala Sepetang
It seems that I don’t have many locations left to explore between Taiping & Ipoh. Checked out the map and realised that two other nearby locations would be Kuala Gula Bird Sanctuary and Kuala Sepetang (Port Weld). According to my travel book, there won’t be much birds at this time of the year as the birds will only be flocking there starting the month of September.
Since Kuala Sepetang has its place in history for having the first railway tracks in Malaysia (Between Port Weld and Taiping)
On the way to Kuala Sepetang, I actually drove past the Residence of Perak’s first Menteri Besar, Ngah Ibrahim. It was quite a big mansion (but sorry, did not stop for a photo session.)
Nearing the town, the landscape around me changed from the normal palm oil trees and into mangrove forest. Kuala Sepetang is a small peaceful town which was only awaken by my car. The town was actually a dead end of the road. I would have thought that the railway tracks would still be here but there wasn’t any sign of rail-works along the drive. So much for preserving history …

Ipoh
That was more or less the end of my northern road trip. Two hours drive later, I reached my hometown in Ipoh. The next day, I’ll be heading back to KL. Hopefully in the next few months, I’ll be able to take another trip, this time to the east coast or the southern region.

Monday (10 August 2009)

Paddy Fields

Seberang Perai
8.30am: Head out from Tong Wei’s place towards Sungai Petani. Not much jam along the highway, thankfully.

Sungai Petani
Exit out from the highway into Sg Petani and immediately started to look out for signs to Muzium Lembah Bujang. It wasn’t hard to find and after touring a few main roads in Sg Petani, I’ve finally found the roadsigns to the Muzium.

Lembah Bujang
10.15am: Reached the muzium which is surprisingly located on a hilltop. I was actually thinking that the muzium would be at a ‘ground level’ location. The authorities relocated all the temples (Candi) found in the surrounding lands and reconstruct them at the muzium. There were in total 4 temple grounds.

Candi Lembah Bujang

Once I had enough of temples, I head back to Sungai Petani for lunch.

Sungai Petani
While driving through Sungai Petani earlier in search of Lembah Bujang, I kept noticing an ad or direction pointing to a certain Radix Fried Chicken. I’m curious as I have not heard of this food chain outlet before. Found one outlet and proceeded to survey the place. The menu is quite or should I say VERY similar to KFC, but with different names of course. It also supposed to have WIFI too. Great! I can upload my photos while I take a break for my lunch.
But alas, the WIFI wasn’t working and I didn’t get to upload anything at all. I then stopped by a shopping complex nearby to use the loo and check out the local stores. Got away from the mall as soon as I can, because although the mall looks new with trendy shops, but I was the only person walking around. I hate to be pulled in by every shop assistant around.

Alor Setar
My journey continues up north to Alor Setar. Drove into the town and immediate saw the distinctive Alor Setar Tower.

Alor Setar Tower

Made some turns here and there and I came to Pekan Rabu! It was supposed to be special in the old days to open only on Wednesdays, but now it is commercialized to open everyday. Okay, stopped to have a look, but I got place to park the car so I got back in and headed to the Tower.

Pekan Rabu

Figured out that I don’t want to spend my hours stuck in Alor Setar jam and proceeded to Jitra. Now comes the challenging part. After going up north, it is time to head to Pengkalan Hulu, where I would need to go down south to Gurun(via North South Expressway), turn east to Sik, head south-eat to Baling and north-east to Pengkalan Hulu.

Gurun - Baling
The entire journey from Gurun to Pengkalan Hulu would be on trunk and kampung roads. I made a mistake where I’ve missed a turning at Sik and eventually heading up north to Pedu Lake. Once I realised my mistake, I had gone by about 20kms! And so I head back the other direction back to Sik to find the correct junction to Baling.

Baling View

I remember from my history lessons that Baling was quite an important town. But there were no such signs anywhere. Now that I reread the history books, I figured out that the government might have suppressed the Communist ideology until the extend of forgetting this town as part of our history.

Pengkalan Hulu
From Baling to Pengkalan Hulu, the journey is about 15km on trunk road. At Pengkalan Hulu, I have a decision to make to either go up to the border to Betong or head back down to Gerik. Realising that I didn’t bring my passport an a huge billboard ad calling ‘Remember Your Loved Ones, Don’t Bring Back AIDS’, I head south to Gerik. I estimated that I couldn’t go anywhere further than Gerik and decided that this would be my last stop for the day before the sun goes down.

Gerik
5.30pm - Reached Gerik town. Scouted around the town for necessities…
Motel, check.
Hawker Food, check.
Cybercafe, check.
and best of all, Cantonese speaking Chinese majority, check!

Checked into a not-too-shabby motel run by a Chinese family (so I’m quite sure I would be hearing people banging in the room next door. Not sure if Gerik of all places would have such ’services’ too.)
Had a dinner of fried noodles and orange juices at a combined price of just RM4.50. Went back to the room to charge my laptop and handphone, regretting that I didnt bring along my camera charger (I really thought I packed it along …).
Prepped the pictures and blog text before heading to the cybercafe to go upload online.  Apparently there’s a 12.00 midnight curfew for businesses here and can only surf for less than 3 hours here. So I went back to the motel room to plan for tomorrow’s journey.

Saturday Evening (8 August 2009)
2.30pm - Last minute shopping for a pair of sneakers.
4.00pm - Sent the car to the Peugeot Service Center to have its first service check up.
5.00pm - Last minute packing of bags. Damn … remembered to take every charger except my camera charger!
6.00pm - Drove the car back to Ipoh after that.

Sunday (9 August 2009)
After having some vegetarian breakfast with the family, start my journey up north.
First stop, straight to Georgetown. It’s been a long while since I’ve been to Penang.

Welcome To Penang

I dont even remember the Penang Bridge. I thought the Komtar building was metalic in color but how weird it looked like to me in real life. It looks like a highrise apartment with its yellow coated paint.
Wanted to stop by Fort Cornwallis to have some photoshoot. Just as I step out from the car it started to rain! Bad luck…
Got back into the car and drive on. No longer than 10 mins, the rain stopped. What the hell …

Backdrop - Mainland Malaysia

Next plan, take a drive up Gurney Drive. It’s a different experience driving in the day when there’s not much traffic and people at all. But at least I got to see the actual buildings standing there.

Driving Along Gurney Drive

Then continued on my journey to Batu Feringhi. So many hotels & high rise condos along the beach line that there is rarely a sight of beach from the road.

Hard Rock Hotel Batu Feringhi - Still Under Construction

Stopped at Teluk Bahang to have some laksa Penang for lunch. I hope I don’t get diarrhea because I can never stand strong spices. After a short lunch break, head back to the mainland.

Teluk Bahang

Met up with Tong Wei in his Seberang Perai’s home. Dinner with him and his wife and a jug of beer later, watched Chelsea beat Man United. Well, it was a tiring day … and it was more like watching a football match til I fell asleep. Only found out about the score the next morning.

Thanks to him for his hospitality and his sharings. Since his wife is almost due, need to think of a gift for his first newborn pula …