So it's been a while since our last video hasn't it, and the reason is Malaysia went back into lockdown due to Covid.
But things are now reopening and in this video I'm going to tell you all about our activities in Ipoh,
what food we ate, give you a tour of where we stayed, tell you how much money we spent. Let's get started!
If you've been following our story you know that just a few days after we arrived in Malaysia the world was hit with Covid and so we spent three months on lockdown in Cameron Highlands.
Then when interstate travel reopened we went to Penang for about six months.
And if you watched our last video you remember that we were in Langkawi.
When we left Langkawi we took the ferry to the peninsula, and we decided to take the train to Ipoh in the state of Perak.
The train ride was wonderful, it was very very comfortable, nice scenery in the countryside along the way.
But at the time we arrived in Ipoh some other Malaysian states were going on lockdown and so we had a feeling that Perak would also be on lockdown soon.
So we tried to get in as many activities as we could safely and sure enough Perak did indeed go into lockdown just a few days after we arrived in Ipoh.
But before the lockdown we had a great time doing stand-up paddle boarding in Gopeng, just south of Ipoh.
This was so much fun, we really enjoyed this.
Now when we went there we were the only two on the tour, and we had two guides to help us along the way.
Now I called this stand up paddle boarding, and you can see our guide here standing on his paddleboard.
It looks so nice and easy and relaxing, but here's what happened when I tried to stand up.
I'm on my knees now and I'm going to try to fully stand up.
So yeah for us it wasn't stand up paddle boarding, just sit down paddle boarding, but it was a lot of fun
It was quite relaxing once we decided we were just going to sit down and not try to stand up.
And we liked it so much that we planned to come back to do rafting, but as I already mentioned we went back into lockdown.
Now we'll have something to do if we come back to Ipoh.
Another activity we enjoyed here in Ipoh was visiting several cave temples.
Some of the temples we tried to visit were closed due to Covid but we did find a few that were open, and probably the best was the Sam Poh Tong Temple.
Wow, I have never seen a pagoda like this, so beautiful surrounded by the limestone cliffs.
There were about four or five different temples that we visited in the area.
We could walk from one to the next, and each one was a bit unique from the others, and each one had its own charm and its own character.
Some were smaller and some were larger complexes with very ornate grounds.
If you look closely at this temple you can see the mouth of the cave sort of formed around the structure.
And then the last temple we went to was the Da Seng Nan Temple.
There was a bunch of construction going on, I think they were fixing it up a bit.
And then there was a cave we visited that is not part of the temple.
But when we came out on the other side of the cave there was a beautiful lake surrounded by towering granite cliffs, so absolutely gorgeous.
This is mirror lake and it is so scenic here.
It's impossible to get the whole thing in one shot so I'm going to try to move the camera around.
Hopefully the bright sun here won't wash out the image.
We had a great time walking around Ipoh's historic area, taking in the magnificent train station architecture the clock tower and the amazing street art.
Here are just a few examples of the murals and the street art scattered around Ipoh's heritage district.
I really like this one it's honoring the Malaysian healthcare workers during Covid.
Normally this alley would be full of tourists but due to Covid it's empty.
We're pretty much the only ones here right now.
We enjoyed visiting the Ho Yan Hor tea museum.
This museum of course has exhibits about the tea making process, but the museum displays the life story of Ho Kai Cheong.
The thing that stood out the most to me about this man was that he decided to go back to school and got a doctorate of divinity degree at the age of 87!
What a fascinating story and an interesting museum.
So our next activity was a visit to Gunang Lang park, and there were two unexpected surprises for us here.
First we didn't realize that you need to take a boat to get to the park so the short boat ride was an extra treat.
Then we had no idea that there would be animals to see at this park, so as we walked around we saw peacocks.
Look at those beautiful feathers, wait spread your feathers back out again for my video.
Thank you Mr. Peacock, no wait put them out again!
And we saw white peacocks.
And it was really quiet when we came, there were only two other people here and that's because this was the last day before the lockdown started up again.
Once the lockdown started and we couldn't do any activities we decided to focus on food.
And I'm gonna be a little bit naughty and start with dessert.
I'll start with our trip to Big Mama's to try Ipoh's famous bean curd pudding.
This is a soft, almost jelly like dessert made out of tofu I think and with a large choice of toppings.
I had mine with brown sugar, peanuts, and sesame, and Emily had hers with ginger peach and pumpkin.
This is a must try if coming to Ipoh.
Alright the next dessert is this peanut candy from Sin Weng Fai candy shop, and I'm telling you people line up to get this stuff.
We waited about 45 minutes to get our bags of this candy.
They make this candy right here in the shop and we bought ours fresh while it was still warm.
These candy squares are made out of peanuts and sesame, and I lost count of how many times we came back to the store to buy more and more of these bags of candy.
A couple of other desserts that I want to mention quickly,
these delicious pineapple tarts are made fresh at the store and we bought a tub of these and couldn't stop eating them.
And then these ice cream sandwiches were a huge chunk of ice cream placed between two fresh sugar cookies
I loved the chocolate chip and Emily loved the tutti fruiti.
The peanut candy store, the pineapple tart shop, and the ice cream sandwich store are all located on Jalan Yau Tet Shin if you are trying to find them.
And if you want the best churros in all of Malaysia you want to find Ne Churros here in Ipoh.
These churros they're almost kind of like a donut and they are absolutely delicious.
All right let's get to the main course here.
and we went to Ong Kee Restaurant to get some takeaway food, specifically to get Ipoh's bean sprout chicken.
This is a steamed Hainese style chicken with bean sprouts that are extra flavorful due to the fact that the water that is used to grow them comes from the limestone cliffs that surround Ipoh.
Let's take a look at a video clip of me trying it for the first time.
Alright we just got some bean sprout chicken.
This is one of Ipoh's most famous dishes. We're going to give it a try here.
It was a little bit busy down at the restaurant, with Covid we decided to get it to go and bring it back to our apartment. Let's give it a try here.
Let me try some bean sprouts first.
Very good, nice kind of a crunchy texture.
Chicken's very juicy, very nice very flavorful yeah this is really good we'll probably get some more of this before we leave here.
After the restaurants were allowed to reopen for dining we decided to try some dim sum for the first time, and didn't really even know what it was.
And if you're like us and also don't know what it is, well dim sum it's sort of like a set of small food items,
almost like appetizers or finger foods and very popular here in Ipoh.
And because the portions are small it's typical to order many different items. We ordered seven items out of probably about a hundred to choose from.
You can see the list in the photo there. And really we weren't exactly sure what it was we were ordering.
We just picked seven things that sounded like they would be something we would enjoy eating.
We ordered pork basil dumplings which were my favorite, also vegetable dumplings, wontons
three kinds of steamed buns including pork, barbecue, and pineapple,
and delicious peanut mochi which, I don't know I think if you added chocolate to this it would have tasted just like a Snickers bar.
If you want to try dim sum in Ipoh, we definitely give Foh San restaurant a thumbs up.
I also can't talk about Ipoh without mentioning white coffee, where the coffee beans have been roasted in margarine.
It gives it a really good flavor and something definitely to try if you come to Ipoh.
Alright, so after six weeks of lockdown we were able to do some activities again and we headed for Lost World of Tambun.
The water park was still closed as you can see here, but we were able to go visit the animals and there were so many to see.
Probably our favorite was the giraffes because we were able to get up so close to them and we even got to feed them, look at this.
We also saw a hippo having its lunch, hungry hungry hippos!
And we saw the tigers, and we saw so many more animals, too many to show on this video.
But one of the best things about coming here now is that the park had just reopened and there was nobody here.
I think we just saw a few other families the entire afternoon.
During our two months in Ipoh we stayed in this apartment building.
It had a nice pool, although it was closed during the lockdown portion of our time here.
The apartment unit was super nice, very modern, three bedrooms, we obviously don't need three bedrooms but we chose this apartment anyway.
It was in a great location and probably the best thing about it was the view of the beautiful sunrise over the mountains, take a look.
Good morning everyone, it's about 7:30 in the morning.
I'm standing on the balcony of our apartment on the 18th floor looking east,
and I think looking toward Cameron Highlands, I'm not totally sure about that, but a very beautiful sunrise.
Wow the sunrise today is so different much more red and orange colors, very different but still very beautiful.
Alright so let's go over how much money we spent.
Our apartment costs 80 ringgit per night, which is about US$600 per month, that includes all the utilities and internet and fees.
We averaged 55 ringgit per day for food for both of us which is about US$400 per month.
We didn't spend much on transportation within Ipoh because we usually walked,
but we did occasionally have a Grab taxi so we averaged only US$7 per month.
And then for activities we averaged US$15 per month.
So all together we averaged US$1022. This does not include our health insurance, some small toiletry items like toothpaste,
or our transportation to get to Ipoh from Langkawi.
So where are we going next? Well I want you to try and guess and here's a hint:
we are still having an interstate travel ban right now so we're going somewhere that is in the state of Perak.
If you think you might know where it is leave your prediction in the comments below.
Also be sure to subscribe to our channel so that you can be notified when we release the video for our next destination.