Ipoh

We woke up to a glorious sunny morning.  After a typical Malaysian breakfast at Sin Yoon Loong Coffee Shop with some wonderful Ipoh old town white coffee, we took a walk around Ipoh's Old Town.   

Very fascinated by the old Chinese shop houses - restored or otherwise.  Not many left in KL but still quite a number in old Chinese cities such as Ipoh, Penang and Malacca

Yew! That looked like a dried baby shark in a dried mummy shark!

After Old Town, we went to visit Perak Tong, a cave temple built into the limestone hill.  Ipoh is set in a valley among limestone hills and these hills are riddled with caves that are believed to be a great source of spiritual power.  As such, over the years, many of these caves have become temples.  The most popular of all is Perak Tong although the largest one in Malaysia is Sam Poh Tong, both within a few kilometres of each other.

The inside of the temple is filled with all sorts of figurines....

...and the walls lined with colourful murals

A staircase leads to the top of the cave and we decided to give it a try......

At the end of the stairs, we realised we were only at the first level

Tasha and I went up another level and discovered that there's yet another set of staircase.......we climbed down intead!

The "climb" up Perak Tong left us hot and sweaty and we wanted nothing more than to hit our beach resort in Penang.  So, instead of stopping for lunch, we picked up a salt-baked chicken 鹽焗雞 at Aun Kheng Lim and let the girls devoured it in the car.