Ipoh dimsum~!

woke up at 7am on a sunday morning juz to haf dimsum!! the uncle told us tha previous day that the Dua Bao gets sold out as early as 6am in the morning sometimes!! thou we r not great fans of Dua Bao, we din wanna go there and not able to even find a seat..















we did a recce to check out the place on our 1st day and man!! there're lotsa ppl standing ard coz there's no seats!! and it was abt 10am that day.... so now u know why we so ganjiong to go so early le...? but even so, we cant find an empty table and need to share to order our breakfast fast.... anyway end up we din take any photos of the food coz we cant accumulate enough for a nice pic with such a small portion of the table to ourselves... remember there's still the teapot, tea cups, sauces, cards....

wad is the best thing to do after breakfast?? to nap of coz!! haha... now i understand why din i feel especially tired reporting to work on monday morning str after i came back singapore...

we were supposed to check out by 130pm so we did.. and went for lunch after depositing our barang barang at Grassland.. we had yong tau fu (ytf = why the fu*k) curry mee, again, from the same stall the bus uncle pointed out to us the previous day.. anyway this was lunch part 1... lunch part 2 on the way later...















we're done being tourists the previous day le...so today we shall do some town-exploration!! ipoh is generall known to be divided into the "old town" and the "new town".. reasion being that the old town is the original ipoh region where the current train station is and had seen much history of the colonial past of ipoh.. u can actually see that the old town has many buildings that has france influences as well as chinese/indian cultures... much like malacca and penang... ipoh day 1 was spent mainly in the new town where our hotel is, and the new town was there due to the expansion of the old town... hmm... getting complicated....

anyway..... juz a personal comments we had... the old town looks newer than the new one!! i think it was the effort to preserve the place la... at least it was done very tastefully... unlike malacca... where all the buildings were painted so damn bright... the old town was damn lifeless thou... all the shophouses were unoccupied... some of the eating/drinking places recommended by Lonely Planet were not in operation anymore... at least they looked like they're unoccupied... not sure if they'll come alive when night falls...















the bridge that links the old and new town...
















a whole black of apartments with national flags!! national day coming meh? passed loh....



















aspiring lawyer?
















the train station of ipoh... majestic huh... we din go in thou.. yan says wad if it's lousy inside... it'll spoil all our praises for it....

another shot of the train station

"We, the citizens of............. Malaysia boleh!!"

age is catching up.... *tired*

dunno wad building this is... but it's nice nonetheless...

*thinks**damn it! she's late...*

















late and still acting pretty....

oh im at the edge of ipoh!! this bridge goes over the railway and wad lies beyond is unknown to us....

we roam in circles... literally.... passed the little india twice.. the old majestic colonial buildings twice... and finally get to the chinese shophouses... we chanced upon this closing coffeeshop and then yan suddenly exclaimed!!

"Kong Heng!!!"

apparently it was recommended to her by an ipoh colleague.. i checked up lonely planet and indeed it was also in the map... hmm.. but too bad, we're slightly too late... walking abt in too many circles... her friend said the stall is good for their popiah and snacks...

so we continued our walking and we found another coffeeshop that's unusually bz considernig that it's already abt 4pm in the afternoon, way after lunch time le... then we realised there's another one that's right opp. the road that's even more packed!! hehe... of course we chose the one that's almost impossible to find seats to haf lunch part 2 la.... ppl there were mainly eating chee cheong fan.. at 1st i tot it's those usual hongkong style chee cheong fan that were steamed on the spot and has charsiew or prawn fillings kind... apparently not... there were juz the usual ones but were diced so thinly that they look juz like kuay teow!! i ordered 2.. one dry with sasame oil and soy sauce, and the other wet with curry sauce...(hmm???) and a white kopi-peng! i was thinking is it this thing that ppl know as ipoh horfan coz other than this, we've not seen any other places that sells anything close to being ipoh horfan...

ipoh horfan?


we ran out of places to go le... and we're still 5 hours from boarding of bus... more shopping at ipoh parade!! we din buy much this time.... oh no we did... we bought loads of comics!! haha... cheap thou...secondhanded ones... im still not done with reading any of the series till now....

our last dinner at ipoh! horfan!! dun think this is ipoh horfan also...it's juz the usual soupy horfan with lots of eggs... but it's nice!

Grassland big bus with videos and music and games!! but i juz wanna slp... next day gg str to work... *sianz*

Ipoh horfan~!!

was away in ipoh over the weekend... u muz be thinking "siao boh" over the weekend go away muz be very rush... actually ok la... if mind rushing then where can we ever find time to go traveling then? quit our jobs mehz...???

we arrived at 5++am in ipoh and were trying hard to orientate ourselves... were expecting to be dropped at where all the long-distance buses were but we forgetten that we took bus with Grassland!! anyway we spend the morning till 7++am walking in circles (literally) to get our bearings right... good thing that yan doesn't seem to mind it a bit and was gladly enjoying the morning breezy walk with me! =) oh we had prata too! light breakfast with indian teh tarik.. nice and sweet!! sweet like nmalaysian style... in case u dunno, so far all the teh and coffee we had in malaysia were all potentially diabetic-causing....















the trees by the roadside were all trimmed into cubes!!

finally located our hotel of choice and tried to check in... but it's fully occuppied!! luckily we asked further... there'll be vacancies after 10am... hmm... u'll wonder how come ppl check out at 9am in the morning... anyway so meanwhile we go find breakfast part 2.... curry mee!! we sniffed out this stall (im serious!!) while getting our bearings right and wad better way to kill time other than eating?















curry n mee and lor meat!!


while we were at our breakfast pl we caught the attention of a family with 2 kids... apparently dad and mum realised we're from singapore coz we were speaking eng on and off... they wondered why did we chose to come ipoh coz there actually isn't much things to play ard here... not much tourist attractions, it's doesn't haf any worthy shopping arcades...

"we come here walk walk and eat eat lor!"

"then how u know that curry mee frem this stall is nice?"

"coz we got this book!! *points to Lonely Planet* actualli we followed our nose and the crowd that we saw lah..."

"that book actually got say where are the nice eating places huh?? then it got say the bean sprout chicken over there nice? *uncle points to an alley across the road*"

and the uncle/auntie goes on to telling us abt where to find good dimsum, chinese pastry, where to take bus if we wanna visit the cave temples of ipoh, which direction to go for shopping arcade etc etc... a couple of nice husband and wife huh...? oh and all the while they're talking to us, their kids were still finishing their breakfast at their own table...

after a short nap to catch up on lost slp on the nite bus, we went ahead and be tourists!! visiting the "holes"... they call the 3 temple caves shan dong.. the 3 holes... sounds obscene in english huh.. anyway i was expecting sth more majestic and grand from the 3 holes... perhaps my expectations were kinda high.. so they din live up to it...

Ling Sen Tong, at the entrance to Sam Poh Tong





















hey matching attires with the deities!! oops and some disrespects..
















li yu yue long men!! (koi leaping over dragon gate)

















so steep!! no wonder our legs got wobbly on our way back...





















told u we were getting wobbly.....!!

















some of the tortoises were huge!! the biggest was near a metre in length i think!!


getting tired.. and bored.... we decided to skip 2 holes!! haha... perak tong and kek lok tong.. but they did say that perak tong supposedly to be most popular of the 3... next time mayb... the tong won't run away right..

back for lunch!! bus conductor uncle pointed out a coffeeshop to us that looked quite secluded and i think usually we won't pay much attention to it coz it din attract too much crowd.. it's those coffeeshop that looks like it caters more to the local rather than the rich chinese population.. there's only like 3-4 stalls inside and ppl are very friendly.. mums bring their kids to pack lunch for families.. grandchild eating rice with curry sauce prepared by grandma at the stall... i mentioned to yan that i can spend a few hours juz enjoying a slow lunch sitting there looking at ppl..

ah boy awaiting for his lunch while ah ma (not in pic) prepares it...

our 1st ipoh white coffee!! boy she looks tired here...

more town exploration after lunch and gradually we made our way to Ipoh Parade.. the only aircon shopping area ard.. haa... spent money shopping... RM120... *pukes blood*

hehe... wanna know wad we had for dinner?? see!!!

look at the crowd!! (try to spot yan?)

short fat bean sprouts!!

yan's colleague says we HAF to try this in ipoh.. ppl call this ya chai ji, actually it's juz chicken rice with a serving of bean sprouts.. and instead of the chicken rice rice, it's either plain rice or horfan soup.. the latter is nicer of course!! anyway chicken rice is still better in malacca... chicken rice balls rulez!!

after that pasar malam shopping and buying of local produce.....

end of day 1........ *tired*

10km New Balance RealRun!!

when was the last time i ran 10 klic man??!

cant remember le!! not even at Nike Realrun 2 yours ago leh....that one end up nv run lor... due to friends songyong and everyone bangseh...
(oh we did run some distance at ATC 2 yrs ago....that was LOooooNG... got abt 20km?)

slow and steady is the way to go man....

Stand chart anyone?