Exploring PERAK: Taiping

I had never been to Perak despite having spent so many years in the Peninsular of Malaysia. I mean, I did drive across Perak on my way to Penang at least a couple of times but I didn’t really stop to explore any further than its RnRs. So when a friend of mine came up with the idea of joining the Taiping International Marathon 2012, I jumped at the idea and registered myself almost right away.

Taiping would be hosting at least three major events on the same Sunday so booking a hotel had proved to be not an easy task. In fact I contacted almost every hotel that I could find listed on Agoda and probably a dozen other hotel-booker websites and all of them came back negatively.

I even seriously thought about staying at a homestay but the idea of having to stay sweet and polite and probably charming in front of some stranger’s family didn’t sound at all appealing to us.

That was before I found Peking Hotel. Somehow it seemed to have stayed out of the radar and I didn’t find it listed on any of the websites so when I found about it on someone’s blog, I ventured making a phone call.

“It’s OK. We’ve still got a lot of rooms. You can just come here without having to book first”, someone on the other end of the line assured. He only agreed to take my name when I insisted, telling him that I didn’t want to go there and end up sleeping on someone’s kaki lima. With the fact that all the other hotels were fully booked and this Peking Hotel still had plenty of rooms, I had to expect the worse of the worse.

It took us almost 4 hours driving on the PLUS Highway with one stop at an RnR with a tower called Sungai Perak RNR.

The Peking Hotel

Taiping reminded me a little bit of Sandakan with old and new buildings mixed almost proportionately to each other.

With a little bit of help of Papago, we found the Peking Hotel almost effortlessly. Sitting elegantly right in the middle of town, it wasn’t difficult to find. Just the look of it made us jump in excitement. It might not be the most luxurious hotel but there was something about it that made us go “OK, this is it”.

We were welcome by a cashier whose name I have stupidly forgotten and he explained to us a little bit about what to see in and around Taiping. Of course, apart from the expected Taiping Zoo and Mangrove Park, he also came up with a list of restaurants that he recommended us to go to.

“Taiping is the town of the old. It is full of old people because most of the young ones have moved to either Ipoh, Penang or KL. In fact, I’m the youngest in the whole of Taiping”, he said followed by a reverberating laughter. I turned to look at two old men who were sitting idly and having tea at one corner of the veranda. I managed to stiffen my head and avoid nodding before they looked at us.

The cashier itself was a marathoner (or rather used to be). In fact, he still had the physical looks of a marathoner despite having stopped for quite awhile now. When I told him that it would be my fifth half marathon thus far this year, he let out a loud ‘woahhhhhhh!’ before calling out to the two old men and dramatizing the fact that I was from Sabah and  had come all the way to Taiping to join the marathon event. Iskh. 😀

We just nodded in admiration as he explained to us how the hotel had a long history, that it used to be a police station during the British era before it was turned into a hotel as it is today.

We were placed at a room on the ground floor. The look of it would have made an ordinary tourist go checking out right away but we were no ordinary tourists.

In fact the excitement kinda intensified and we were all over the hotel exploring and capturing pictures at just about every corner before we knew it. I really felt like being thrown back to the 80’s when most hotels were still using fans and air-conds were still very much of a luxury thingy.

Exploring the Old Charms of Taiping

Everything in Taiping seemed to be within a walking distance so we decided to leave our car at the hotel and explored the town on foot. After all it has always been the best way of exploring a town the size of Taiping.

Taiping like most other major towns in Perak seemed to be blessed with the old charms of historical buildings left behind by the British when they colonized most part of Malaysian peninsular, then Malaya, during the pre-independence.

There were just so many historical buildings in Taiping I wonder why it wasn’t even included in the proposal when they applied for George Town and Malacca to be inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

I remember being in awe as we were walking past the heavily European St Convent school building. The cross was still there unlike most other convent schools whose cross had long been removed.

The St Louis’ Church was just as charming. It was left unpainted so it really looks like one of those churches in the medieval time.

I did see a few more historical-looking buildings during the marathon but I was too busy thinking how I was going to finish the rest of the KMs. It did come to me that may be I should retrace the trail AFTER the marathon, probably by car, but of course, an acute exhaustion can pretty much change your mind.

Food

The whole town of Taiping seems to be a one big food court with so many eating places to choose from. The one at Jalan Inskandar is just one of quite a number of food courts in Taiping and the number of stalls within the building alone made me so upset at myself for being indecisive on which one to go – first. LOL.

Just when we thought we had found the biggest of them all, we explored further to find more and more food courts of almost the same size if not bigger. That was when I decided that Taiping really is a food destination worth visiting.

We had been eyeing a restaurant right across the road from Peking Hotel more for its clay pot Nasi Goreng. The restaurant is strategically located at one corner of a shop lot that overlooks a busy junction so it really was a perfect spot to be sitting down and watching the world go by.

I would say, it was quite too salty so I had to drink a lot of Chinese tea so that I wouldn’t get too dehydrated especially when I had to run for a half marathon the very next morning.

I did go out in the middle of the night to look for something to tapau so that I could have a proper meal before running for the marathon. Most of the restaurants that we found were meant for beer-drinking  so it took us quite a while before we managed to find the right restaurant that cooks the right food for me. WE had quite a bit of a chat with the cook and my jaws dropped when he told us (that) he himself had run for the Penang Marathon a few times over the years. o.O

The Chicken rice had actually taken me by surprise because it tasted so much better than it looked. It would be the next morning that we found out that it was one of the most recommended restaurants in Taiping. Jeez. What a sweet co-incidence. But then, the cook is from Penang so it’s quite obvious where he’s got the skills from.

Based on a recommendation by a friend, we celebrated out feat of finishing yet another half-marathon this year by having a spread of Thai food dishes at a restaurant called Kedai Kopi Tops Thai Tomyam (whatever that means. LOL).

Without a proper map in our hand, we had to drive around for quite some time before we managed to find it, thanks to the existence of so many one-way roads in Taiping. Even the Papagon couldn’t help us this time.

Misses

Of course with the only one night that we spent in Taiping, we didn’t really get to explore Taiping as much as we wanted to.

The Maxwell Hill had to be spared for another time because apparently we had to take a 4WD to go up there due to the road condition. WE could have hiked our way up but it wasn’t a good idea especially when our visit to Taiping would involve running for a distance of 21KM. For that distance, every ounce of energy really makes a difference. LOL.

We didn’t even get to visit the Taiping Zoo which is said to be the best zoo in the country. So was the mangrove park which is said to house some of the oldest mangroves in the world.

As I keep saying to everybody, some places (and things) are better left unvisited so that we always have something to come back for in the future.