Kuantan Again After 17 Years

Posted on November 7, 2012 by jipp

My job had required me to drive across the peninsular of Malaysia recently, from my adopted hometown Kuala Lumpur all the way to Kuantan on the east coast. The town of Kuantan is very significant to me personally since it was in this town that I became independent and away from my family for the first time at the very young age of 16.

It would be my very first visit after my last goodbye to this town about 17 years ago so I was both excited and nervous and I had mixed feelings about how I was going to react over all the things that bear so much memory to me. Continue reading →

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One Night Excursion to Ipoh

Posted on October 30, 2012 by jipp

The first thing that amazed me when I first arrived in Ipoh was the beautiful hills with peculiar shapes. They are scattered all over, giving Ipoh such an amazing landscape that is hardly found anywhere else in Malaysia. If the whole of Ipoh was flooded down in seawater, it’d look like the Halong Bay in Vietnam. The hills really are beautiful.

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We actually arrived in Ipoh from Lenggong Valley when it was already dark. Being totally disoriented, we had to park somewhere so that an Ipoh local friend of ours could come and show us the way. Continue reading →

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Lenggong Valley: The Latest UNESCO Site in Malaysia

Posted on October 10, 2012 by jipp

Our exploration of Perak continued by heading East towards Kuala Kangsar before turning south towards Lenggong Valley. Now, Lenggong Valley might have surprised a lot of people when it became the only fourth UNESCO World Heritage Site in Malaysia after Mount Kinabalu, Mulu, Malacca and George Town.

Whenever I come to a country for the first time, I’d usually search for its UNESCO World Heritage sites knowing that it’s going to be worthwhile to visit every one of them. I mean, everybody knows that to be getting inscribed on the list is not easy. A place has to be extraordinarily unique and highly significant and historically invaluable to humankind to be even considered in the run for a place in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. Continue reading →

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Exploring PERAK: Taiping

Posted on September 30, 2012 by jipp

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. Continue reading →

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The Pine Tree Trail

Posted on September 24, 2012 by jipp

Before you read any further, you may want to check out my previous post on Weekend Dash-away to Fraser Hill.

Now, due to some work commitment for which we had to go back to KL before midday, we planned to get up early in the morning and be at the starting point of the trail before sunrise.

Then we thought may be challenging the trail with an empty stomach was not a good idea after all so we decided to negotiate with time and wait for hotel to open its door for breakfast at 7.30am. It was a decent breakfast really.

It really was funny. I don’t know what I did in the past to deserve it but I tend to underestimate things quite so much nowadays. There are at least 8 trekking trails in Fraser Hill with different levels of difficulty. Of course with all the egos that we had, we knew we’d go for the toughest of them all. Heh. Continue reading →

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