We've mainly traveled on freeways between JB and Malacca and KL and Ipoh. Lots of palm plantations and today we got into some hills. Very steep but the road went between them. Today was the longest trip. The bus stopped at a rest stop after about two hours for 10 mins or so. I think the traffic may be heavy because of the holiday.
Upon arriving in Ipoh, we went down the block to a Chinese buffet I remembered. As we were finishing lunch, a Lion Dance troupe arrived!!!!!! What a performance right in front of us. They performed for about 15 minutes dancing around the restaurant to bring good luck.
Then, we looked around at some colonial buildings including the train station. Colonial seems to be British from mid 1700 to mid 1800. It's like visiting an older town where the downtown is partly empty. It seems to have very busy places and very deserted places.
Joan had the Ipoh signature chicken rice dish. (Joan Very good
The next morning, we had 9:30 bus tickets so got out shortly after 7 for breakfast. This was the first hotel without a breakfast but we found a restaurant attached to another hotel with a buffet. Walked over to the bus station and were so early we went to the train station and sat outside it for a while.
Off to Taiping and got there in less than 1.5 hr. Then we started wondering where our good luck from the Lion Dance went.
We went thru Taiping without stopping. We ended up at another town about 7 km away. Lani had actually arrived at that station before and said that there was a local bus to Taiping. One arrived after about 15 min and said no, wait another bus will come. A woman came by and confirmed that yes, a local bus would come. 20 mins later the woman came back and said come with her, she would drive us. She ran a store across the street and her husband would watch it. She then drove us back and toured us around the gardens and to the hotel. !!!! We then went to the hotel to leave the luggage. Tried to book a bus at the downtown station, all the buses for tomorrow were full from that station. Since we didn't want to try to get back to the bigger station, we went back to the hotel and tried to buy online. We were looking both from here and from Ipoh. We tried to book thru a bus company site and a general bus travel site. Neither would take credit cards, so Joan decided to set up a webcash account which both would take. It also wouldn't take the credit card.
We walked around looking for a travel agent and asked at the big hotel in the middle of town. She directed us to another bus ticket counter. After we found the bus office, we discovered that we could travel late at 6:40 pm tomorrow.
Next morning, ate at the hotel buffet. They even had my rice porridge. We walk to the lake gardens, a large park with many trails and visited the zoo. It has good habitat for a variety of Asian and African mammals and birds.
After lunch at the fod court, we walked to another very informative museum. We then saw a Chinese performance of balancing acts and a great unicyclist doing tricks. Finally time to reclaim our luggage at the hotel and go to the local bus startion to catch the 5:30 local bus to the outlying bus terminal. We sat for 25 anxious minutes before leaving. Then the bus stpped to pick up and let off people on the way. We arrived with 10 minutes befroe the scheduled departure and waited an additonal 15 minutes. Left at 6:55 heading into the duask for Butterworth / Georgetown. After a slow trip we got to the ferry terminal at about 8:30. We got shuttled (we think for being elderly with luggage) to the ferry terminal enterance to avoid 10 min walk.
We must have just missed the ferry because we waited 30 minutes for the next one. Upon arriveing on the other side, we tried to hire a taxi who referred us to a bus. We walked to the hotel arriving around 10. Beautiful hotel, see you in the morning.
