YowCH & Grace

140615 to 21 PJ, Ipoh, Tambun Trip 1/2

For this June holidays, we took a week-long break to visit YowCH’s parents in PJ, while we dropped into Church Camp, get Esther’s and Grace’s ICs done and to have a short local trip.

We left Singapore at 5:00am on Sunday, 15 June 2014. The car was packed with stuff for Loon’s baby, to be born in August.

Upon arrival at 8:30am, we went straight to the mamak for breakfast. YowCH’s parents walked from home to join us.

We then unpacked and rested, then had lunch with Daren and Loon at nearby Yong Tow Foo. Very nice.

We then went to One Utama for some shopping and dinner at Hokkaido Sushi, again, nice.

Certainly, we had supper, with Chee Kean, Loon and Daren.

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On Monday, we went to the IC department at Shah Alam to update Grace’s IC and to make a new one for Esther, who had just turned 12. The IC can be collected the next day, but we will be away on a short trip to Ipoh-Tambun. That afternoon, we dropped into Bintang Chulan Hotel near One Utama for the start of Church Camp.

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On Tuesday, 17 June 2014, we drove off from home at 5:10am to get to Ipoh early to enjoy dim sum breakfast.

Click on the map below for a larger version.

After a 10 minutes break to feed Samuel, we reached Ming Court at 7:30 sharp.

After breakfast, we visited the caves-temples, starting with Ling Sen Temple:

Then a short walk over to Nam Tin Temple where we climbed to an intermediate level.

This is the view out of the cave at the higher level.

Next is the nicest of the lot, Sam Poh Temple:

The inner opening has a turtle pond with several species of turtles and terrapins. Very naturally cooling although the roadside is super hot due to the summer solstice.

After these three neighbouring cave-temples, we returned to town for luncheon snack at Sin Yoon Loong White Coffee. Their coffee was fantastic in taste. We also had some kaya toast, chee cheong fun and egg-custard (Chinese panna cotta). All very nice!

After the coffee break, we drove over to Jalan Kuala Kangsar and visited Perak Cave, the nicest of the cave-temples.

While Grace (with Samuel) and parents rested in the cool cave, YowCH took Esther, David and Joseph on the vertical hike to the top of the lime-stone hill. About 40-storeys high, the climb was rather tough, but even Joseph made it to the top!

We then checked into the Lost World Hotel, and since the Lost World is closed on Tuesdays, we went out for a late lunch at nearby Nasi Kandar shop.

We got three rooms (all next to each other, with 2 adjoining for the children and YowCH’s parents).

After lunch, we drove to Batu Gajah to visit Kellie’s Castle, an unfinished project of a Scottish castle with local design features. Reaching at 4:00pm, we roamed the place until 5:15pm before returning to Tambun. The children had a great time exploring the place, going through secret stairways and climbing to the roof.

The hotel was rather quiet on a Tuesday (off-day), and we just conveniently had dinner at the Damansara Village steamboat restaurant (duh, the main restaurant is just 10 mins from the PJ home!).

This is where Samuel had his first taste of solid fish meat! And he enjoyed it greatly!

After dinner, we went out to the Lost World’s Hot Springs for a dip, rather refreshing. It is park of the hotel room package!

Even Samuel enjoyed the warm water from 35°C to 42°C in various pools of mineral-rich water from the local springs. There was even a steam room.