We have another long weekend this weekend. In gloriously multicultural fashion we get Monday off to celebrate the Prophet's birthday, which was on Sunday, and Tuesday off for the Indian celebration of Thaipusam.

So we have headed once more for Perak -- Taiping to be precise.

This is Day 3.

We're staying at the Legend Inn, which is probably the best hotel we've encountered during our current stay in Malaysia. Decent-sized room, quiet environment, free wifi, nice breakfast. Just a pity they can't come up with an early breakfast, but more of that later...

We got here via the fast train to Ipoh, which is really very smooth and zippy. The platinum service gets you there non-stop in two hours.

The only drawback was that we'd missed breakfast -- Di Naina, our local early-morning purveyor of weekend rotis and teh tarik, was not yet serving when we rolled up just after six. Come back in 30 minutes, they said. Not possible. Train to catch... None of the vendors had turned up yet at Subang Jaya station either, and when we got to Kuala Lumpur station, all that was available was snacks. A sticky kaya bun put us on for a while, but how could that be a replacement for proper brekkie? Even on the train, there was nothing but cakes and sandwiches. So, once at Ipoh, we needed to detour via the nearest food outlet, Old Town White Coffee, before setting off for the bus station.

The bus to Taiping takes you via the motorway through the glorious mountain scenery we'd encountered a couple of weeks ago. Only this time it wasn't raining. And the traffic, though not fast, was moving. The bus to Taiping actually doesn't go to Taiping. It goes to the long-distance bus station at Kamunting, so you need another little red bus to take you the remaining few kilometres. When we arrived, there was a dearth of little red buses. And the little red bus that finally did roll up, after a really, really long time, was going somewhere else. Discouraged, we opted for one of the dreaded taxis. No sooner had we negotiated a price and boarded than the right little red bus arrived...

Taiping is lovely. Wooded mountains form a magnificent backdrop, and in the course of an afternoon and a leisurely day, we've strolled past a large quantity of picturesque old buildings, eaten cheap and delicious meals at one of Taiping's many, many hawker centres, wandered into the lovely All Saints, one of the oldest Anglican churches in Malaysia, visited another of the region's always sobering war cemeteries, and toured the Perak Museum (which has interesting exhibitions on the orang asli, and on the traditional pottery water jugs that are made round here, as well as the most enormous crocodile skeleton...)

The city's star attraction has to be the Lake Gardens. This is a gorgeous place. The rain trees by the lake drip with vegetation. The reflections create a new picture every minute. And it is clearly bird heaven. Although you see far fewer than you hear, we did see several beautiful kingfishers and even a hornbill. People walk, jog, do tai chi, or potter on the lake -- the easy way to do this is by taking a brick-like pleasure boat; the difficult way is by pedalling little paddle boats that come in the shape of ducks or swans or dinosaurs. We met some spectacled leaf monkeys by one of the bridges. A first for us.

Today we planned to go up Bukit Larut, an old colonial hill station. But though we got there at 7.45, the tickets for all the land-rovers departing today had already sold out. So we've booked for tomorrow, which will involve missing breakfast at the hotel. Hence the complaint above. We are in hopes we can buy breakfast at the start of the landrover track. Otherwise we'll be crabby, crabby people...

Robbed (hopefully only temporarily) of Bukit Larut, we took the little blue bus to Kuala Sepetang. Well, actually to the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, a little distance out of the kampung. A nice ride, through quite traditional villages. It's a different world out here -- another country from Subang Jaya.

They're rebuilding the boardwalk at the reserve, so you can't walk far, but it was nice to be reminded of all the different kinds of mangroves there are -- mangroves with stilts, mangroves with snorkels, etc -- and the absolute highlight for us was seeing a family of six otters going about their business in the river. Wild river otters -- another first.

Totally unaided by Lonely Planet, we had discovered that the speciality in this part of the world is mee udang, so we had some for lunch. Huge and succulent prawns, with soup noodles or fried noodles. Incredibly messy, but totally delicious. Not to be missed.

We then walked up to the charcoal-production place. Quite atmospheric -- dark warehouse buildings, piles of wood, huge kilns from which escaped trails of smoke, an acrid smell in the air, blackened floors...

And finally, and hotly, we walked back into Kuala Sepetang, formerly Port Weld. LP characterizes it as "a small, scruffy Chinese town of minimal appeal". Frankly, we're getting fed up with LP's attitude. We found our brief visit interesting. It is very Chinese. Everywhere there are spirit houses, and today a lot of people were burning -- piles of spirit money were going up in smoke outside several shops. The old wooden buildings are very curious and quite picturesque. And there's an old sign marking the old Port Weld railway station.

But the arrival of the bus precluded further investigation.

Tomorrow --- Bukit Larut...