Perak -- Day 4
by prudence on 09-Feb-2012
Bukit Larut was awesome.
We walked across town in the pre-dawn darkness, stopping off at the foodcourt to buy curry puffs and sesame balls for an ambulant breakfast.
Past all the people gathering to exercise at the Lake Gardens, past one or two Indian families setting out already to make their Thaipusam offerings, past the dead youngsters in the war graves.
The ride in the land-rover was like nothing I've ever experienced. The road is extraordinarily steep and extraordinarily bendy. Approaching some bends, the asphalt seemed to loom over us so alarmingly that I wondered how the vehicle would ever manage to master it. This would not be a good place to suffer from car sickness.
The land-rovers take you to a height of 1,023 metres. It's a lot cooler up there, of course, although still very humid. It's also quiet and atmospheric. We heard amazing birdsong, and the calls of howler monkeys (we assume that's what they were -- they certainly howled), and not much else.
It was disconcerting to realize that the top -- where the communications towers live -- was still 3 km distant and 300 metres up... But we powered on, accompanied always by birds, and spied on once by a gaggle of spectacled leaf monkeys. The views from the top were hazy but still impressive.
Back down at the land-rover drop-off point, we wandered around the cluster of remaining buildings. You can still stay up there, but its heyday as a colonial hill station is long past. The abandoned tennis courts, the broken swings, the overgrown houses, the closed cafe, and the swirling cloud all induce a certain melancholy. But it's very beautiful. Stare at a couple of square metres of vegetation, and even non-experts like us can identify 20 different leaf shapes -- trees, epiphytes, mosses, lichens, and the rest. A few hundred metres below us was an Indian temple, from which came gentle sounds of chanting.
Just before mid-day we bumped our way back down in the land-rover, and walked back into town for lunch.
The rest of the day was a bit of a fiasco. The train was ages late, and there was nowhere cool to wait, and no information. When the train arrived, the electricity wasn't working. So the carriage was pretty much volcano-temperature when we stepped inside. They finally got the aircon and lights going, but the whole thing fell over again at Ipoh. Once these trains start to fall behind schedule, there seems to be no chance of making up time. We were two hours late getting into KL...
Still, it was a good weekend. Lots of wildlife, lots of good food, lots of new experiences. I'm very fond of Perak.
We walked across town in the pre-dawn darkness, stopping off at the foodcourt to buy curry puffs and sesame balls for an ambulant breakfast.
Past all the people gathering to exercise at the Lake Gardens, past one or two Indian families setting out already to make their Thaipusam offerings, past the dead youngsters in the war graves.
The ride in the land-rover was like nothing I've ever experienced. The road is extraordinarily steep and extraordinarily bendy. Approaching some bends, the asphalt seemed to loom over us so alarmingly that I wondered how the vehicle would ever manage to master it. This would not be a good place to suffer from car sickness.
The land-rovers take you to a height of 1,023 metres. It's a lot cooler up there, of course, although still very humid. It's also quiet and atmospheric. We heard amazing birdsong, and the calls of howler monkeys (we assume that's what they were -- they certainly howled), and not much else.
It was disconcerting to realize that the top -- where the communications towers live -- was still 3 km distant and 300 metres up... But we powered on, accompanied always by birds, and spied on once by a gaggle of spectacled leaf monkeys. The views from the top were hazy but still impressive.
Back down at the land-rover drop-off point, we wandered around the cluster of remaining buildings. You can still stay up there, but its heyday as a colonial hill station is long past. The abandoned tennis courts, the broken swings, the overgrown houses, the closed cafe, and the swirling cloud all induce a certain melancholy. But it's very beautiful. Stare at a couple of square metres of vegetation, and even non-experts like us can identify 20 different leaf shapes -- trees, epiphytes, mosses, lichens, and the rest. A few hundred metres below us was an Indian temple, from which came gentle sounds of chanting.
Just before mid-day we bumped our way back down in the land-rover, and walked back into town for lunch.
The rest of the day was a bit of a fiasco. The train was ages late, and there was nowhere cool to wait, and no information. When the train arrived, the electricity wasn't working. So the carriage was pretty much volcano-temperature when we stepped inside. They finally got the aircon and lights going, but the whole thing fell over again at Ipoh. Once these trains start to fall behind schedule, there seems to be no chance of making up time. We were two hours late getting into KL...
Still, it was a good weekend. Lots of wildlife, lots of good food, lots of new experiences. I'm very fond of Perak.