We've settled down into quite a nice little routine here in Taiping, as in fact we always do. It's one of our talents.

Novotel breakfasts are good. (They always were... I remember 'Le Grand Bonjour' breakfasts from the very rare, and therefore very precious, French Novotel stays of our early married days... Here you get tasty dishes that include lots of vegetables. And you get chocolate bread-and-butter pudding! With vanilla sauce. Real vanilla. You can tell by the specks.)

Next on the agenda is a walk. Then it's coffee time (which is also when you deal with emails, comb through the day's news, and do some language practice). After an early lunch, the rest of the day is for work.

Here are my top five for this week:

1. The food continues to be awesome. We've sampled Taiping's own version of surf and turf (in the form of char kuay teow with fish balls, fish cake, and char siew pork) from Larut Matang Food Court. We've been back to the Kedai Makanan Tai Chien, this time for a great loh mee. We've indulged in more hor ga sai (if you remember, this was the combo of local coffee and Milo), this time from the historic Peace Hotel. We've had Sunday lunch at Kedai Kopi Kok Beng (excellent -- from the big plate of poached chicken, roast chicken, and char siew, through the tasty chicken rice and peppy garlic-and-ginger relish, right down to the wonderful gingery soup). And we've enjoyed really great examples of old Malaysian stalwarts like kaya puffs and roti canai.









2. The wildlife has put up a fantastic show this week. We've met hornbills, monitor lizards, and spectacled leaf monkeys in the park, and two kinds of macaques (pig tail and long tail) in the forest at the foot of Bukit Larut. (You may notice an oversupply of electricity cables in the pictures. It's obviously a lot easier to sashay along these than to deal with actual trees. I don't know... The monkeys of today...)















3. Said forest at the foot of Bukit Larut, reached by way of the park, is now our preferred walking area. The Burmese Pool is lovely. The Thanneermalai Sri Thandayuthapani Alayam Hindu temple also makes a wonderfully atmospheric objective, its worship music blending curiously with the morning sounds of the forest. Nearby are the bottom reaches of a huge waterfall, and the old British swimming pool, whose construction apparently forced the relocation of the temple to its current site (good grief...). The second time we were up there, it appeared that a feast had been laid out for the monkeys (who were, needless to say, not hanging back).

























4. The really, really rainy day. In itself this wasn't great at all. It was a big, long, wet, chilly pain. But when you're pretty well soaked, and need somewhere to shelter and warm up a bit, you're very lucky to find a place like Wanis Shoppe. We started off with piping hot teh tarik, and -- much water under the bridge later -- moved on to some of the tastiest rice porridge ever, a plate of mee goreng topped with fried egg and sambal, and a cup of teh O. The bill for all that? MYR 7.40.



5. The mall. The Novotel backs onto a small mall, which has allowed our inner mall rats to re-emerge after a long dormancy. As well as a beer-supplying supermarket, it boasts a kek lapis shop (the offerings are a bit more expensive than Kuching's, but very tasty nevertheless); a few of the classic Malaysian franchises (Georgetown White Coffee, Secret Recipe, etc); and a cinema where this week we went to see the vastly enjoyable Incredibles 2 (and its preceding short, Bao, which has generated quite a cultural discussion). The mall also offers a range of friendly transport animals. Sometimes, after all, what you need is a ride on a two-headed dinosaur.