Ipoh, Malaysia

We booked the train from Penang to Ipoh for a change of transportation. I also like taking the train in different countries.

I finally figured out where to buy tickets online on the KTM website, rather than try to navigate I just googled for the page. Once there it was pretty easy to book out seats from Butterworth (the town on the mainland across from Penang).

We took a taxi from our hotel at 6:45am to the ferry. It was only a 10 minute walk pretty much down the street but it was really humid so I didn't want to walk with our packs. However we didn't tell the taxi driver which ferry we wanted, and as we found out there's a different dock for the ferry to Langkawi than Butterworth. So we ended up walking in the humidity anyways about 10 minutes.

We just missed the ferry, and then because it was Saturday they didn't run every 10 minutes as the LP stated. Our ferry left at 7:35, arriving at Butterworth at 7:50. The train station is only a five minute walk and people were very helpful in pointing the way. Caught our 8am train with three minutes to spare!

We had a nice air conditioned train in 1st class to Ipoh. Even got served tasty banana bread, and I bought some teh tarik from the food car.

The train station in Ipoh is the top rated sight in the LP, it's a nice old building.

We walked to our hotel, about 10 minutes. One of the nice things about train stations is that they are very centrally located, unlike most bus stations and airports.

We stayed at the Sekeping Kong Heng. Sekeping runs a series of artsy boutique hotels in the region. At first we had trouble finding it, for the 2nd time this trip the LP had our hotel marked incorrectly on their map. We asked a shopkeeper and then we found it easily.

It was only 11:30am and our rooms weren't ready so we checked our big packs and took off for lunch.

Ipoh is known for several foods, one being dim sum. The food blogs we read in Penang said don't bother with dim sum there, go to Ipoh instead cause there are more people of Cantonese ancestry.

The place to have dim sum is Ming Court, so that's where we headed. Luckily they were still serving when we arrived (dim sum is very much a morning meal more so here). The dim sum was excellent, the best we've had.

Walked back to the Kong Heng and checked in. The rooms are pretty out there, probably not a place I'd stay in more than once. The shower is a glass cube and the toilet has just a sheer curtain separating it from the room. Not much for privacy!

The hotel is the centre of a complex that reminded me of the Distillery. Little arts and crafts shops, cobblestone walkways, art exhibits, newlyweds having their pictures taken, cozy little cafés.

For dinner we headed to Onn Kee for another Ipoh specialty, tauge ayam (chicken bean sprouts). Onn Kee and Lou Wong's are the two best places and are kitty corner to each other, and their outside seating spills out into the street and closes the street at night. The two restaurants are really popular.

The food was amazing. Dinner is served in three dishes: bean sprouts, boiled chicken, and rice noodles.

The bean sprouts are short and fat in Ipoh, and taste really really good. They're not part of a salad or stir fry, you get an actual plateful of bean sprouts. Yummy. The rice noodles were also amazing. The chicken was good, but the real attractions are the bean sprouts and rice noodles.

We walked through the night market that was just setting up and then walked back to our hotel.

So far, an excellent start to the food of Ipoh!