This entry is a little late, but what the heck, too many people are already protesting that they’ll leave if I continue putting Steven Lim on the front page.
The day after I completed the Penang Bridge Marathon was the day I free myself from all that stringent training I had to put myself through.
After four months of internal struggle resisting every piece of fried chicken wing thrown at me, there is only one way to celebrate this momentous occasion… by going on an Ultimate Ipoh Food Tour™
I didn’t expect Ipoh to have much tourist attractions, but turns out that this trip was more fun than I had imagined.
Joining me on this trip is travel junkie and kennysia.com regular Nicole Tan.
Travelling around Ipoh on foot after doing a 42km marathon isn’t gonna be much fun, so the first thing we did was to get our rental car from the Penang International Poikeeteo.
A Proton Wira with auto gear costs RM148 a day (always ask for discount).
I wanted to be the driver because I have no faith in Nicole’s driving skills and I wanna live till at least 70 because I am a gentleman and a gentleman should always drive.
Before I could do anything Nicole hopped into the driver seat and shot me back this look.
Hokayyyy, better back out then. 😛 So off we go on our little road trip to the land of Pomelos, Chicken Rice and Michelle Yeoh.
Penang to Ipoh is just two hours by car.
But it wasn’t until 4 hours that we finally reached our destination – thanks to Nicole doing a good 70km/h on the North-South Highway.
Of course, the important thing is that we reached our destination.
Still feeling sore from my race, we straight away checked in and rested, ready for a full day of exploration tomorrow.
Ipoh reminded me very much of Kuching, except they have more mountains.
The old school way of making a chair
It’s a small, quiet, slow, and very laid back town.
It is exactly the kind of place where every young people can’t wait to move out from and where old people woule wanna retire to.
Modern Photo Studio… not very modern right?
Ipoh grew up as a rich tin-mining town in the early days, but since the closure of the tin mines the growth of the city has stagnated some what.
This is Ipoh’s famous Mistress Lane.
Last time, rich businessmen used to hide their mistresses in the small houses here with a narrow lane. This is so that their wives driving around with their big Mercedes wouldn’t notice them there.
How times have changed. Nowadays, the mistresses are the ones driving around in Mercs and the wives are kept in the small houses instead.
Most buildings in Ipoh are very old and run down, lending it a certain quaint old town charm.
We didn’t exactly know where to go in Ipoh for good food, but luckily enough we had local Ipoh guy Rick Cheah bring us around.
This is what they call a Kip Chai Fun, from Greentown Food Centre. Basically fried beehoon with dunno-what-thing inside. Very dry but very filling.
Some famous Ipoh White Coffee for an extra strong caffeine kick from homegrown coffee shop, Sin Yoon Long cafe.
Ipoh is popular for their big ass bean sprouts, and the best big ass bean sprouts chicken is at Onn Kee.
It’s fat and crunchy and goes very well with chicken rice. We managed to still finish our meals eventhough we’ve been eating non-stop since morning.
Chicken drumstick from Sun Seng Fatt cafe. This plate of chicken meat costs RM8! But they’re very silky smooth and delicious so its worth it.
This place is damn cool. Their waitress came and took our orders with a PDA. Even waitress also got PDA!
You don’t see a lot of kopitiam where they take your order with a freaking PDA.
Most of the time, they’ll just shout halfway across the coffee shop with a voice louder than thunder, “TEH C PENG JIT PUEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! KOPI O JIT PUEHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! “
While walking back to our car, we came across this delightful old man trying to sell us lotus flower pods
I didn’t know you could eat the lotus flower seeds!
We don’t get a lot of these stuff in Kuching so I decided to give it a try.
I asked the uncle to demonstrate eating lotus flower seeds for us, but the poor man replied, “I cannot eat lah. I have no teeth lah!” Haha.
I gotta say eating lotus flower seed is a strange but interesting experience. The seed tastes fragrant, but it was nothing close to enjoyable. Guess I was worried about getting some virus from eating it raw.
After lunch, we decided to do some sightseeing around Ipoh.
There wasn’t much to see in terms of sights in Ipoh, but we did manage to drop by some majestic temples that seem to be built right into the rock walls of the mountains.
The temples here look really different. For one, the lions guarding the temples are smiling.
So cute right?
Don’t know about you, but I’m used to my temple lions looking mean and angry like this.
Maybe it’s to make the tourists feel more welcome.
Even the statue deities here look so slim and svelte, as if they’ve just gone on a 4-week program with Osim uZap and iGallop.
The temple is called Ling Sen Tong. With so many statues placed throughout the frontyard, the place looked more like a children’s playground than a respectable temple.
I still did my part in giving them some well-deserved donation though.
That’s my Chinese zodiac sign, The Dog.
For some reason, they made The Cow looked like an idiot.
Look he’s smiling at you!
Over at the temple, I met my half-brother, the Monkey King aka Kenny Beckham Sia.
And his piggy sidekick Zhu Ba Jie.
There are a lot of animal statues built like they’re meant for parents to put their kids on there.
Nicole couldn’t resist it and climbed on a camel.
I couldn’t resist it either and climbed on a…
Baby deer?
Doesn’t look like the deer was enjoying the ride as much as I did.
Wait. That sounded kinda wrong.
Don’t know what the heck this sign board means
Not far from Ling Sen Tong, is another amusing temple called Sam Poh Tong.
The main attraction here is a little pond where they breed hundreds of tortoises in there. Feeding is allowed if you bought some vegetables from an auntie at the entrance for RM5, which we did.
We had no idea how many tortoise there are at the pond, until we saw this.
The place was crawling with those creatures. LITERALLY!
We were so excited.
There was a baby tortoise far away from the pack. Nicole was trying to feed him with her outstretched arm, but the poor fella was struggling to even move. Even after like 15 minutes of cheering him on, the tortoise wasn’t making much progress.
He was so slow he probably took three days two nights just to crawl away from the pool and he’s probably gonna take ages more to reach that piece of yummy vegie in front of him.
We tried, but we gave up. Not gonna sit there to wait for him forever.
Moments later, we saw that stupid tortoise strolled nonchalantly back towards the pool area like nothing happened! That bugger.
While we’re enjoyed watching the tortoises’ antics, something interesting happened. Out of nowhere, we heard a series of loud knocking noises.
*KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!*
It was like someone was knocking on the door really loudly, except there were no doors nearby at all. A short while later it came again.
*KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!*
What could that possibly be?
After listening to it closely, we realised that the sound came from the pool. As it turned out, that was the sound of two tortoises having sex.
Yes boys and girls.
When humans have sex, we go “Ah ah ah!”
When tortoises have sex, they go “Knock knock knock!”
BECAUSE THEIR SHELLS ARE ALL BANGING INTO EACH OTHER!
Meanwhile, something even more amusing was taking place. The male tortoise was trying to mate with the female tortoise. You can see him mounting from behind her, all horny and ready to go. But apparently, the female tortoise wasn’t exactly in the mood for it.
Normally, when human girls wanna hint to their partners that they’re not up for it, they have to go through a lot of effort coming up with some pity excuses like “I have a headache” or “I’m too tired” so that the boys would stay away.
But if you are a female tortoise, you don’t even have to bother with all that lame bullshit.
If you’re not up for sex, forget about arguing. JUST SHRINK YOUR HEAD BACK INTO THE SHELL!
Imagine a guy making sweet love to his wife or girlfriend, and halfway through she just sinks her head and limbs into her body liddat. Can you imagine how crap he must have felt?
The male tortoise must be feeling so frustrated, however he still kept going at it.
Eventually one of the older tortoises (presumably the female tortoise’s dad) got really fed up by the horny tortoise’s persistency. He had had enough of it, so he approached the hot-blooded male from behind.
Then the old fella opened up his mouth real wide, took careful aim…
AND BIT THAT SON OF BITCH’S BALLS REAL HARD!
Only then did the fella decide to move away.
I swear I’m not making this up. The whole episode really amused the hell out of me. You can even check out Nicole’s blog for the video.
…
You know your life is really sad when you get excited talking about tortoise porn.
It wasn’t long before it was time for us to leave Ipoh. Nicole and I spent whatever remaining time left camwhoring in front of the beautiful Ipoh Railway Station.
First, it was her. And she posed like this.
Like this.
Like this.
And then it was my turn.
At first I was just posing like this.
Suddenly, Furong Jie Jie‘s spirit appeared and took control of my body.
I was possessed.
Before I knew it, I was posing like this.
Like this.
And finally, like this.
Damn, that Furong Jie Jie spirit was evil.
She went to Ipoh and created a Furong Kenny.
I just switched my mobile number to 012. Figured I could save a lot since most people I call are on Maxis anyway.
If you’re still holding on to my old 013 number, pop me an e-mail and I’ll tell you what my new number is.