Ipoh, Malaysia - Bus Trip Escape

Visiting Northern Malaysia
You can fly to Ipoh in just under an hour or you can take a more leisurely approach to the 350 mile trip.  The nine hours on the bus include 30 minutes for customs and immigration as well as an hour lunch stop in a small town called Yong Peng.  When I surveyed the Singaporeans I know about Ipoh they were non-plussed, many admitting they'd never been.  I knew then that I was onto something good.  Matter of fact, the bus was almost empty, just a few of us on the top level and hardly anyone below.  The bus captain looked to be an octogenarian, the wiry, been-through-it all-type.  He gave me an eye roll when I asked for help loading my luggage, so a helpful passenger stepped in.

Ipoh is in the state of Perak, in the north west of Malaysia.  We rode up the western coast past Malacca and skirted the edge of Kuala Lumpur.

Ipoh sits in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains.  To the east is the Cameron Highlands, a place where the Brits would go to escape the heat.  It is known for its tea plantations.  The weather is completely different there - as much as 30 degrees cooler at the highest points, which can reach 5,000 feet.  My trip is related to those peaks, but more on that later.

In my experience many Singaporeans have a shady view of Malaysia.  There is a rivalry for sure, but it's more than that.  It's like the dangerous neighbor that's a bit out of control.  "Please wear your seat belt at all times" she warned me - my own wife - the otherwise open minded kind.  "They're known to drive down from Ipoh, drop off passengers and then turn right around, no sleep."  This somehow got into my head, and I wondered if the slow drift from lane to lane was cunning driving or slumber.  I cinched my seat belt tighter and tighter.

It wasn't the most exciting sight-seeing.  Other than the thin curtain of shade trees on either side of the highway, there are millions of palm trees.  One of Malaysia's top exports is palm oil and as such, they've turned an entire country into a mono-crop plantation.  For as far as the eye can see, from the valleys to the hilltops, nothing but neat rows of palms.  However, as we got near Perak, things began to change.  Sharp rock outcroppings began to replace the palm plantations.

Ipoh and its environs, back in the late 1800s, was the tin capital of the world.  Many flocked here to mine tin and it flourished, until, as the story goes, it stopped flourishing.  What's left now are half-eaten limestone mountains.