H-Ipoh-thetically… (We went to Ipoh)

Firstly, I AM SO SORRY this post is so overdue.

Secondly, I AM SO SORRY for the terrible, terrible pun in the title. It’s not even pronounced hee-po-the-ti-cally (hai-po-the-ti-cally) BUT I spent the past 20 min trying to think of a creative title so please work with me.

A week after MCKLMUN (I wrote a page on that), it was time to start packing again; this time, for a trip to Ipoh.

Friday 4th of July, after class, Zi Tian’s dad picked us and our luggage up from SMR, and six of us, Zi Tian, Zi Tian’s sister Zi Yuan, Pei Ying, Yi Jing, Rumin and I sat through the two hours + journey from KL to Ipoh in the car. Things we did in the car: sleep, listen to music, talk, come up with the hashtag #alorsetarxipoh to use for photos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The future is now.

It was already 7 in the evening when we finally reached Ipoh, or more accurately, Zi Tian’s house. We had a bit of a house tour in the Chin mansion before going for dinner. Dinner being bean sprouts and chicken with hor fun. I, uh, finished the last bits of the bean sprouts??? I was the last one still eating at the table??? Heads-up, I ate a lot during this trip. Hard not to, because Ipoh food is great.

The rest of the Friday night was just basically chilling out, watching a movie until 1AM, talking and stuff etc.

The next morning was an early rise to curry mee as breakfast, and it was nothing like the curry mee back in Alor Setar. It was strange, but it was also amazingly good and now I’m just getting hungry thinking about Ipoh curry mee.

After breakfast, we explored Old Town Ipoh. Sekeping Kong Heng and its surroundings, specifically. It was a really quaint and lovely area segregated from the urbanities of the city and it was nice to just walk around and take loads of photos and also film. We even had some kind of ice ball that kept leaking all over the place.

We then had creme caramel at a really crowded coffee shop, the same creme caramel that my classmates tapao-ed for me from Ipoh during last year’s road trip. (Also the very same one that set Bellyn off on her pudding craving the following week.) And then we had egg tarts and white coffee. And tau foo faa. I told you this was a food trip.

We went back to Zi Tian’s house to clean up for a while after that before setting out once again for lunch at Tualang, which was an hour’s drive away. With so much food already in me, you’d think I couldn’t take in anymore. I thought so too. We are both wrong. I finished my plate of rice…and more. I went from barely finishing half a packet of Indomie during lunch hours at The Rock to eating non-stop for six hours. My stomach was a bottomless pit for that weekend.

Another hour’s drive back to Zi Tian’s house later, we watched Black Swan (or semi-watched, more like; I still remain highly disturbed to this day), cleaned up and then headed out for dinner at a hawker centre near to Zi Tian’s house.

Post-dinner hours were the highlights of the trip: we went to Kinta River Front and that’s when the longest 30 minutes of our lives happened. It was a very scenic place and we saw people riding two-seater and three-seater bicycles so naturally we wanted to do the same. 10 minutes into our attempt to ride a three-seater bike, we were all already pretty sweaty and aching and still had no idea how to balance a three-seater bike??? We eventually got it though, despite all the swerving and almost-clashing-into-other-bikes and it was the most tiring workout I’ve had had all year.

It wasn’t surprising that all of us slept pretty well that night.

The next morning saw us waking up at 11AM and having lunch after that. After lunch we shopped a bit at Ipoh Parade where we got a Parkson gift card for Zi Tian’s family as a token of our thanks. The subsequent hours between that and leaving for the train station was spent eating green tea ice cream, complaining about the terrible service of the cafe and lying on the living room floor talking and laughing. Soon, it was 3PM and we left for the train station with heavy hearts. We met up with Qiu Jing there and I spent the next 2.5 hours watching Adventure Time on my laptop.

The two-day weekend felt like a month-long trip in a good way, and I enjoyed myself immensely, being able to immerse myself in the full experience of the exploration of Ipoh without the immediate worries left back in Sunway. Thank you Chin family for having us. Thank you housemates for being such great companions.

I also made some videos for this trip.

All photos belong to Zi Tian.