Around Malaysia : Day 3 : Ipoh : Food, food, food

The third day in Ipoh started out with food hunting.
Most coffee shops open at 7am and by noon food will sold out. If you want to have a taste of Ipoh's finest delicacy, it's a must to wake up early. As they say, early bird catches the worms.

Our first stop is Thean Chun Coffee Shop.
This coffee shop is fame for their Ipoh Kai Si Hor Fun which translates into Ipoh Chicken Strands River Noodles.
It is a soup based dish served with flat rice noodles, strands of chicken and chives.

If you see red in the soup. Fear not, it's not chili or anything spicy.
The colour comes from prawn shells which serves as the stock of the soup to give the soup a rich and sweet flavour.

A lovely bowl of kai si hor fun, the flavours in the broth is very rich.

We are told that the Popiah from this coffee shop is great too and we ordered a wet version and a deep-fried version to try out.

I prefer the wet version better as I am not into deep fried popiah but both taste equally good.

A cup of Ipoh White Coffee and Caramel Custard.

This shop is not the shop for white coffee but we are already in Ipoh, we wanted to try it out to compare it to the fame Ipoh White Coffee shop that we will try later on.
The Caramel Custard is great, the smell of eggs is very strong and fragrant in this little custard. They didn't skim on the ingredients while making this sweet dessert.

After breakfast, we visited Concubine Lane.
It is said this place used to be the place where tycoons hid their mistresses thus the name Concubine Lane. Today, this place has turn into a tourist attraction.

There are lots of street arts around the place. You just have to hunt for them.
There's a map stating the locations of the street arts. If you still can' decode it, ask the locals, they would be happy to tell you the exact locations.

This piece of Street Art depictates how Ipoh used to be a tin mining town before it become the Ipoh we see this very day.

Time for more food. You can't just get enough food when you are out travelling.
This time around we stop by this shop called Xin Quan Fang for their curry noodles.

The dry curry noodles.
It's good but I am more a fan of Penang style curry noodles. So any curry noodles other from Penang is just alright for me.

The wet version.

Finally we stopped by Nam Heong for the fame Ipoh White Coffee. This is the moment I have been waiting for, this is my purpose for visiting Ipoh.
This has to be the best cup of coffee I have tried. It's rich and aromatic. The coffee leans acidic so it might not be for everyone but I really don't mind the acidity. In fact, the acidity is what gives this coffee its flavour.

This is our final food stop. It's the Mapo Wantan Mee Restaurant.
Wan Tan Mee is egg noodles.

At time point, I was too full to even eat. I left the tasting to the rest while retiring from eating for the day.

Dried Wan Tan Noodles.

Dumpling soup.

Our trip in Ipoh ended with this food journey all around Ipoh 

Around Malaysia : Day 2 : Ipoh : Sunway Tambun at night

The second day in Ipoh, we ended our night with a hot spring bath in Sunway Lost World of Tambun.
They had some sort of promotion going on that time, it was like buy 1 free 1 for the hot spring bath at night.
I was really excited as I never tried a hot spring bath before eventhough I visited Iceland and never went to the Blue Lagoon or there's so many hot springs just across the mountains near my house.

I did not take as many pictures during our hot spring session because I thought it won't be really polite to take pictures of people bathing in hot spring and we looked like we were ran over by the train at the end of the day.

The hot springs.
There are many temperatures for the spring ranging from 39-45 degrees. I kinda forgot on the temperatures available but there were 5-6 pools available. So there's enough space for everyone.
Different temperatures for different people. Different people? More like different human adaptation.

At first the spring water just felt too hot for us but after adaptation, we found it really relaxing. It's like being wrap in warm cotton wool.
I did tried the hottest spring but I felt it's still too hot for me. Guess I couldn't adapt to that temperature.

Aftermath of hot spring. I guess I did not look too bad with my wet hair and makeup into hot spring.
I would not have done any makeup if haven't I came to the hot spring from somewhere in the day.

That's how we ended our second day in Ipoh.

The next day I woke up really sore and tired as if I have hiked 12km the day before. Is this the effect of a hot spring bath? 

Around Malaysia : Cameron Highlands

This was a spontaneous trip. Since we were at Ipoh, we thought why not drive up to Cameron Highlands since it takes only an hour to get up there.
We drove up to Cameron via Brinchang which is the less dangerous route to take and the nearest from Ipoh.

We went up the highlands late in the afternoon so we ended up not doing much at the highlands. All we did was visit the tea planatation.

It took about 30-45 minutes to drive into the tea plantation from Brinchang. It's much nearer if you are coming in from Tanah Rata.

We visited the cafe to grab some drinks and desserts. We were lucky that we managed the cafe because we were there an hour before the closing time.

There are a good selection of tea or infused tea drinks and also cakes and pastries.
The cakes are made infused with the tea from the plantation. It's quite unique and special to them.

We ordered iced milk tea, strawberry tart and boh tea infused cotton cheese cake.

I do not know if it's tastebuds trciking me but I can't taste or even smell the tea in the cheese cake. It's like a regular cotton cake. Even the cheese tasted so faint.
It was disappointing.

Nothing we ordered was notable.

Walking down to the plantation from the cafe to get some pictures but the view here isn't so great because there are trees blocking the view of the valley of tea.

It's too far to walk into the plantation for great view and it isn't safe to walk into the deeper parts of the plantation since you do not know if there are any creepers hiding in the bushes.

While driving out from the plantation, I did manage to stop the car by at the side to catch a great picture.

This portion is a few minutes drive from the cafe area , the view is much more magnificent without any distractions. Just purely tea valley.

Actually it was about to rain, I am glad I managed to get this shot before the rain started pouring. We got a few drops of rain on us but nothing major.
We left as fast as we could to counter the dark clouds but unfortunately the clouds got to us before we managed to arrive on flat land.
We had to drive through the rain through the slopes and sharp turnings down the Ipoh. It was really scary experience but glad we had a professional driver with us.

We managed to arrive back to Ipoh safely at the end of the day.

Around Malaysia : Ipoh, Day 1 + 2

Ipoh bound to visit a friend who is currently posted there. 

Drove all the way there. 

It took us about 3 hours to get there, so it wasn't too bad of a drive. 

We started out journey at 9am, arrived about 12pm.

The first day there was basically eat, eat and eat. 

We didn't do anything really interesting besides eating. 

Our first stop is Lou Wong restaurant. It is a famous Ipoh bean sprout chicken rice shop. 

The restaurant is so packed despite it was late afternoon-ish. 

I totally forgot to take picture of the chicken. 

We were totally famished. 

I think that's all for day one. 

We ended the day with a movie. We watched Star Wars : Rouge One. 

The next day we started our day with food again. 

Half boiled eggs on toast. One of favourite type of breakfast.

Yoo tiao with Coconut jam. 

After awhile we went for Dim Sum.

I wasn't joking when i said it is going to be food overloaded. 

We went to this oh so famous dim sum restaurant called Foh San. 

To be honest, I find the dim sum to be totally average. It's so overrated, not to mention it is pretty pricey. 

'

After our quick morning tea/lunch, we headed down to Kek Lok Tong. 

It is a Chinese temple inside a limestone cave. 

After visiting the cave we had this crazy idea and we drove to Cameron Highlands which is about an hour drive from Ipoh. I will keep the post about Cameron Highlands in another post since it is not Ipoh. 

At night, my friend took us to a nice American pizzeria - MichelangelO's Pizzeria. 

This place serves nice oven baked pizza. Hot from the furnace. 

Definitely one of the best pizza I have tried in Malaysia. 

The pizza is so flavourful, there is so much topping (they aren't stingy with their toppings) and each bite is so cheesy. 

We ended the night by visiting the hot spring at Lost World of Tambun since our friend lives nearby. 

We did not pay much for the hot spring since there was an offer for it if you go at night. 

Travel Diary : Italy : Day 1, Rome

We started out Italy trip in Rome. Then from Rome we will head our journey all the way north.

During my stay in Rome, I did very typical things tourist will do when visit Rome such as visiting the Colosseum, Roman Forum and eating gelato!

Got my Roma Pass.
It includes 2 free museum/archeological site visits and free transporation.
Since we will be in Rome for 3 days and doing much visiting, it is more economical for us to pick up the pass.

The Colosseum.
Sadly it is under restoration at one side of the building and you can kinda see the construction thingy (I forgot what it is called) at the left side.

A sneak peak inside the Colosseum

After visiting the Colosseum, we took a stroll opposite to the Roman Forum.

It just amazes me to see how people of the ancient times without the help machinery and technology could build such a magnificent town.
And some these structures still stand majestic till this very day.

It is really big , you could spend hours and hours strolling in this ancient city.

It was a rainy night at Fotana di Trevi. So, there was not too big of a crowd. If not I guess one could not expect to get too close to the fountain without squeezing your way through.

Honestly, the fountain is much smaller than expected. It looks way more majestic in pictures I have seen.

It is Gelato time!
This is a small family owned gelato shop called Valentino near Trevi Foundation.

I swear the gelato of this gelateria is out of this world. Every flavour so smooth and rich.
The owner is very friendly too.

My favourite was the Ferrero Rocher flavour. It taste richly of Ferrero Rocher. Who doesn't love the world's famous chocolate snack in gelato form. 

Around Malaysia : Kluang Street Art

About a week ago, I headed down to Kluang to attend a friend's wedding. After the wedding, she and her husband took us around Kluang's Street Art alley to wander around.

Little towns in Malaysia have been painting their streets up with hopes to lure in tourist.

I did not managed to explore the town further than the street art due to time constrain. Next time maybe when I come down to visit my friend. 

Around Malaysia : Day Two, Malacca Trip

We woke up extremely early the next morning just for the famous chicken rice balls at Jonker Street. My friend told me it can get very packed and the queue can get very long so she suggested us to go at 7.30am.
Thank goodness when we arrived, the queue wasn't really long, we waited for about 15 minutes before we got our seats.

The queue wasn't bad at all which is surprising. Usually the queue is horrendous and the wait time can be up to an average of an hour.

Chicken rice balls for 4 people.

The serving size for the rice balls is not sufficient to go with the enormous amount of chicken. We find the chicken is way too much for four. They probably gave us a whole chicken.
I really like the chicken, it is tender and flavourful.

We paid MYR 60 for the meal with drinks.

Basically the whole morning and afternoon, we spent most of our time just strolling around Jonker Walk.

Strolling along the streets. We found a street that sells 2nd hand and antiques.

Another cafe we tried is The Baboon House. We are not allowed to take photos in the cafe thus there won't be any photo on the cafe at all.
The environment in the cafe is amazing. It's really serene and peaceful. It's an old run down garage with lots of trees and plants.
You are not allowed to make too much noise in the cafe, so we had to tone down.

On the food side, I would say the burgers are amazing. I am really impressed with it. The desserts are just okay, nothing too special. We ordered the sticky brownie with ice cream. The brownie is anything but sticky, we were quite disappointed by it.

We left back to Kuala Lumpur at 5.30pm via Melaka Sentral and that's how we ended our visit to Malacca.