Trip up North 2017

Earlier this year we bought a drone. What to do with a drone…:-)? Aric came with a plan: take drone videos of all the fishing villages in Peninsular Malaysia and combine them into a documentary. An ambitious project..:-)

The plan was to start in Kuala Perlis, near the Thai border. Quite far from KL, about 500 km, we decided to drive first to Ipoh, stay overnight in the Ipoh Bali hotel and meet a friend for dinner.

We had stayed before in the Ipoh Bali hotel and liked the place. Your own private balcony, where you can feed the koi fish, a nice breakfast, pleasant atmosphere.

In the evening we met our friend and had dinner with him. Of course the Ipoh specialty, chicken hor fun with taugeh…:-) The restaurant he had in mind was closed, so we went to Ong Kee , also very good and less touristy than Lou Wong, opposite the street

The next morning we left early, still 300 km to go. We had left KL with nice weather, but now the skies became dark, and soon heavy rain started, which did not stop. No way you can drone when it is raining. Was the monsoon starting already? Only the next day we read in the news that the downpour was related to the typhoon Doksuri, that had hit VIetnam!

We arrived in Kuala Perlis for a lunch with Assam Laksa. Malay style, not bad.

Here is the quite attractive mosque of Kuala Perlis.

Our plan was to start taking drone videos here, then slowly go down south, visit a few more fishing villages and stay overnight, halfway to Penang. The heavy rain messed things up. We waited for quite a while, but the rain continued, with strong winds.

Finally, a bit disappointed, we decided to stay overnight in Kuala Perlis. A good decision because around 6 pm finally the rain stopped and the wind became less strong.

While Aric was starting his drone, I walked to the lookout tower, from where I had a nice view of the mosque.

Here is a drone view from the village. We were happy that we could at last have one drone result after our long drive…:-). Note the pedestrian bridge, crossing the Perlis river.

We walked to this bridge and found a large crowd there, watching longboat races. Very interesting, actually they were training for the Perlis Water festival in November

In February 2016 we had also made a Trip up North and we had enjoyed the food at the Hat Thien restaurant in Kuala Perlis so much that we went back there for our dinner. Good decision.

After our dinner we walked back to our hotel. It was dry, no wind, we were optimistic about the weather the next day.  Kuala Perlis is well known for its horseshoe crabs. Next visit we must try them.

We woke up the next day not by the sun shining in our room, but by rain pounding the windows. Bad luck. Useless to visit fishing villages…:-(

Instead we decided to have a look at the one and only waterfall in Perlis, north of Kangar. It had been one of the main targets of  our 2016 trip up North. It is a seasonal waterfall and during that trip there was no water at all. We expected that it would be different now, and we were right. Quite impressive.

For comparison.  The left picture shows the situation in 2106, nice flowstone but no water. The right picture has been taken from roughly the same angle. What a difference.

We decided to drive back to Penang. On our way we passed one of the fishing villages, Simpang Ampat, the rain did not stop. Scenic views of the paddy fields, but look at the dark clouds.

It is really a small village, finally we found the only coffee shop, where we had a drink and some food. The cat is hoping for some leftovers, Aric is hoping that the rain will stop

We knew that the situation in Penang that morning was chaotic, flooding, landslides, cars floating in the water, and when we crossed the bridge, the situation looked quite threatening.

We decided to try our luck and go to Balik Pulau for its famous assam laksa.

Balik Pulau is on the West side of Penang, you have to cross the hills on a winding road. There had been a few minor landslides, but the road was not blocked.

Still heavy rain in Balik Pulau, but the assam laksa was nice.

We expected a traffic jam on our way to our hotel in Georgetown, but actually there was not a lot of traffic, probably many Penangites had stayed at home that day.

We had booked accommodation in the Chulia Heritage hotel . The outside and the lobby look nice, a traditional Chinese hotel, but probably during renovation they have split the huge hotel rooms into smaller units. Still ok, though, and not expensive

End of the afternoon the weather finally started  improving. We walked to the clan jetties, passing the Kapitan Keling mosque (left). The Tan jetty (right) extends far out, a perfect location to drone.

In this picture you see theTan jetty (where we are standing, near the red temple) and the large Chew jetty.

Georgetown with the ferry terminals.

We had dinner that evening with a friend who is living in Penang, so he knows the good food places…:-)

He suggested for breakfast the next morning Moh Teng Pheow a famous nyonya kuih stall, near to our hotel. It opens a bit late, at 10:30 am, but it was worth waiting. Popular place, friendly staff, nice food.

Our next destination was a fishing village, Teluk Kumbar, at the southern point of the island. On our way we visited another waterfall, suggested by my friend Siang Hui. Usually it is just a trickle of water, but he expected that it might now be more powerful after the heavy downpour. And he was right, as usual..:-).

In front of the waterfall there are two temples, an Indian and  a Chinese one, next to each other. Unusual.

Here is the drone picture of Teluk Kumbar

Aric is collecting data about assam laksa shops in Malaysia and had discovered one in Bukit Mertajam, so leaving Penang we went to this shop for lunch. Only open during weekends and run by a family in their own home in a residential area.. Take off your shoes, before you enter! Nice assam laksa, friendly service

After our lunch we continued to Guar Petai, a.k.a. Frog Hill. We had visited this spectacular mining landscape in 2016 during our trip up North last year. Very suitable for droning, although even without a drone, you have a nice view from the hill in the middle of all the lakes

In the left picture you can see Aric on top of the hill, directing his drone. The right picture is taken by the drone, and when you enlarge the picture and look carefully, you may see me at the right, on the ridge…:-)

Here is one more drone shot, taken from a higher altitude.

Ater this Frog Hill we drove back to Taiping. I had booked two nights there, Aric went back to KL. My activities in Taiping this time were mainly related to heritage, which may be a bit too detailed for the average visitor of this blog. Therefore I decided to write a separate blog  Taiping September 2017 , about how I spent these two days.

Taiping promotes itself proudly as Bandar Warisan (Heritage Town) and it is true that you can find many beautiful historical buildings there.

But there are also many ruined and run-down buildings, and during this visit I have concentrated on this darker side of my second hometown.

As I had no transport this time, I had booked a train ticket from Taiping to KL Sentral. Nowadays there is an efficient and fast ETS (Electric Train Service) between Gemas and the Thai border.

Food and beverages can be bought on board, tickets can be bought online. It took me only 3 hours and 20 minutes between Taiping and Sentral. Kudos for Malaysia!

Although we had to modify our plans, the  6D5N trip was very interesting and full of variety, as usual..:-)

3 thoughts on “Trip up North 2017

  1. >Kuala Perlis is well known for its horseshoe crabs. Next visit we must try them.
    You can’t eat horseshoe crabs. Only their eggs. They are not crabs, but a relative of arachnids, spiders. They are in danger of being overharvested. Their ‘blood’ is widely used for medical reasons.

    The photos of the flowstone in Perlis might actually be tufa, as there is a lot in the streams in Perlis.

    Great photos, especially the drone aerials. Good to see you are making use of the drone.

    • Thanks for your expert comment…:-)
      Recently we had the eggs of sea urchins in Taiwan, eggs of a horseshoe crab will be a new experience.

      According to Wikipedia there are two forms of flowstone, tufa and travertine. So this should be tufa?

      • As far as I know, it is tufa. Tufa tends to be softer than travertine. Tufa doesn’t form large deposits, whereas travertine forms huge dams e.g Pamukkale in Turkey and is often associated with hot springs.

        So now you have to start an egg tasting of different sea creatures!!!

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