My third visit to Taiping in 2025!. This time, the main reason was to visit the painting exhibition of my friend Halim..He is suffering from MND (Motor Neuron Disease), can not speak anymore, is confined to a wheelchair, but is still full of energy. He started painting again as a hobby and held a solo exhibition in the Taiping Clock Tower on 9 and 10 August,

On Sunday, 10 August, I took the ETS to Taiping. My favourite coach, C, has a canteen, but this time, I prepared bread and coffee at home.

In Taiping, my friend Yeap picked me up from the station. and after we had lunch, he dropped me at the Furama hotel. I took some rest and had a look at the Majestic cinema, where recently there had been a fire (see my June 2025 post). There was now no police tape, so I had a look inside. Empty space, the fire had destroyed the roof. Was it arson?

It is a short walk to the clock tower. I was welcomed by a lady, who turned out to be Halim’s daughter. There were a few other visitors.

Halim’s painting collection.

When I told the lady that I was a friend of her father, she called him, and soon he arrived. We have been friends for many years, and I have bought two of his paintings that are now decorating my study.

More visitors arrived, it was a very joyous meeting. Mission accomplished.

It has become a tradition that Yeap and I meet for breakfast during my Taiping visits. He asks me what kind of food I would like and then he chooses a location. This time a new one he had found on TikTok(!), the Roti Bakar Arang Fadzil House, a Malay eatery in Tupai. Not bad, I had my favourite roti goyang.

When I mentioned to him the fountain in the Lake Gardens, recently restored and redecorated, he said, let’s have a look.

The original plan for the next two days was to show the attractions of Taiping to my KL hiking friend, but there had been a change of plan, so I had two “free” days 😉 As I had visited Taiping already in June, I decided to do something different, explore the Lake Gardens. For the last few years, I have always walked the Raintree Walk, but never the rest of the gardens. I also wanted to have a closer look at the fountain.

During my walk, I took many photos. Instead of some photos here, I decided to show all of them in a special page on my website, using my (fading) programming skills. The page is still under construction. It works like this: click on the screenshot below, and you will open the page with a map of the Lake Gardens. When you click on a green marker, you will see the photo taken at that location. Click on the photo and you will see the picture on a larger scale. You can zoom in and out on the map. Later, I may add photos of other locations in Taiping and add captions. Comments are welcome.

After leaving the Gardens, I followed Jalan Kota, passing the Public Library, one of the Taiping heritage buildings. I went inside for a while,

I also passed one of the huge Taiping murals. Well done, but just using the wall as a canvas. Those huge murals are a specialty of Taiping murals, not really my favorite.

The Land and District Office is the most prominent landmark of Taiping, a reminder of the glory days of Taiping when it was the capital of Perak. The small building opposite was a personal landmark for me. Lian Thong restaurant, where I often had my breakfast. Pity that it has been sold and renovated, losing its charm.

I had a late lunch at Prima, where I unexpectedly met Yeap again. Taiping is a small town. Back to my hotel for a well-deserved rest, I had walked more than 9000 steps. In the evening, I met Indra, who had been very active with the restoration of the Ceylon Association heritage building on Station Road. Some time ago, he messaged me about another restoration project, the Sri Sithi Vinayagar Temple, built in 1924 by the Ceylon Tamil community of Taiping. I was interested to have a look and Indra was willing to take me there. Also located on Station Road, near the Sikh Gurdwara.

The temple is dedicated to Ganesha, and inside the temple compound, there is a beautiful sculpture of Ganesha with his parents, Shiva and Parvati.

Indra presented me with an interesting book about the temple. We met the priest, who put a pottu on our forehead. Last May, after finishing the renovation, a consecration ceremony was held the Kumbhabhishekham. Hinduism may well be the most complicated of the major world religions.

There was an interesting table outside the temple with the “Nine Planets.” Did the Hindu religion already know about Planet 9? No, at home I Googled for the Hindu nine planrets, The official name is Navagraha. The nine heavenly bodies represent the Hindu deities influencing humans. They are Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (the 5 planets known in antiquity) plus two more of the Moon, too complicated to explain here. Interesting and beautiful.

After our visit we had some snacks in an Indian restaurant, the Sri Annapoorana Curry House. Worthwhile to come back next time for a full meal.

I just mentioned Lian Thong as my personal landmark. During my many visits, I became friendly with its owner, Teoh, and we kept in touch after he sold the restaurant. We met for breakfast the next morning in a kopi tiam near Novotel. We had a fascinating conversation about Taoism. Teoh is Chinese-educated and dedicates much of his time studying the Tao writings.

How to spend my second “free” day? A considerable part of the Lake Gardens is occupied by the Taiping Zoo. I must have visited it in the past, don’t remember much, so I decided to go again. I took a Grab and paid RM 8 for my (senior) ticket.

The Zoo was disappointing. Maybe the reason was that my timing was wrong, around 2 pm. It was a hot day, and most animals were smarter than I and were resting in their shelters.

No tiger to be seen. I walked around and took many photos, which are included in my picture webpage.

Walking back through the Lake Gardens, I took more photos. This is the famous zigzag bridge, more on my webpage.

I was dehydrated and needed a beer, together with a late lunch. Later that evening I had dinner with my friends Lay Chun and Kar Seng.

The next morning, I had breakfast at the Circus Grounds, CCF with my friend Foo. Another valuable tradition..

My plan was, on my way back home, to stop at Ipoh, stay overnight, and meet a heritage contact. But last minute that morning, he WhatsApped me that he had another assignment and could only meet me at dinner. I was quite upset, cancelled my hotel and bought a ticket Ipoh-KL. I had lunch at the New Club with Bok Kin and Teng Him, who then dropped me at the station

.I had a few hours to spend in Ipoh. I know Ipoh reasonably well, click here or here, so I took only a few pictures. Here is the iconic railway station.

The impressive town hall. Compared with Taiping, Ipoh has an amazing number of beautiful heritage buildings.

The Birch memorial. When I bring friends to Ipoh, I always tell them that the two roads on both sides of the memorial were originally named Station Road and Post Office Road. Now they have been renamed Jalan Dato’ Sago and Jalan Dato’ Maharaja Lela , the killers of Birch. I also point out the whitened historical figure on the frieze and ask them if they know who it is .

There are plenty of heritage buildings in Ipoh Old Town. Left the Chung Thye Phin Building (Arlene House) and right the former Straits Trading Company building, now a bank.

Details of those buildings

This time, no pictures of the pasar replica, the ruined heritage buildings, the infamous Amelia Earhart mural. And no Ansari chendol. But still interesting and always nice to meet friends.

On our way to Taiping, we wanted to visit the Mirror Lake in Ipoh and try to find Japanese graves in Pokok Assam. But the weather was not favorable, so we skipped it (see the end of this report), but still arrived  rather late in Taiping, just in time to have assam laksa and cendol in the Old Railway Station. We had booked a room in the Furama hotel and had dinner in Siang Malam with our friend May.

Before our dinner we still had time to walk around in the Lake Gardens, this time not only to enjoy the beauty of it, but also to start the project I had planned…:-). Notice the two bridges below, at the right. They show the same bridge, but one picture is from about one century ago.

I had collected a number of old (postcard) pictures, and the next morning I met friends from the Taiping Heritage Society for a walk through the town, looking for the location from where the old pictures were taken, and then take a new one from that location. It was not always easy but big fun, the result can be found in a separate report,  Taiping, old and new .

In the afternoon we were invited by May for High Tea in  her “Maywarmers Lodge”, where we met Suet and Peter, who are now residing in the Nest bungalow, a place I hope to visit soon. After that we met Paul and Fahmi, who had come to Taiping to visit a waterfall the next day. First we had dinner in Yut Sun, a Taiping landmark, famous for its Hainanese Chicken Chop. Then we walked to the Government Office, one of the many Taiping firsts. There was a pasar malam, many people , relaxed atmosphere.

The next day, the four of us went on a waterfall hike to two Taiping falls, the Kamunting fall (left) and the Maxwell fall (right).The last part of the Kamunting hike is very steep, access to the Maxwell fall is easy. I wrote a separate report about this hike, Taiping Waterfalls.

After the hike, Paul and Fahmi drove back to KL, we had a lazy afternoon, with dinner in Prima (popiah’s, otak otak and oyster omelet). After our dinner we visited the Taiping Mall, mainly because there are some panels with historical pictures of Taiping.

The next morning, after breakfast we first went to Pokok Assam. My THS friend Amril had given a detailed description of the field were the tombstones were to be found. Landmark was a huge tree with a small Hindu temple. in one corner of the field.

Exploring the field, we found a number of isolated tombstones. Some of them had engravings, which Aric could decipher as being Chinese. No Japanese tombstones. But one of my friends who lived in Pokok Assam as a teenager, told me that he had taken Japanese officials (?) to the graves. He thought that maybe the remains had been exhumed and taken back to Japan. Another THS friend thought the existing tombstones might have been erected for people who had died in the hospital without next of kin. It was an interesting excursion.

Here a collage of the tombstones we found

On our way back home we still had time enough to visit Tasik Cermin, the “secret” Mirror Lake near Ipoh. I had been there before, Aric would like to have a look himself. The lake is located in an active quarry and can only be reached through a tunnel. There was a warning sign at the entrance of the tunnel that access was not allowed because a few months earlier a piece of rock had fallen down and damaged the platform. We trespassed and had a (quick) look.

The quarry is located only a few hundred meters from the trunk road no 1. Driving back we noticed a sign for a Chinese temple. There are several well known temples in this region, for example Kek Lok Tong and Sam Poh Tong, but this one was new for us. The name of this temple is  Da Seng Ngan. The caretaker said it was actually an old temple, but long time covered by a landslide, and only rediscovered in 2006. More information can be found here .

As you can see in the GE map below, there are many temples on the slopes of Gunung Rapat. Could become an interesting new project…:-)