Leaving Georgetown marked the beginning of our "4 cities, 1 week" blitz of northern Malaysia. Typically we try to stay in cities for about 4 nights, since shorter stays and more frequent moves tire everyone out. However, there were a few places that we wanted to visit in the north of the country, none of which seemed to warrant more than a couple nights' stay. Also, after staying 10 days in Koh Lanta and with an 8 day stay outside Kuala Lumpur planned over Christmas, we decided everyone could handle a quicker travel pace for a week.
Since the roads in Malaysia are pretty orderly and well taken care of, the bus ride from Georgetown to Ipoh was quick and uneventful. We went to Ipoh to go white water rafting, something the boys were eager to try and Bob and I looked forward to doing again.
The day started out kind of quirky--the white water rafting people told us to meet them at a toll plaza rest stop, where they'd pick us up to take us to the rafting point. Our Uber driver didn't want to turn into the road with the toll plaza, so he dropped us off on the side of a busy Malaysian highway. We walked a short distance to the toll plaza to find...no one waiting for us.
We'd not yet gotten a Malaysian SIM card (our mistake and travel lesson learned), so we had no way to call the company. We waited for a while, looking very much out of place in our bathing suits and rafting clothes....
We asked a random guy if he could help us, which he gladly did. He looked up the company, we called from his phone, and he even offered to wait with us until they came. The rafting guys did eventually show up......on a moped. Since 6 people on a scooter is too many, even by Southeast Asian standards, they left to go get a car and, eventually, came back to pick us up (again).
The plan for the trip included lunch, which was our first stop. We're not sure if the guides were trying to make up for lost time and/or cater to stereotypical Western tastes, but we ended up at a KFC. The boys were thrilled because, since Mongolia, they've been begging to eat at KFC. Our family rarely eats fast food and eating at American fast food restaurants overseas creates a strong feeling of stereotype threat in me, so we'd avoided KFC to date. But we were all hungry and just wanted to get on with rafting, so we ate at KFC. The boys were extremely happy with our most un-Malaysian meal ever.
Weird beginning and subpar lunch aside, the rest of the rafting trip was really great. First we suited up and got on the river!
At the first rapid, Bob got tossed overboard. I don't have any pictures of that, unfortunately, but the boys thought it was hilarious. Actually, they were grinning, hooting, and hollering for pretty much the whole trip.
At a couple of points, the second guide would go downriver with our camera to take photos/videos of us. He even caught when the main guide fell out after one of the bumpy rapids, which made Bob feel a bit better. :)
At some of the calmer spots, we jumped out of the raft and floated downriver.
Our 2 guides were super nice and extremely playful and friendly with the boys.
We rafted for about 2 hours through beautiful jungle scenery. It was definitely an activity that everyone in the family enjoyed and wants to do again!
During the rest of our stay in Ipoh, we walked around the small historic district, which has some beautiful colonial architecture...
The boys ate beautifully spun cotton candy flowers...
And we tracked down more street art. Ipoh also has its own collection, in a similar style to what we saw in Georgetown.
My favorite was this mural of iced coffee in bags. Drinking a cold liquid from a plastic bag is the equivalent of drinking from a to-go cup in Europe or America. The rubber band that closes the bag also conveniently fits around a scooter handle.
Other things we did in Ipoh included eating bean sprout chicken (Ipoh's signature dish), wandering all over town searching for an elusive multi-stage geocache, and eating dim sum (also a "thing" in Ipoh) for breakfast. None of which I got pictures of, though.
Our stop in Ipoh was a lot of fun, and after a quick 2 nights it was time to move on!
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