A day in Taiping

After 5 days of good cycling, we decided to stay in Taiping for a day. Taiping is a city between Ipoh and Penang, with quite a rich history. We had been here once, more than 10 years ago, and remembered it as a nice, old town with quite a bit heritage. It's a rough diamond, could really become a beautiful place - a bit like Ipoh but even better I would think, if it is managed well. 

Beautiful old wooden house, this one urgently needs a serious renovation - if still possible at all...

Another nice example, this one in better condition

We walked around the whole day, did more than 20k like this - stay active lah! We walked for a while in the beautiful lake gardens, went to the zoo (yes, even the zoo, it's actually quite a nice zoo) and the town itself, mostly following the heritage trail. We also took enough time for lunch (claypot yee mee), a good coffee (yes, we found really very nice coffee here!) and dinner (rojak and sotong kang kong) of course. 

Wonderful lush Taiping lake gardens, well "fed" by the rain

Like yesterday, it started to rain early in the afternoon already, there is a reason why this place is called the "rainy town". Taiping gets one of the highest amounts of rain of all Malaysian towns... and that we noticed. Rain all of yesterday afternoon and night, and most of today's afternoon as well. No problem, rain is the perfect excuse for a nice coffee anyway.

Rainy Taiping with Maxwell Hill or Bukit Larut in the background

We stay in Sojourn Beds & Cafe guest house, a recommendation for anyone planning to come to Taiping by the way. Simple, friendly, clean, correct place for a fair price. The kind of guest house I wouldn't mind finding regularly on our way!

The old market of Taiping

Tomorrow we continue our cycling trip, back to the coast, with a visit to the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, seems to be one of the  biggest, best preserved and managed mangrove forest reserves in the world! Looking forward to that!

Closed doors

Closed windows too

In case of fire...