• Family travel,  Malaysia,  Perak,  Road Trip 2012

    Road Trip 2012 – Day 1

    Hello world! I am on a road trip along with my husband and son. My first destination is Pendang because that’s where my mother is. Started the journey as early as 5am.
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    I took the advice of the Travel Time Advisory Schedule to travel before noon on North-South Expressway (E1). I thought I was smart to travel before dawn. I was wrong. Everybody seems to choose to travel before dawn, making a huge traffic jam very early in the morning.

    Expressway versus trunk road

    My husband decided to take the exit at Tanjung Malim (Exit 121) and drive along trunk road (Federal Route 1) to avoid further jam. We don’t mind the long and winding road. The sight is better than the expressway. Not a scene of drivers overtaking one another in dangerous ways. I feel safe traveling on trunk road than expressway.

    The first stop we took was at R&R Temoh, located somewhere between Kampar and Tapah, around 10am. Yassin had  to take his morning shower and we put in RM1 in a container as per instruction note  glued on it. Facilities here include toilet, shower, surau and food outlets. While taking our breakfast, my eyes wandered around. Saw some interesting subjects to photograph. Took my camera out and snap.

    Can you do bird-watching on the expressway? No. Take the trunk road. You will even see chicken cross the road.

    We continued our journey and reached Gopeng in about half an hour. I asked my husband to stop for a while as I want to photograph some windows to add to my Windows Collection on Flickr.

    Clock tower and windows of Gopeng (Gopeng-hagen, as my husband put it. Haha)

    We drove on further slowly and saw Gua Tempurung sign. As it is just 5km away, we decided to drop by. Gopeng is also well-known for s such as the Gua Tempurung, located approximately 5 km from the town centre. Gua Tempurung is a well-known limestone caves in Gopeng and the longest cave in Peninsula Malaysia. Part of it has been developed as a show cave with electric lighting and walkways and there are a range of tours of different lengths and difficulty. Knowing that I am not that fit, my husband bought tickets for the shortest tour. Haha.

    Tickets are very cheap; RM6 for an adult and RM2.50 for children. The tour we took was Tour 1: Golden Flowstone. Tour is about 40 minutes and starts every half an hours from 9am to 4pm.

    I was pretty impressive with a speleotherm that looks like ‘Monalisa’ (right bottom).

    Gua Tempurung (Tempurung Cave) existed since early 8000 B.C. The cave measures 1.9 km in length and 120 metres in height and situated inside Gunung Tempurung that stands 497 meters high.The mountain is an erosional remnant near an ancient coastline. Years of mineralisation of the limestone rocks yielded deposits of tin, with some tungsten minerals and other minor ores. For more information about the cave and tour, visit Gua Tempurung website.

    After Gua Tempurung ,we drove 20km more to reach Ipoh. My husband wanted to find his favourite Nasi Kandar spot he used to visit years ago. But it wasn’t there anymore. We just drove around Ipoh looking for another Nasi Kandar. But could not find any on the route we were on.

    Ipoh town.

    We just took an exit back to E1, did not stop at any R&R as they were visibly full all the time. It’s school holiday, what do you expect. But thankfully, the E1 was less congested. We reached Pendang at 4pm. Spending the night here catching up with my mother.

    We’ll be taking route K153, K17, K10, K15, K154, Federal Route 67, K171, K173 and Federal Route 4 (the West-East Highway connecting Grik, Jeli and Pasir Puteh).

    Good night, everybody. Till tomorrow.

    ~Emila, Pendang | 2259hrs