Some of the significant in Ipoh

I was born in Ipoh like couple of decades ago, grew up there and had a fond memory with friends, family, and probably my first love. Oh don't ask, back than I wasn't a "color wolf" like now yet, was still a innocent child with loads of fairy tale dreams that imagine one day I will have a family here, half a football team of children running around, and an unrealistic super good looking sexy wife that walk my dog with the kids whilst I'm having fun with my Nintendo.

Oh well, time flies and all that imagination has been buried under the carpet since I moved out to the major city of Kuala Lumpur. And now I'm coming home on every Lunar New Year celebration, picking up bits and pieces of my old dream. Don't mind me if I rant a little and talked too much of unrelated stuff in my post, as I am about to document some of the things happened in my life.

1. Sungkai was one of the cowboy town between the North South route. Its been long forgotten every since the toll road being introduced back in the late 80s.
2. And here we are now, during festive seasons, we Malaysian likes to practice major evacuation. I'm serious, it's like watching apocalypse movie. Only thing is, one will have to suffer many hours in the traffic and we get to use the county road since the toll road will have higher traffic volume.
3. One of my favorite local restaurant being the Loke Wooi Kee. Simply said, this is a standard coffee shop that the locals come to eat, rather than heavily influenced by tour company.
4. The chicken and bean sprout noodle is one of the top cake here, but I'm not going to sit down and wait for it. Not especially during peak season like this, too many outsider(including myself) came back from other states eagerly trying to get a hand on the best food we ex-locals knows.
5. Instead, went with a not so famous plank noodle. As it's translated name, a piece of wood doesn't mean the noodle hard like a piece of wood. It was the noodle dough being slammed on the wooden plank over an over again until the dough is soft and smooth, before grind into slices of noodle. Not the best in town, but it's not bad at all. Considering it was only RM6.50(with egg).
6. And the significant Kaya Butter Toast we like the most. Kaya is the kind of sweet paste made of pandan leafs, matched with slight savory from the salted butter, made these stuff very addictive, especially local likes to dip them into coffee or hot chocolate. Darn it, I'm mouth watering now even when I'm typing this.
7. Along the road is Deen CT Corner. Deen CT was an Indian Muslim guy. He made good shave ice coconut drink, and he's also my mentor in smoking with "happy" stuff. Sometimes, after school I will be visiting Deen CT to grab a bowl of super chilling shaved iced coconut drink we called it Cendol here, and sometimes he will also pass me a stick of those happy smoke that keep me chill for couple of hours at my mother's flower shop next to this road. As far as I know, Deen CT is no longer here. He's happily resting with all the happy stuff he can get, now the stall operated by Deen's brother which he doesn't know who I am, other than seeing me visit once or twice a year for a bowl of cendol.
8. There was a time(well, just a couple of years back) where the entire town started to fill up with reggae bar and rest house where you'll meet bunch of like minded hippy around. However, all that has changed, thanks to the almighty virus breakout. Many of these reggae bar and rest house are done. Without tourism, this place seems to be the hardest survival place in the map.
9. On the other hand, second hand shops are everywhere, especially clothing bundle shops. I don't know how that works, but justifying selling a piece of cloth for RM5(that's like $1.20), I just can't brain how can they pay for rental.
10. Restaurant Hua Nam is one of the significant breakfast place, back in the days when my dad still drove us to church during Sunday morning, we will be here having our breakfast by 7am. Imagine a Chinese kid sitting there having a bowl of noodle with sweat on his face and had to go to church immediately after breakfast. One will have to anticipate the kind of bad breathe issue, smelly collar due to sweat, and the oily face, bringing all that to meet the sweetest girl in church and probably will be sitting next to me.
11. Chang Keong Dim Sum restaurant is one of the typical Hong Kong style dimsum shop, but definitely different in terms of setup and location. Nobody open dim sum shop at the ground floor in Hong Kong, due to rental and property location.
12. And the extremely famous Cowan Street Bean Sprout Chicken restaurant, I think I only visited this place 2 times in my life. Once with my parents, many years ago, and then 1 more time with friends from other state. They're famous with their food, and ofcourse their attitude. This is one of the oldest traditional restaurant here, the operator does not like you to stand there and try to make order. If you arrive, find a place and sit down. Wait for him to come to you, don't you ever dare to approach the server, or you'll get lecture. If you try to pro-actively help with your order, you'll probably be sent off. Don't laugh, 10 out of 10 customers came here to see how bad it could be, but they ended up come back over and over again. I started to believe, it's not because of the food, it was due to the mind fucked mentality people like to be abused in order to cherish what they paid for.
13. We were actually driving to find a Watson's pharmacy, but ended up GPS sending us for tour in town. These are the road we seldom drive to, and Oversea Restaurant is one of the most significant restaurant in town. Being situated at the middle of major financial companies, big bosses and the rich likes to have their food here. Don't ask me, I only been to this restaurant back in the early 2000s when I was working with a steel factory, and the ISO auditor came for audit. The manager took the auditor and me there fore a meal to show hospitality.
14. Was going to snap a photo of the closed down Syuen Hotel, also another iconic hotel in town. I remember my sister crashed her car for the first time inside the parking lot. I've been there for a job interview, and came back out got myself a parking ticket because the interview took me longer than my parking credit. And a girl that I admired for a long time, got married here and I was invited. Well, all that has gone. Damn virus killed it.
15. Finally, due to road closure and GPS lack of accuracy in such small town, it led us to some of the crazy dodgy alley that show the other part of the town. One just can't imagine how run down these buildings are unless going to the back alley.

Restaurant Loke Wooi Kee
Address: 26, Jalan Mustapha Al-Bakri, Taman Jubilee, 30300 Ipoh, Perak
Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/SppP9qHk8Y5eteQg8