We could easily have visited Taiping, a former Perak capital during British colonial rule, as a day trip from Ipoh: the train takes only about 45 minutes. But we didn’t want to spend the hottest part of the day rushing around town. Instead, we decided to stay overnight, giving ourselves the cooler hours of late afternoon, evening and morning to explore.
It was a good plan. At least, in theory.
Our guesthouse was about an 18-minute walk from the station, so we decided to walk rather than take a taxi. We soon regretted that decision. Half of the route was along a busy main road with neither sidewalks nor shade, and the heat and humidity were brutal. By the time we reached our room, we were drenched in sweat and exhausted.
The air conditioning helped us recover quickly, though, and soon we were ready to venture out again — first in search of lunch, then toward one of Taiping’s best-known attractions.
A Tropical Garden in the Middle of Town
We ate at a small Teochew Chinese restaurant, where we had fish soup and stir-fried vegetables, then set out for one of Taiping’s main attractions: Taiping Lake Gardens.
The gardens were established during the British colonial period and were inspired by Kensington Gardens in London. But history aside, what struck us immediately was their beauty. Lake Gardens took our breath away. It was one of the most beautiful parks we had ever visited.
Imagine a large, intricately shaped lake surrounded by emerald-green tropical gardens, with verdant, misty mountains rising in the background. Winding paths connected numerous islands in the lake. In some places, the water was clear; in others, miniature green plants formed a carpet across the surface. White egrets walked on the islands, starkly brilliant against all that green.
Walking through the gardens, we sometimes forgot we were in a town and not in tropical wilderness. Hearing calls of wild animals only reinforced the feeling. There is a zoo in the park, which explained at least some of the sounds we were hearing. And seeing monkeys on one of the islands in the lake was the final touch.
After our monkey battle on Pangkor Island, I was a little apprehensive when I spotted a sign warning us to Beware of the Monkeys. Sure enough, there they were.
A pack of dogs was approaching their island, and we could hear the monkeys calling to one another across the lake, clearly annoyed by this intrusion. After our recent experience on Pangkor, I couldn’t help finding the situation rather satisfying.
Near the entrance to the park, enormous rain trees lowered their twisted branches toward the lake. Each tree was like a mini forest, with other plants growing on its trunk and branches. Their trunks twisted into almost grotesque shapes, making the trees seem ancient and otherworldly.
We wandered along the paths, taking in the greenery and shade, until we heard thunder.
Welcome to Raintown
Rain began to fall, and fortunately Taiping Lake Gardens has plenty of small gazebos scattered throughout the park. We ducked into one and watched locals continue walking through the gardens under their large umbrellas, completely unperturbed by the rain.
We decided to treat the rain as an unexpected break rather than a problem.
After all, this was exactly why we’d stayed overnight: there was no need to rush.
As we resumed our stroll through the park after the rain, one of the trees caught my attention.
It had large red, strongly scented flowers with a peculiar shape.
I had no idea what it was, so I googled it.
It was a cannonball tree.
At first, I wondered how such a strange name had been chosen. Later, as we continued walking through the gardens, we encountered more of these trees — this time with fruit.
The mystery was immediately solved.
The fruits were enormous balls hanging from the trees.
I reached up and lifted one where it hung from the branch. It was surprisingly heavy, and now I understood where the name came from.
They really did look — and feel — like cannonballs.
We stopped for dinner at a hawker court near the park. There was grilled fish and vegetables, so once again we had no trouble skipping the rice and noodles.
Then the rain returned.
This time it wasn’t a gentle tropical shower. It poured. Taiping was proving that it hadn’t earned its reputation as Raintown for nothing.
What amused us most was watching some of the locals in the park simply carry on with whatever they had been doing, as though a torrential downpour were nothing unusual.
Eventually the rain eased enough for us to walk back to our guesthouse, taking the opportunity to browse some of Taiping’s older streets along the way.
A Different Kind of Old Town
The next morning, we wanted to walk some of the heritage trail, but first priority was breakfast.
We dived into a large hawker centre and began to browse. It was busy and clearly popular with locals, but the majority of the food was rice, noodles or deep-fried. Then I spotted a small stall selling steamed dumplings with different vegetable fillings.
While waiting in line, we chatted with locals who suggested which fillings to choose.
The dumplings were delicious, and after we added boiled eggs and coffee, our breakfast was quite good.
Now we were ready to explore.
Taiping is famous for its colonial heritage, but we soon discovered that we needed to adjust our expectations. We are used to old towns in Europe — or colonial towns in Central Mexico — where you can wander the old streets for hours, and each corner presents charming old houses, alleys and plazas.
Taiping — and Malaysia in general — felt very different.
There were beautiful, well-preserved white buildings with stately European architecture, gleaming under the tropical sun.
Then, next to them, you might see buildings full of faded elegance but showing their age.
And then there were houses of a completely different character, distinctly Asian in design.
Some, even when shabby, still had the exotic charm you associate with Asia, hinting at a bygone era.
Others were simply run-down and ugly.
You were constantly switching between these moods as you walked through the streets.
“Charming old town” just didn’t apply here — but Taiping certainly had character.
Doors, Closed and Open
We also wanted to see Taiping’s Clock Tower. Unfortunately, we happened to be there on the very day it was hosting an official opening ceremony.
There were speeches, refreshments, important guests and security — everything you would expect from a formal ceremony.
Unfortunately, it also meant we couldn’t visit the tower.
When we passed by again in the afternoon, the ceremony was over and the area was quiet.
The tower was still firmly closed.
We continued along the heritage trail and soon came to Persatuan Kang Har Tong, a historic Chinese clan association.
The building was closed too, but we noticed a caretaker and asked if we could have a look inside.
To our surprise, he not only opened the door for us, but also gave us a tour. He explained that the building belonged to a wealthy Wong clan.
In the main hall, a large central altar held ancestral tablets bearing the names of deceased members of the clan.
The tablets were arranged on stepped tiers according to generations and seniority.
We learned that families could pay to have their deceased relatives enshrined there, where they would continue to receive prayers from the wider clan community even if their immediate descendants moved away.
We asked the caretaker whether his own ancestors were enshrined there or in another clan building.
He laughed.
He wasn’t rich enough for that, he explained, and he didn’t belong to a clan here. His family worshipped their ancestors at home.
It was our first encounter with this Chinese tradition, and we found it fascinating. We had set out to follow Taiping’s heritage trail, but once again, it was the unexpected moment along the way that became one of our most memorable experiences.
A Glimpse into Malaysia’s Past
We continued to the Telegraph Museum, a small but interesting museum that took us into a very different part of Taiping’s history.
Telegraphs are now completely outdated, but I remember them from my childhood, when they were still a means of communication before the internet and widely available telephones.
The museum showed us that Malaysia had once been at the forefront of telegraph technology, thanks in part to gutta-percha, a natural material discovered and produced in the region. It was used to insulate underwater telegraph cables — a groundbreaking technology at the time.
After lunch, we still had a couple of hours before our train back to Ipoh, so we visited the Perak Museum, the oldest museum in Malaysia.
This turned out to be one of the highlights of our short visit.
The museum was surprisingly varied. One exhibition explored the dragon symbol across Southeast Asia, displaying an array of utilitarian and artistic objects with dragon themes from different countries.
The oldest exhibits included taxidermy specimens of Malaysian wildlife. It was fun recognizing animals and birds we had already encountered during our travels — water monitors, otters, hornbills and others.
Other halls explored the customs and traditions of Malaysia’s Malay, Chinese and Indian communities, including clothing, wedding traditions and religious practices.
But what fascinated me most was an exhibition on the Indigenous peoples of Malaysia.
It introduced communities that still live in remote areas and, in many cases, have preserved ways of life with roots stretching back centuries.
We were sorry to have to cut our visit short. There was still more to see, but our train wasn’t going to wait for us.
Leaving Taiping
There was still plenty of Taiping we hadn’t experienced. We didn’t have time to finish the whole heritage trail through the city, and we skipped Bukit Larut, or Maxwell Hill, because the mountains had been covered in clouds since morning and rain threatened once again.
Twenty-seven hours clearly wasn’t enough.
When we first arrived, Taiping hadn’t made much of an impression on us. But by the time we were ready to catch our train back to Ipoh, the city had grown on us, and we wished we’d had more time.
Taiping reminded me of meeting a stranger who seems quite ordinary at first glance. You might not pay much attention to him if you passed him on the street. But then you start talking, and discover one interesting story after another. The longer you talk, the more curious you become about the person behind the ordinary first impression — and by the time it’s time to say goodbye, you wish you could stay a little longer.
That was Taiping for us.
The next morning, we left Perak behind and headed north to Penang, ready for the next chapter of our Malaysian adventures.
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