Boredworkers.com

If you’re wondering what’s with the title, it simply states the distance that WL and I travelled within the span of 75 hours during our trip to Penang (mentioned in my last post). Its a wonder considering that the actual milleage to Penang is roughly 360km one way. Where did the additional 400 odd km come from? Perhaps the following travel itinerary might shed some light:

• 23:00 - 15 Sept 2005 : Kuala Lumpur - Milleage = 0km
• 04:00 - 16 Sept 2005 : Penang Bridge (going in) - Milleage = 376km
• 15:00 - 18 Sept 2005 : Penang Bridge (going out) - Milleage = 597km
• 16:00 - 18 Sept 2005 : Taiping, Perak - Milleage = 668km
• 17:00 - 18 Sept 2005 : Ipoh, Perak - Milleage = 736km
• 19:00 - 18 Sept 2005 : Cameron Highlands, Pahang - Milleage = 835km
• 21:30 - 18 Sept 2005 : Simpang Pulai, Perak - Milleage = 939km
  
• 23:45 - 18 Sept 2005 : 18.3km after Tapah rest stop - Milleage = 999.9km
• 02:00 - 19 Sept 2005 : Kuala Lumpur (home again) - Milleage = 1156.9km

Its usually at this point in the telling of my trip that I get a surprised “WHAT?!” from friends listening in. Yes, you read it quite right. I did make a detour to Cameron Highlands to visit a friend. But lets start from the beginning and work our way there.

Penang was the usual food galore that we’ve come to expect. Areas that we drove to for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper included Gurney Drive, Air Itam and Georgetown. It was mostly hawker food and the like but there were two places of note. The first was an old KFC outlet in Midlands Park (I think) that was converted from an old style bungalow. The atmosphere was a little different from what we’ve come to expect of fast food restaurants. After KFC, we manage to get our hands on some Him Heang (along Burma Street)’s Tambun Biscuits (RM9.00 for a box of 32). It was still crispy fresh from the oven!

The second place worth a mention is a nice dimsum (chinese dumplings) place along Jalan Anson that we went to for brunch on Sunday. Zim Sum Restaurant, if I recall the name correctly. The place was huge and served a very good variety of dimsum; from the standard steamed and fried variety to hong kong style chee cheong fun and century egg porridge. By far the best was their freshly baked egg tarts. They came by for last orders just when I paid the bill and we decided to give it a pass thinking that we could get some on the way out at the counter. Boy was I mistaken. In the short time it took for us to walk from our seat at one end of the restaurant to the back exit where the counter was, they had already sold out, cleaned up and closed shop! That’s how popular the egg tarts were. Brunch for two = RM16.80.

Our first stop on our return journey was Taiping, Perak. The sole reason for stopping was to buy some of Taiping’s delicious Heong Pneah. I seriously don’t know how to translate that to English but a word to word conversion would mean… Fragrant Biscuit (RM3.80 for a pack of 10). By the time we left Taiping, we were desperately hungry but decided to hold off till we got to Ipoh for some Ipoh Nga Choi Gai (chicken and beansprouts - Dinner for two = RM15.00). We have a friend who stayed there and we though we would pay him a visit but when we called, he told us that he was up in Cameron Highlands with his better half’s family to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival (Lantern festival or Mooncake festival as some may refer to it).

We had our dinner and were on our way back to the North South Expressway when we passed Kelly’s Castle in Simpang Pulai. That reminded me that we were only a short distance from the new trunk road up to Cameron Highlands. I asked WL whether she wanted to go meet our friend and on the spur of the moment, we decided yes. And so that’s how we found ourselves 1,628m above sea level having ourselves a nice old time lighting lanterns and running around in the cold. We met some kids there who hijacked our lanterns but it was all good fun.

The rest of the journey went by pretty quickly once we were on the road again. Nothing particularly special that needs to be told, so I’ll just end it here.

I would put up photo gallery but as Shannon mentioned earlier, the site’s having some teething problems and the backend isn’t quite cutting it at the moment. I’ll put up some photos just as soon as someone gets it to work.

Cheers.