Of Taiping, Penang, and Christmas!

Supremo Trip! Taiping is a great place! Food's good, air's good, view's (Lake Garden) good, and best of all, no traffic jam like K.L.!

Let's see, what have I done on the first day? Go straight to Taiping in Ken's car with Vijay and Sek Lun, then had a rest in Ken's house, then went around Taiping for a bit and ended up in Tesco to buy barbeque stuffs (bought my badminton shoe for Maxwell Hill and went into Taiping Central to watch midnight show of Ip Man (Great fighting moves!). Met a few of Ken's and Vijay's friends, who went with us to Maxwell Hill as well, very friendly they are. Then Sek Lun went hungry and so Ken brought us to a mamak stall. Went back and sleep in Ken's house.

Next day, packed up and got ready for Maxwell Hill/Bukit Larut/ Sing Kei San, and Sek Lun went a little sick, but nonetheless we still got up there. Took around 30 minutes to get up there with a jeep, it was hot then at 12 p.m. but when we reached the place, temperature dropped to like around 20 Celcius (I think). We rented an old bungalow of course, to stay for the night. Relaxed for a while at the place and went hiking for a bit, then a leech managed to stick itself on my ankle and sucked my blood. Vijay burned it and it fell off, but was released and spared of its life (with its stomach full). It's anti-coagulant saliva kept the blood flowing out, the wound took a whole night to dry.

I really regretted that I didn't hike the other places, but still it was relaxing up there. But we had barbeque of course, but the charcoal BBQ stove's too small and (only used it to smoke the sausages and fishballs) took too long to cook the chickens so we fried them instead, and we watched a movie on a laptop and went Christmas Carolling... at 2 a.m., then went to sleep. The old house filled with bugs.. moths particularly. The next day, woke up quite late, and went downhill at 12 p.m., and went for lunch before resting again in Ken's house. Then went out again for sightseeing around Taiping. Went to Lake Garden and yes, the view is fantastic. Then went and bought a racquet to substitute all my broken ones near the place where we all had lunch earlier.

After all that, we went to Sepetang (near the sea) to have seafood dinner, met another friend and then we all went to the Taiping Zoo for Night Safari, lotsa animals, but most are sleeping, and the African animals are grazing, oh well, animals.. sleep and eat. Finally, we went for a drink, and went back to Ken's house to sleep. Next day, packed for Penang, went straight there, and went to Batu Ferringhi to find a hotel but everything's too expensive, so we went for a casino cruise and rented a cabin to sleep. But before that we went to Gurney Plaza and explored the new wing with another of Vijay's friend, had lunch and played pool. And so, we boarded the ship that ferries us to the cruise, explored the cruise and found there's nothing worth doing other than gambling and eating, and also enjoying the sea's wind. Played Rm5 worth of slot machine and found out it's a stupid game, then went to the casino and see people win and lose money, then went back to sleep in the cabin.

Thus, we went back to Taiping and collected by badminton racquet, had lunch and counted our accounts, found out we spent more than RM300 throughout the trip, I spent almost RM500 including the racquet and badminton shoe... Ouch. Then took the bus and in 4 hours I've reached K.L. with Sek Lun. Brought him to Masjid Jamek Putra station to go to KL Sentral, and I myself went to take Masjid Jamek Star station, then walked another 20 minutes (as usual) to get home. And here I am, typing all these like a diary. Another of my memoir sealed in the blog. (If not, I might forget.) Time to sleep again!