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Saturday 18 March 2023

Roadtrip Day 1 (Bismillah Cendol │ Taiping Lake Gardens │ Tai Hu Food Court)

We're going on a road trip!

A week ago the office asked me to give a lecture to students of a community college in Jitra, Kedah on Monday 20th March 2023. This lecture would be a series of simultaneous lectures at over 140 community colleges all over Malaysia involving an estimated 30,000 students and would be worthy of entry into Malaysia's Book of Records (MBOR).

At such short notice and with the Malaysian school holidays ending this weekend ETS tickets headed north were all sold out. Since a bus ride would take between six and seven hours anyway we decided to drive instead.

The distance to Jitra in in the northern state of Kedah is approximately 450 kilometres so we decided to split the drive into several days. The plan was to drive to Taiping on Saturday, then Jitra on Sunday.
The plan was also once I was done with the lecture on Monday we would drive back south to Ipoh before driving back to Kuala Lumpur the following day.

We managed to book the necessary hotels and today began our impromptu road trip. Our good buddy who dabbles in the used car business was kind enough to allow us the use of a very comfortable sports utility vehicle so that we could drive the considerable distance in some measure of comfort.

We left our home twenty minutes past nine in the morning and arrived in Taiping at twelve noon. You can watch the hyper lapsed footage of the drive in our previous video.

We then made our way to the hotel but were told we could only check in at three in the afternoon. We then made our way into town and had lunch at Bismillah Cendol. We had:

  • a bowl of Pasembur each for RM8.00
  • a bowl of Kacang Jagung Cendul for RM2.20
  • a bowl of Pulut Jagung Cendul for RM2.60

which came to only RM12.80 (approximately USD/EUR3). With about two hours to burn we decided to drive back to the vicinity of the hotel and drove into DoubleTap Cafe's parking lot.

We decided against having a drink here since we wanted to first take a drive around the Taiping Lake Gardens. We circumnavigated the Lake Gardens and then headed to a Petronas Station since the car we were driving was 'thirsty'.

We again made our way to DoubleTap Cafe and ordered the:

  • Dalgona Coffee for RM15.00
  • Iced Honey Lemon for RM8.00
  • French Toast (shared) for RM8.00

that came to RM31.00 (approximately USD/EUR7). We were seated by a large window overlooking the lake and spent a pleasant hour here. We then made the short drive to Flemington Hotel next door and checked in. We booked a twin room for RM208.00 (approximately USD46/EUR44) which was wholly paid from monies in our Booking.com wallet, monies that we had garnered from previous bookings.

We then took a nap and then wanted to take a stroll along the Taiping Lake Gardens in the evening but a heavy down put paid to our plans. We waited a while and left the hotel at sunset once the rain had subsided. Be sure to watch our next video on our stroll along this beautiful part of Taiping.

We then arrived at our dinner destination, Tai Hu Food Court. We had:

  • Mata Kuching Drinks for RM4.80
  • Plate of Lor Bak for RM19.70
  • Grilled Stingray for RM26.00
  • Kueh Teow Thng for RM6.00

which came to RM56.50 (approximately USD13/EUR12). We then took another stroll along the Taiping Lake Gardens and made our way back to the hotel. The room rate came with breakfast for two, so we hoped to have an early night.

Catch up with you tomorrow morning!

(Do visit our YouTube Channel Have Perut Will Travel)

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