Cameron Highlands-Ipoh 150 km ± 4 hours
In the evening a nice and hot steamboat seemed the appropriate dish. Before we went to Ipoh we had a drive-see in the surrounding. Our hotel room was just looking over the empty golfcourse. But further up there were more cactus farms and a small butterfly zoo with all kinds of giant beatles, snakes, orchids etc. We also bought some strawberries and mangoes.

Grace asked what was more difficult driving up or driving down Cameron Highlands. I thought driving down was more risky. After another 2 hours of tossing and turning we came on the north-south highway again and resumed our journey north to Ipoh. Worth reporting is that in the midst of the route there are some waterfalls where you can stop and gaze and even swim in the river.

On the North-South the only suspense was when the rain would come down in real torrents and you had to slow down because the car really aquaplaned through vast amounts of water on the road. They haven't used that special asphalt which absorbs surface water yet. Along the highway we noticed the small hills like in Guilin, China and Karst in central Europe. There were a lot of quarry's and particularly chinese temples which were built into those hills. Ipoh was the only city which we hadn't planned for. This was the tin city. Some old and exclusive looking villa's told us about an illustrous past of miners getting rich.

Somewhere in the city we looked for a travel agency for information and found one. The ladies were so friendly and they gave some suggestions for a nice hotel near good facilities for the evening. We stayed at the Syuen hotel, took a dip in the pool. I got a considerable (corporate) discount because I could produce a company namecard. We left the car in the hotel basement and walked on to the opposite mall.

After Kuala Lumpur shopping wasn't very interesting but malls usually have nice foodcourts with good and relatively cheap food. I grew especially fond of the ais kacang. Which is shaved ice on all kinds of sweet beans, jellies etc. And then we saw the theatre and the spiderman movie. It was actually premiered three days before the US premiere. Of all cities… here in Ipoh. There was a sign that they could eventually examine any bags for videocamera's. No videocopying. Nonetheless the Spiderman DVD was already selling in Penang a few days after that, unbelievable… The aircon in a Malaysian theatre wants you to believe your'e on a alpine ridge and we were continuously contemplating finding some warmer regions since we hadn't any jackets on but Spiderman came to the rescue with quite a performance. Outside the weather was the usual 30 C.

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