De Garden, Good Place For Gathering

There are more and more restaurants & retail shops opened in De Garden Mall. Anyway, I find restaurants are more attractive then retail shops. It is true that restaurants over here with cozy environment & nice food are good places for gathering with family or friends. I just met new friends here in a newly opened Hong Kong style restaurant, Tong Yan Kai (唐人街) and had very good conversation about blogging life.

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However, a bigger crowd would simply annoy the nearby residents due to traffic congestion & irresponsible parking. There are several signboards of "no parking" put up at adjacent residential streets but I still see many drivers are ignoring the restriction and causing inconvenience by parking along roadside that narrowing the driving path.

Let's Solve The Puzzle

This sign sounds meaningless? Let's fill in the blanks to figure out what's this :-) Well, I think you may know the answer is Hotel Excelsior, which was once the most famous hotel in Ipoh. As I remember, it should be established about a quarter century ago in the years of 1980's and was the largest of its kind in town. Over the years, many new hotels opened to share the growing market and uniqueness of Hotel Excelsior has faded away. However, the Dulang Coffee House at ground floor is still a favorite dining place. Having missing characters on its neon sign is not the first time. It was even funnier when once I encountered only characters "EL" were missing and from far we only saw "HOT EXCELSIOR". Well, was it really "hot"? I have no idea :-)

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If you would like to know more about Hotel Excelsior, you may check the following details.

Hotel Excelsior

43, Jalan Sultan Abdul Jalil, 30300 Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.

Tel: +605-2536666

Fax: +605-2536912

Email: mail@hotelexcelsior.com.my

URL: www.hotelexcelsior.com.my

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Oh yes, when typing its telephone number, I also remember another story; when there was the time we still using 6-digit telephone number, its telephone is just one number different from my home number. Therefore we always answer calls on behalf of Hotel Excelsior :-)

Fishing in Sunday

Sunday is a non working day for most people, as well as foreign workers. Many of them originated from other third world countries and staying far away from home to earn for better life in future. I was walking along Hugh Low Bridge and found this guy, whom I believe is a foreign worker, was fishing at Kinta River. May be many would think the polluted river is hardly to get fish, but after I watched for less than a minute, he has got one caught. I was wondering how many more fishes is possibly in the plastic bag beside him. Anyway, instead of hanging around in town during off day, choosing to make use of any available time for benefitial activities is a positive way of living.
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Lam Looking Bazaar Is Back

There is no update on Lam Looking Bazaar restoration in this blog since 4-Jan-2010. The building work is completed & I see the first occupant, probably is the anchor tenant, namely Sew Cheong, has moved in. As far as I know, this is a Chinese traditional medical trading company that originally operating in Hugh Low Street. Lam Looking Bazaar is now entering a new chapter. I believe a lot of Ipoh citizens hope to see the bazaar to regain its shine like in the past glorious era. However, I find the name of Lam Looking Bazaar that engraved on building has been removed (you could refer photo in the post dated 21-Jan-2009). And the restoration has made it too "new", people who do not familiar with its history may think this is just another new building.

Japanese Stone Lantern

Stone lantern is a unique feature in Japanese landscape garden. It appears in many styles as a decorative item in the garden and is very charming when lightened up at night. Normally the stone lantern stands among green plants or beside the pond. Some designs are simple and neat, but there are also carved with animals, plants or characters. The Japanese Garden in D.R. Park which is a joint development by Ipoh and its sister city, Fukuoka, has these beautiful stone lanterns.

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The Glass Wall

Bougainvillea Building is the only high rise building in Ipoh that uses glass wall. Although it is only 10 storey in height, the building seems to be displaying most modernized design in the city. The glass wall on three of four surfaces of the building sometimes reflect beautiful color of sun rise and sun set. It was mainly occupied by a famous IT college upon completion until few years ago. Currently it is still linked to IT industry where a computer & IT company, Kinta Digital World, is occupying the lower floors.

Moment In The Morning

It was raining last night. The sky seen to have thin clouds remaining in the morning. This is always a nice moment that I enjoy the cool breeze, bird singing, swaying leaves & beautiful sky color. I am lucky to see a group of birds flying over me but I have too little time to adjust the correct camera setting and only managed to capture a blur image of the birds. Anyway, I still feel grateful to see this beautiful start of a day and hope this will be another nice day to go.

Public Buses To Be Upgraded

Some Ipohites may have noticed since several months ago there are some new air conditioned buses named "Perak Transit" (in pink color) start servicing the public for the route between Ipoh and Kuala Kangsar, which is considered as an inter-town line. Recently, there are more new Perak Transit buses in blue color running on the road occupying some intra-city routes. It seems the public transport in Ipoh will undergoing some upgrades. Hopefully this does not end up in similar fate as the previous Citybus (about 13 years ago), where air-conditioned buses did not grow further to replace all aging buses, instead slowly downgraded to non air-con and most of it eventually missing in action. However, these 30-year old monsters are surprisingly still running on the road. We can see these old buses are lining up at Hugh Low Street carrying passengers to every corner of the city.

Multi Usage Tower

I believe drivers who ride along Raja Perempuan Mazwin Road will notice this telecommunication tower at the session near First Garden. It appears to be a typical telecom tower but come with a very different coating. Instead of painted in usual red and white, it's only coated in white and decorated with several colorful Islamic patterns. I also found the little golden Islamic dome on the tower top and some loud speakers on tower body. I then realize this should be also a minarets of mosque.

Reflection of Sunset

It was raining for more than two hours in the afternoon. The heavy rain has created some little swallow ponds at the field. It reflects the beautiful color of sunset.

Sunset at the State Secretariat Building

Perak state is commonly known as the silver state in Malaysia ("perak" means silver in Bahasa Malaysia). Today's sunset appears to be silvery and become a nice background to the silver state's administration center, state secretariat building which carries the remarkable great purple roofing.

De Garden Multi Storey Car Park

With more and more shops opened in De Garden Mall, car parking becomes a major concern to this hottest complex of shopping and dinning. The congestion has extended to the nearby shops and housing area. Even a small piece of land has to be utilized to build a multi storey car park. This 5-level car park may help to relief the high demand of parking lot but it may not completely fulfill the need with its limited capacity. Since De Garden, Kinta City & Tesco are located adjacent to each other, pedestrian overhead bridges can be the link to distribute the load among these shopping malls.

Center Point Landmark

There was a master development plan of Ipoh that covers up to year 2020 being published and opened for public view few months ago. As reported in the newspaper, there was a question about where exactly is the current Ipoh's city center. I am confused with this question. In my opinion, although the city boundary has expended tremendously and the most intense commercial developing area now is Ipoh Garden, but I believe the city center has not changed to most Ipohites. In fact I find this telecommunocation tower at Cockman Street is nearly the center point of downtown and it's taller than any other surrounding concrete buildings. Even though this is not a remarkable structure, but I believe it can be upgraded & beautified (especially with lighting effect) making it a landmark.

Beautiful Lake in Gunung Lang

Limestone hill is a natural treasure of Ipoh. It not only supports the cement industry but also provides beautiful scenery as tourism spot. The best known places must be cave temples, such as Perak Cave & Sam Poh Tong, that have been established for more than half a century. The latest developed spot should be Gunung Lang Recreation Park. It's entrance is just few hundred meters from Northern Ipoh exit of North-South Expressway (and you may find the great sign IPOH is just on top of the hill at entrance). After driving about a kilometer, passing by a temple called Dragon Head Rock, the recreation park appears on the right. There is a beautiful lake surrounded by limestome hills. There are more features at the other side of the lake, including an observation tower. Admission to the park is free but it charges reasonable fee for crossing the lake by boat. This is a very nice place for the citizen to enjoy refreshing air and relaxing atmosphere in this beautiful environment. Publicity of the park is still not effective as I find even some Ipoh citizens are not aware of this place. Hopefully it will be made known nationwide, or even worldwide so there will be more people able to enjoy their visit to this beautiful park.