The Bub in the Belly

Here's what we did for the Ipoh-leg of our Chinese New Year break.

The morning before we left for Ipoh, we had a walk around the new shopping mall next to our condo. The mall is huge but it's so new that more than half of its units are empty so there wasn't much to see. We popped into one of the little cafes for lunch.

After that we started our drive up north to Ipoh. The drive up is pretty scenic. Ipoh is located in the middle of the Kinta Valley in the midst of limestone hills so apart from the usual greenery that you see all along the North-South highway, you see a lot more hills. 

Ipoh is where my mother's family is based. Her parents (my grandparents) brought up nine children in Ipoh and four of those children still live in Ipoh. I love going back to Ipoh for Chinese New Year, because I get to see most of my relatives then. Three of my grandmother's children live overseas (including my mother) so I don't always get to see those family members but we still have a good crowd. We need at least three round tables, sometimes four, for our reunion dinner and it's pretty great to see four generations at the dinner (my grandmother has seven great grandchildren with more to come).

The drive was pretty smooth, we made it in a little more than an hour and a half. We checked into a hotel when we arrived, rested for a while and, for dinner, we went over to Uncle Daniel's house. His wife, Aunty Sharon, is an amazing cook so it is always a pleasure to eat at their house. My brother was already there (he drove up from PJ a couple of days prior) but he was leaving after dinner to make a round trip to the KL airport to pick up my mum who was flying in from Sydney.

After dinner, some more relatives came over so we hung around, chatted and played mahjong till about midnight.

The next morning, we gathered with my relatives again and drove out for brunch near the stadium. Lots of great hawker fare - wantan mee, pork noodles, chee cheong fun, rojak, curry noodles, ban mian, etc. After we ate our fill, everyone drove over to Uncle Peter's place. The adults sat around, chatted and played mahjong while the teenagers went go-karting. We and my mum went with Uncle Daniel and Aunty Sharon to check out a showhouse nearby - a new townhouse development that was being launched.

After that, it was back to the hotel for a rest before the reunion dinner. Like last year, the dinner was held at Royal China, which was next to our hotel so we just walked over. The food was excellent so, although it was a little pricey, I think it was worth the price.

After dinner, we all gathered again at Uncle Daniel's house as usual. His house is usually the headquarters during Chinese New Year.

Everyone was having so much fun that it was 2 am before anyone wanted to leave. We went back to the hotel, exhausted but happy.

We woke up very late the next morning, missed breakfast, packed up and went straight to check out, while Ryan went to have a look at the rabbits in the hotel lobby. There was a small rabbit house with about 6 small rabbits, which the hotel had for the Chinese New Year (Year of the Rabbit).

We went for lunch at Lou Wong. This is the very famous "tauge ayam" dish, which consists of steamed white chicken, served with noodles, which you can have dry or with soup. You can also order beansprouts and meatballs as side dishes. I highly recommend this - we always make a point to stop by for a meal everytime we are in Ipoh.

After that thoroughly satisfying meal, we drove over to Uncle Daniel's house to say goodbye before starting our drive back south to KL/PJ. Wish that we could have stayed longer!

We spent the next few days in KL/PJ and headed back to Singapore on Tuesday night. Will share what we did in KL/PJ in the next post!