Back to my roots - My Hometown...

Some basic details of where I came from...NO. I dun mean my dad's active sperm and my mom's egg !! But the place where I'd stayed for the 1st 20 years - hometown.
Well..wat can I say about Ipoh, my birthplace. Ok..my hometown not exactly Ipoh but 15mins journey out from Ipoh. It's called Gopeng, an even smaller town with basically nothing except mountains, caves & farms. Ok, not really that bad. They do have all the basic necessities like clinics, "foodcourt", kopitiam, shophouses, schools, restaurants, police station, temple, banks, etc, etc, etc...Hmmm, let me see, what else so special about there ? Nothing, haha..but there're a few caves that are really quite famous; like Gua Tempurung. People will come for the expedition or camping. And the mountain nearest to our housing estate is quite nice too. Ok..not really super wild mountain..but mountain with small little path for you to travel up. You need to go up to enjoy the natural wild like waterfall (ok, mini one lah..), refreshing rivers and along the way, you will see lots of plantation. All the weird insects, birds & plants. The the temperature will start going down too..as you goes up. You will see lots of orang asli too (but i guess, most of them moved down to rent houses already - they're becoming more civilized liao). Eh, did i mention before that my dad teaches at the school up there at the mountain before he retired !? That's why his last few years teaching were like honeymoon period 'coz the classrooms were small with limited students and when on rainy days, he will not need to go school at all. Gopeng is a bloody small town occupied with simple and very contented people. People are generally close there. However, town gossips are generally favourite past-time there too. Nothing much can be written about Gopeng. Oh yeah..we have "exotic" food being sold there too..like snake soup, turtle soup, squirrel, etc. Let's move on to other towns surrounding Gopeng. First, Ipoh. OK, it has everything. Few hospitals, libraries, shopping centers, hotels, big factories, clubbing scene, karaokes, broking firms, chill out places, financial centers, mini airports, train station, stadium, parks, many many good makan places..in fact EVERYTHING lah..mind you, Ipoh was declared a CITY many years back. But still, it's quite a laidback and quiet town. And FYI, the "IPOH HORFUN" here is totally different serving from wat in Ipoh. Horfun in Ipoh is just normal horfun..but smoother and nicer. It can be served in various ways. Ipoh also has many other good foods. But too bad, I can't really remember most of it or how to describe it. Ipoh also famous for producing pretty girls, supposingly. Michelle Yeoh is from Ipoh. But you cant really see them on normal days. You need to go back during CNY, and then at that time, Ipoh will be flooded with pretty, trendy and attractive girls. OK, we move to another smaller town around Gopeng - it's called Batu Gajah. An even smaller town than Gopeng, I guess. However, they have a very very small train station. But I think it's meant for load/unload stuff only and not for passengers...I'm not sure. They also have a tourist attraction in the form of a castle. Yes, CASTLE. It's called Kellie Castle. It was built by some angmoh lah..long long time ago...check out the webbie for more info. Quite a nice place to visit. The movie "Anna & the King" was shot there. OK, then we have the town, Kampar. Before the highways, Kampar used to be quite a famous town because everybody needs to go thru it to travel from South to North or vise-versa. But now with the north-south highway, there's no need to do so. Generally a bigger town than Gopeng but nothing much there..so nothing much to mention too..haha. Basically..that's about all. More famous places around Gopeng (journey within 1 - 1plus hours) will be Taiping, Cameron Highlands, Pangkor Island and further away will be Penang.