Sungai Petani - Ipoh - Kampar

Day 1: 8 May 2009 Friday


I marked the beginning of my personal ultimate backpacking trip by riding a Sri Maju bus from Sungai Petani to Ipoh. It was a 2-hour plus ride worth RM23.

What a ride. I was unlucky enough to get the furthest seat at the back. Looking at the bright side, at least I was provided a roller coaster experience :p


To those who are familiar to travel between Ipoh and Penang, you'll recall that halfway through the NS Highway, you'll definitely pass by a hilly area where there's ravine at one side of the highway, right before/after the tunnel through the hills.

Somewhere near there, my bus passed by two accident sites at the other side of the highway, within less than 1km between each other. Oh dear, how high can Malaysia hit her highway accident rate?

Too bad I was seated too far from the window to take a good pix to post here. Anyway my description would suffice, right?

The first one was a pile-up between 5 to 6 vehicles. To name a few I saw, there's a truck, a van, and few cars. Thank God I didn't see any casualty bad enough to warrant newspaper usage (not on the headlines, friend!).

But the funny thing was that there was a very minor jam behind the accident scene. You know Malaysians are notorious to be nosy (but not helpful, unfortunately) when it comes to casualties.

Anyway the answer was a few metres away. Another accident. Now that explained the minor jam. This time it was a spin-off. A lorry and a BMW collided so bad that the BMW spinned off the course. Thank goodness not into the ravine on the other side...

And then the major traffic jam began, and snaked all the way till the tunnel. Very bad. When will these people learn to be more careful on the road, especially at areas like this?


Please forgive my photographing skills. This pix doesn't look like there's ravine on the other side but it is there...

After more than two hours, I finally reach Medan Gopeng bus terminal in Ipoh and Keat Meng arrived just in time to pick me up. Before we headed back to Kampar, we went to Kinta City shopping mall to chill out.


We decided to watch Star Trek after thinking for quite a while. Yeah, RM10 sounds like a wasted opportunity on a Friday. We (I think it's only me) could have gotten student price at RM6 if we'd have decided earlier than 6.00pm =.=

But then again, the movie was so GOOD! Recommended for Star Trek noobs who have never followed the famed Star Trek series before this. Yet still, the graphics and effects were terrific even for hard-core Star Trek fans (Me? I'd call myself an intermediate). Once I'm done with this backpacking trip, I promise myself that I'll watch those old series again :)

Oh, and on a cheeky note, call me Vulcan-manic but I think Spock's hawt in this movie!

After the movie, it was a long trip back to Kampar in Keat Meng's car for the next 45 minutes...