Hop on!

I remembered being skeptical and thought that it was bad joke to have the open deck bus in Ipoh. I am guilty for judging before even trying because I was proved WRONG!

The media crew on the hop on hop off bus. 

Here is how  my story goes. I was involved in the fam trip organised by Tourism Malaysia for the Lenggong Carnival. Our itinerary included the ride on a hop on hop off bus which was introduced in Ipoh sometime  in March. It's a double decker bus where the top part is open so you can see the town clearly. The bottom part is aircond so if you hate the sun, you can always sit here. The bus starts at 10am and stop at 9.30pm.It starts at the Amanjaya bus station and will go to the courthouse near the cityhall. Passengers will get down here. Here we can walk around the area since it is part of the heritage trail. Or we can take another bus that starts from the courthouse that will take us around the city with a guide that explain and introduce passengers to the best places to eat, historical places and shopping mall. The tickets  can be used to and fro. Yes you only pay once. 

We enjoyed the ride and I noticed many locals taking their children on the bus. The children loves it. 

The bus will soon go to the outskirts of Ipoh like Tambun and Gopeng. So you can visit most of the tourist spots without worrying about parking spaces. That's the idea for having this hop on hop off bus. 

So I must say that it is a good way of getting to know a city. Just hop on and hop off. 

Meteorites at our own backyard

There I sat on a meteorite which happens to be in an oil palm plantation right smack in Lenggong. Lenggong is one of the UNESCO World archaeological site. We have four UNESCO sites in Malaysia  and Perak is proud that Lenggong is one of them. Getting that recognition is no mean feat. So we are thankful to our archaeologists for finding the Perak Man and this meteorite which fell on our own backyard so to speak.

There were thousands of the meteorites at the place where the meteor fell more than a million years ago and the place is called Bukit Bunuh. It got its name because every living beings were killed at that time when it fell. They look like rocks but upon closer inspection it is not the same. 

I was lucky to be invited by Tourism Malaysia on a fam trip to Lenggong for a carnival  in conjunction with its 7th year of being recognised as the UNESCO world heritage site. 

The above are pictures of the meteorites.

To begin with, I was there with other bloggers and media players by invitation as mentioned earlier to introduce to the world at large if not just Malaysia only the Lenggong UNESCO world heritage site.

Before we visited Bukit  Bunuh , we went to Gua Kajang first. This  is one the cave where two skeletons from the stone age and the bronze age were found. The difference between the two is that the one from the stone age was buried in a fetal  position and the bronze age was buried in a straight position. These two skeletons are now resting at the Archaeological Gallery in Lenggong.

Later on the oldest skeleton of a man was found at another cave and he is known as the Perak Man. Researched found that he was deformed during birth and died in his forties. We did not get to see the place where he was found because the infrastructure of the archaeological  complex was not safe for visitors at the moment. We can only see him at the gallery.

The Perak Man

 He was found to be deformed

I guess we never realised how lucky we are to be on the world map because of The Perak Man. Unlike other countries, we don't seem to show our pride in having a UNESCO site. It's about time that the Perak Govt should put a huge Signboard of The Lenggong UNESCO world Archaeological site. Why are we in awe of other countries' UNESCO sites and not ours? We travel to foreign places to see their UNESCO site without realising that we have ours that many do not know existed . An irony I would conclude.