Lenggong Valley

After what seemed like a ridiculously short amount of time, our alarms went off at 8am. Downstairs for a quick breakfast before our rental car got delivered at 9am. It was an old Proton with about 200,000km on the clock, quite a few dings but it seemed decent enough.

On the road for the day, we headed out of Ipoh on the highway north towards the Lenggong Valley. This was a near miss WHS for us, as we decided to skip it last time we were in Ipoh in 2016. Good and bad, since on the one hand it meant coming back to this distant corner of Malaysia, but on the other a good museum had opened in the meantime!

So after an hour or so driving we arrived at the museum, surprising the guards who according to the registration book received foreign visitors every couple of days at most. The museum was fairly well done, and we enjoyed our visit.

The main reason for the WH status here is the archaeological remains of neolithic and early bronze age people who lived in the area. Earlier than Ban Chiang, most of the remains recovered here date back to 5000+ years ago. The highlight is definitely Perak Man, the oldest and most complete skeleton found in Asia.

It's a mostly complete skeleton of a male who lived about 10-11 thousand years ago. Interestingly, he had a deformed left hand, shortened left arm bones, and a twisted spine (probably from compensating for his poor arm). Since he had apparently lived until late 40s or early 50s, you can draw some conclusions about the society he'd lived in: they must have been farmers since Perak Man would've been a useless hunter. And they must've had some sort of social strata, since he was buried in a way that suggests he was important. Fascinating stuff.

But we were done with the museum by about 11:30, and still had the car for the rest of the day! So we drove into the town of Lenggong and picked a random place to eat. A lady with quite good English convinced us in to her restaurant where we had some fried rice, fish balls and steamed vegetables. The price seemed a bit high and since we never saw an itemised bill or a menu we might've been conned slightly, but it was still fairly reasonable prices.

Decided to continue north up the highway to the Royal Belum State Park, a large wilderness area on the border with Thailand. It's hoping to get world heritage status in 2020 or 2021. You can only access it properly with a boat, so after 2.5 hours driving we could still only look across a lake at it! But we knew that going in so weren't that bothered. If we eventually have to come back (again!) we'll be prepared.

Back on the long 3 hour drive back to Ipoh in the late afternoon. Drove through a big thunderstorm which was a bit hectic, but we made it just as the sun was setting. Parked next to the hotel and hopped out, cracked open the window slightly, locked the car and tossed the keys in as we'd been instructed to do so the guy could get the car at his leisure. As soon as I dropped the keys I realised we'd left in the car: Shandos's umbrella. Shandos's hat. My sunglasses. And my passport.

So I messaged the guy and said we'd left something in the car, and to let me know when he was picking it up. He said 9:30pm, so we went for dinner and had a delicious Hainan chicken rice, then I just waited next to the car until he arrived. It was a pretty slim chance that someone would break into the car and get my passport, but with a flight in the morning I didn't want to take any chances.

Finally got back upstairs around 10pm where I basically went straight to bed after another super long day!Read more