Kampar UTAR Library – Been bored, went to Kampar for a days, drove in the campus and found the library building still has lights on. A shot and I captured the beauty of modern minimalist architecture of the library. Interesting campus architecture in Malaysia.
Photo is taken with Canon EOS 60D + Sigma 8-16mm.
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| The small and peaceful village of Klian Intan. |
Ipoh: 糖水街 Tong Sui Kai (Desserts Street) – Ipoh oh Ipoh, I spent the day eating at Burps & Giggles, and also some times in Ipoh Parade shopping centre, it’s also the day I went to watch Sinister, oh so scary, shocking and exciting. =D Night, I went to this Tong Sui Kai, which literally means desserts street near old town, somewhere just in front Sam Tet Primary School (SRJK Sam Tet).
So this street has a lot of desserts right? Not really, there’s few stalls only, selling the same Chinese desserts like lin chi kang, ABC and mix-fruit ice and stuff like that. Besides there’s local food stalls like wan tan mee, beef noodle and more! Sounds interesting right?
Once interesting thing in Ipoh is that they are proud about their food, unlike in Kuala Lumpur, hawker stalls tend to write food place name at the their stall like Penang Asam Laksa, Ipoh Hor Fun and blablabla. At there, it’s just Asam Laksa, Wan Tan Mee.
Well, I ordered a plate of wan tan mee (RM3.50) and a bowl of qing bu liang 清补凉 (RM2.50). Cheap and yummeh! Well, consider this as a place for dinner in Ipoh. =)
View Shiok Or Not : Food Map in a larger map
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| Lobby, I assumed, A common area too. |
Ipoh // Sekeping Kong Heng – NG SEKSAN, one famous landscape and building architect in Malaysia whose concept is based on raw materials. Sekeping Kong Heng is one of his masterpiece located in Ipoh, Old Town, on top of of a old school kopitiam called Kong Heng.
My classmate actually went there before on a class trip but I missed the chance last time. On my visit to Burps & Giggles, I accidentally came across it that this is connected with the cafe. They are just back to back.
Well, talk a little bit about Sekeping, it’s a modern type of hotel, or you might call it homestay, it’s totally different from the typical hotel with a luxurious lobby, nice hotel room with warm light and shiny marble floor bathroom. The Sekeping is a hotel series located throughout Malaysia and which most of them have their different identity or style, but most of them with design based on bare raw material. There’s one Sekeping Victoria in Penang too.
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| Well, side alley of the building. |
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| Kopitiam Kong Heng in front. It’s totally different thing from the back of the building, |
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| Corridor to the room. |
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| Green wall shading the area and the room. |
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| I was able to open up the louver window and snap a shot of interior of the room. Weird, cold, cool, open, raw feeling. |
Located on the first and second floor of the Kong Heng Kopitiam shophouse building is the Sekeping Kong Heng hotel, there’s like 10 rooms on first floor and and there’s a mini lobby at the ground floor. The second floor is more likely the roof area is a leisure/gathering spot. The whole building is open for visit except the hotel room.
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| The sexy stairs. |
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| Attic area where there’s two more bed up here. |
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| Gathering, hangout spot at the roof. |
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| A view of adjacent building. Truly old town of Ipoh. |
It’s more likely something new that you haven’t experience before. Living so close to the local, you can hear the laughter of uncles drinking kopi-peng in the morning, chattering in local Cantonese dialect, a connection with the raw material and the original building, it definitely will bring up a lot of feeling and inspiration in you. Well, Sekeping Kong Heng is sexy, I would say. Yums.
Kampar: UTAR Grand Hall Has A Cool Chinese Architecture – Visited UTAR (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman) at Kampar a week ago and found out that there’s a cool building in the campus – the Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik Grand Hall. It has a super duper Chinese-orientated architecture design like those Chinese temple roof, red bricks, water features which makes you feel as if you are in China, minus the cold.
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| The grand hall that looks like a Chinese temple from far. LOL, that’s why most UTAR friends told me. |
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| The street lamp, beautiful Chinese pattern. |
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| Love red bricks a lot. |
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| A bit of contemporary design here at the lobby. |
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| Semi-circular rounder arch entrance to the hall. |
This is something different and awesome when comparing to my school – Taylor’s University which has a modern minimalist design.
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| Check out the water features too. Must be something to do with feng shui, I guess. |
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| Chinese words on the water. |
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| Chinese word as sculpture. |
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| There’s fishes in case you don’t know. |
UTAR, a very famous university among the Chinese-educated group of people, and founded by the MCA (=.=), guess this explains the very-ching-chong-Chinese design of this building. Anyway, I kinda like things like this, at least it stand outs among the many universities in Malaysia. Which campus has special architecture design? Do share with me, down below. =D
First Time Visit To Kampar – Little Town Of Perak – I went to Kampar, Perak yesterday! Kampar is a little town in Perak, far away from the big city but famous among Malaysian students as there locates a few higher institution – UTAR & KTAR. I have many friends who are studying at there but I’ve not been there before. I went to there with my girlfriend to check out some hostel room as she’s moving there to study.
It’s about 1 hour 45 minutes drive from Kuala Lumpur and the place is kinda rural. The first place I came across is the little town of Tapah before reaching Kampar. Kampar is very peaceful, there’s many hill and lake, and a lot of residential terrace houses which serve as student accommodation.
Nothing much, you can see coffee shops, rows of shoplots, cyber cafes, a tall hotel – Grand Kampar Hotel, Tesco, railway track and that’s all I guess. Haven’t explore much yet. UTAR is cool, the campus itself is big and has a modern squarish design. Unfortunately, the landscape doesn’t seems being maintained well. But afterall, it seems to be a good designed campus, just located at a wrong location. It should be something close to the city in my opinion.
The student accommodation is one special thing. Each row of terrace houses is named according top institution in the world like Harvard, Cambridge, Imperial and so on. And don’t be surprise that there’s 20 student living under one roof. That’s so, dense! And bicycles are everywhere.
Chee Pherng, Boon Hooi, Me and Peng Sheng in front of UTAR signage!
Met some high school friends there, tour a bit of the campus and went back home. Will be visiting there again, perhaps explore some cool spot. I have found a nice sunset shooting spot at there, will be back with a tripod and a proper camera! =)