Remembering My Hometown

Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia – Jul 2022

It’s Chinese New Year! The biggest festival of my childhood years. How I remember those times, when the whole of my father’s side of the family would converge in our house in Ipoh for CNY (because my granny and grandpa were staying with us, hehe).

There’d be all the silly games we kids played (I have lots of cousins, growing up. My father has 5 siblings, and then there’s mom’s side, and my parents’ cousins’ families), firecrackers, card games, etc. We could eat till we gag. We could break ‘curfew’ and stay up late. Gamble a little, and drink a little (when we were older). And we could get loads of ANGPOWs! $$$ Ka-ching! We’d be festive for at least 2 weeks (CNY is 15 days, OK?) and our biggest day isn’t actually the first day of New Year but the 8th and 9th day, being Hokkiens. Those were the days.

Sadly, the Ipoh house is an empty house now, and not many of the family still reside in Ipoh. Many of the old folks have left us and gone to the world beyond. My siblings and cousins have all gone their separate ways to make a living elsewhere and start families. They’re all over the world now. But Ipoh still brings back loads of memories.

Here’re some photos of Ipoh from our last visit in Aug 2022. Happy New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Koung Hey Fat Choi! Kiong Hi Huat Cai! Etc, etc, etc.

We decided to climb (walk up, to be more precise) a hill near Ipoh, from my childhood years – Kledang Hill, in Menglembu. The last I remembered climbing this hill was with my mom when I was a kid. That may be 40 years ago, because my mom passed away in 1985. To climb the hill, we’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning and get there before sun breaks. We’d walk as much as we could, then head down to Menglembu town to get an early breakfast at 7+am! if I remember correctly. We’d do this to avoid the relentless midday sun. Malaysia has a hot and humid climate after all, being a tropical rainforest.


Canning Garden, our suburb – That hill in the background, is Kledang Hill


We’re there! A view of Ipoh City from Kledang Hill. We got there before sun break! It’s full of clouds. It may rain at any time


It’s raining. We forgot to bring umbrellas. Anu’s smart. She brought a rain coat. “There! That’s the summit. Let’s go on”


The road at Bukit Kledang


We’re drenched. I think we’d stop here. We don’t know how much more there is to go, to the summit. Can’t check maps because there’s no coverage and it’s bloody raining… (Later on, I checked and found out that we were only about 1.4km short of the summit. We could’ve got there in 30 mins!)


Let’s head down. Whew, the rain’s stopped. Anu at a mini waterfall






Someone’s made a garden here! Fancy that


Monkeys out to play, at the car park


Back in Canning Garden. This is our neighbour, Auntie Nancy’s house. She loves leaves, as you can see


More of Auntie Nancy’s garden. We have the same swing in our house, next door. I think it comes with the house as all of our neighbours have the same swing. And that big urn which Jayden is looking at, we used to have one in the Ipoh house’s bathroom that I took a bath from when I was a kid. We took baths with a mug. It’s nice!

One sad news from our neighbourhood recently – our other next-door neighbour, Mr Leong, passed away last month. He had been sick for some time. The Leongs were teachers in my school, the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. Mr Leong was once the head-master. Mrs Leong lives alone now in the house. But one of their children lives in Ipoh and visits regularly. God bless them.

Anyway, Happy New Year! May your Dragon Year be filled with success, joy, good health and prosperity!