Malaysia - Day 2 in Ipoh.

Another day in Ipoh, on Saturday we were up bright and early - none of this sleeping in to a nice (still too early) 08:30. By that time on Saturday we are sitting at a Old Town restaurant (I'll also warn you that their web site seems to load really slow, but that could be the 'get out of China' proxy that we are using) so that we could enjoy breakfast with the family - Dad eats early. The food is good and the white coffee that they are famous for is alright, their black coffee is like sludge but it wakes you up.

From there we went back to the house for a few hours to relax - I spent the time helping Ben, Daniel, and Deklin with their homework.
It's not that hard seeing as their ages are 5, 7, and 6 respectively. However there was one English present tense question that I had to send them to Tina on... Yep, my English still be good as a 2nd grader.

Later in the day Alex showed up to take us (Tina, myself, and Sia Xian) to lunch and then touring to Kellie's Castle. Dr. Lim, having just finished up a surgery, showed up just as we were finishing lunch so that he could join us on our tour of the castle.
The castle was being built by a Scotsman who had made a lot of money in Malaysia with tin mines and rubber plantations - read the Wikipedia link, that's all the information I'm going to provide. Ok, one last thing - he died in Lisbon and thusly the castle was never completed.
In the back of the castle you can see this yellow shell of a house, this is where the family lived for a year when they started the construction of the main building in front. Notes here say it was destroyed during World War II, but that doesn't really make too much sense to me. Who's working to destroy an abandoned home near Ipoh?
On the main floor there is a long hallway where it is said that Kellie's ghost still roams. Alex wanted to say here and wait to see him - I doubt that the ghost would have made the trip back from Portugal, especially when a return trip to Scotland was so much closer.

Looking out over the old house from the second floor.

As we were still in Asia, ghost be damned, wedding photos were being taken.

The place was beautiful, nice huge rooms that maintained their coolness despite the outside heat. There was a huge wine cellar, big party rooms on the first floor, bedrooms on the second, on outdoor patio above that, and a 4 story tower on the end that was designed to house the first elevator in Malaysia. Story is that is what he was travelling to Lisbon to purchased when he suddenly fell dead.

We think he also planned a helicopter landing pad at the end. That's some foresight, perfect for wedding photos.

It was amazing to see, and we are glad that we got a chance to get over there on this trip. After that we went back home and took a nice long (2 hours) nap.

Tomorrow we will talk about mom's birthday party from Saturday night....