Did We Ever Leave?

We're back in Ipoh again and even though its been a year since we were last here, it feels like we never left. There are a few changes, including the very first Burger King outlet, but most things are the same. Our lives and routine are the same too and we have slipped into a daily routine as if we never left. In fact, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner at places that we've been eating at for the past twenty years!

The one big difference is that instead of my parents taking us out to these places, I'm now taking my own two kids. I am sure some of those hawkers remember me as a child and I wonder if seeing me with my children makes them think about retiring!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Ipoh is definitely one of my favorite places in the world. It is flawed in so many ways but I think I'll always be able to look at this first hometown of mine without seeing those very flaws. Its like a cocoon in time that has remained unchanged in twenty years yet has had development spring up all around it.

I go away, grow up, do all sorts of things and when I come back with my two children, the place is as it was when I was a child. Perhaps it has remained this way for me because I am staying in the house I grew up in. I visit my old grandparents in the same houses that I visited them thirty years ago. We go to the same church and they still have the same set of priests there. Its like a living memory of my childhood.

So, as you might have guessed, I'm having a good time here. I've left my USB cable in Brisbane so it'll be a couple of weeks before I can post any photos.