Kuala Kangsar, Royal Town of Perak

I went for a day trip to Kuala Kangsar recently. It's about 2 hour 30 minutes drive from the city centre via the North South Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE). I entered the expressway by taking the Kota Damansara interchange and exited at Kuala Kangsar interchange.


In my opinion, Kuala Kangsar should be one of tourist attractions for local and overseas tourists due to its rich history. This town has a lot of potential still untapped for the tourism industry.


Brief on Kuala Kangsar (source from Wikipedia)

• The Sultan of Perak officially resides in Kuala Kangsar, and it has been Perak's royal seat since the 18th century. It is one of four towns that plays a role in Perak's complex succession system. It was the administrative seat of the first British Resident in the Malay Peninsula, James W.W. Birch, from October 1874 until he was murdered on November 2, 1875.
• Kuala Kangsar is also known in Malaysian history as the site where the first Conference of Rulers, the Durbar, was held in 1897. By the 1890s, the growth of the tin mining towns of Ipoh and Taiping had eclipsed Kuala Kangsar, but it remains to this day one of the most attractive of the Malay royal capitals.
• The town is also the site of the first rubber tree planted in Malaysia. The person responsible was the English botanistHenry Nicholas Ridley. He was the one who helped Malaya and eventually Malaysia become the largest rubber producer in the world. The tree still stands today.
• The first Malaysian scout troop was established in Kuala Kangsar. Consequently, its squad number is 001.

The first thing I did after arriving in Kuala Kangsar was to have its famous dish, laksa. A dish rice noodles with thin fish gravy (or soup rather). Its look and smell could not be appealing to some, as with its taste. I guess it requires an acquired taste. But it's one of my most favourite dishes! You can find almost every restaurants in Kuala Kangsar selling laksa. My personal favorite: Laksa Taufik located at the food court just next to the Perak River. 


I had laksa with cendol, which is one of the popular desserts in Malaysia. It's ingredients are coconut milk, 

The dessert's basic ingredients are coconut milk, a worm-like jelly made from rice flour with green food coloring (usually derived from the pandan leaf), shaved ice and palm sugar. Other ingredients such as red beans, glutinous rice, grass jelly, creamed corn, might also be included. (source: Wikipedia)

       
                                              

Among the picture I managed to take while I was there (descriptions will be added later):