Old Town Heritage Walk in Ipoh

Part of the Ipoh travel guide — see every topic in All Ipoh Guides.

Ipoh Old Town sits on the west bank of the Kinta river in a compact grid you can walk in an hour, and it is one of the best-preserved colonial-era commercial districts in Malaysia. The buildings date almost entirely from the tin boom between the 1890s and the 1930s: rows of two- and three-storey shophouses with elaborate plasterwork, banks and clubs in full colonial style, and a railway station that is genuinely startling. What preserved it was economic failure — when tin collapsed there was never money to knock any of it down.

The railway station

Completed in 1917 to a design by A. B. Hubback in the same Moorish-revival style he used in Kuala Lumpur, the Ipoh railway station is a long white building with arcades, domes and a colonnaded upper floor, universally nicknamed the Taj Mahal of Ipoh. It contains a hotel that has operated since it opened, and it remains a working station on the electric train line. Directly opposite stand the Town Hall and the old post office in matching style, forming a civic set that no city of Ipoh's current size would build today.

The shophouse grid

The streets behind — Jalan Sultan Yussuf, Jalan Bandar Timah, Market Street, Jalan Panglima — hold the commercial core: rows of shophouses with covered five-foot ways, decorated plaster facades, and increasingly a mix of original businesses, cafes and boutique hotels. Concubine Lane (Lorong Panglima), a narrow alley with a name that reflects its history, has been restored into a busy pedestrian lane of small shops and food stalls; the parallel Market Lane and Wife Lane are quieter versions of the same.

Clubs and institutions

Han Chin Pet Soo, on Jalan Bijeh Timah, was a private club for Hakka tin miners from 1893 and is now a small museum covering the tin industry and, unusually frankly, the four vices that went with it. It is excellent and must be booked in advance; walk-ins are not admitted. The Royal Ipoh Club, on the padang, has operated since 1895. The Birch Memorial Clock Tower of 1909 commemorates the first British Resident of Perak, assassinated in 1875, and carries a frieze of figures representing civilisation that has been the subject of considerable later argument.

Walking it

Start at the railway station, cross to the Town Hall, then work east through the shophouse grid to Concubine Lane and the riverside. Two hours at a walking pace, entirely flat, and best before ten or after four — Ipoh sits in a valley and gets genuinely hot in the middle of the day. New Town, across the Kinta river, is the later commercial district and holds much of the food. Free heritage trail maps are available and the old town is small enough that you cannot really get lost.

Old Town Heritage Walk at a glance

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