From the illustration of archived pictures of Perak cave
and compared them with the current state; it will give you an indication how much
effort you need to pour in to enable the temple to reach its current state. The Perak
Cave is isolated from the rest of other developed Cave Temples around the Gunung
Rapat area at the south of Ipoh City. Where is this cave located ? It is actually
located at the northern section of the City. The access to this cave is relatively
quite easy via the North-South Expressway OR the old highway to Penang using the
Jalan Kangsar. In fact, it is just only a few kilometers away from the Thai Buddhist
Temple, Wat
Mek Prasit featured earlier. The third
access is via Tasik Industrial Estate and divert to the left when you reach Jalan
Kangsar (for foreigners, "Jalan" is a Malaysian word, it simply means "Road").
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An old picture of Perak Buddhist Cave Temple possibly taken in two stages of upgrades.
Credit: A pretty young lady named Perak
DJ-IPOH from Forum.Peark.org. She
mentioned the pictures are scanned from pictures of Mr. William Ong, Ipoh.
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Perak Cave has a very strong support from the
Taiwanese community (foreign, expatriates, and local Companies). You can literally
see all the donors are from Taiwan. So, it is not entirely surprising too to see
the landscaping at the external compound carries a very strong Taiwanese flavor (I
have been to some Buddhist Temples in Taiwan,
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it resembles with Kuanyin at the external temple compound,
lotus ponds, willow (trees) and classical exterior outlines and so forth). Well,
these should make a visiting Taiwanese and Mainland China tourists feel so at home.
The righthand side exhibits some gifts and collectibles of Sun YatSun.
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One thing I quite like here is, it has amber car
park space (but it is not a free service-man.. ). It is so spacious that, easily
can accommodate 20 tour couches, I think. The left hand side has a souvenir hall
and across the road, you will find plenty of local tropical fruits such as Jack fruits,
the famous Pomelo etc..
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