Unless you’re really pressed for time, murals are those that you need to go ‘treasure hunting’ for in Ipoh. Right, murals. Street art. Or in other words, tasteful graffiti. Just like Penang, Ipoh boasts a collection of nostalgic murals known as Art of Old Town to celebrate its rich, colonial history. Most of them are painted by the same Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic whose impressive portfolio includes the murals that adorn Georgetown’s pre-war buildings. Seeing these murals, and especially tracing them down one by one, was by far my favorite part of our trip. Our hunt commenced early in the morning for one simple reason— we needed to walk quite a fair bit around town to find the murals. Any time after ten would be punishing because of the blistering weather we have around here. Though we brought along a trusty map, we had no idea where to even begin. We drove by a rather big one in town. It showed an old gentleman with the biggest smile on his face and a cup of white coffee in his hand.
We walked down narrow alleys, passing by row of pre-war terrace buildings until we came across an Asian lady resembling Marilyn Monroe on a narrow pathway at Kong Heng area. She was riding a bike, her skirt flowing suggestively in the air, much to the delight of the younger boys behind her. Of course, they were all painted. Our walk continued from there and we light upon another mural at an open car park. Four packets of iced coffee, all of them massively-sized, were painted on the weather-beaten wall of an abandoned building. A little further down the road stood a girl who’s reaching out to a cage of birds while standing on a stack of plastic stools. Beneath her were old textbooks, the pages all dampened with mold and mildew.
Ipoh used to be a hub for tin mining during the colonial days until the marked eventually collapsed. One of the murals, aptly titled “Evolution,” preserves the town’s glory as a mining hotspot. The mural was done in the style of ink wash painting. The entire town is bathed in gray shadows and crude black lines; it’s a stark contrast from the other colorful murals we’d seen earlier. Nearby, we met with a breathtaking painting of a multicolored hummingbird fluttering about an old tree growing right next to the wall. This photograph I took fails to capture the tree though. But from a different perspective, it actually looks like this. Amazing, isn’t it? I thought the marriage between art and nature was so cleverly crafted. The hummingbird is a representation of how green Ipoh still is; the town is, after all, bounded by grand limestone hills and lush forests. But that’s Ipoh for you. You’d still get the “good old days” vibe from the place. We didn’t have enough time to navigate a few others, like this and this, but we’re sure that they’d still be there, lurking on the peeling walls for many years to come.
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