Taiping was the capital of Perak before Ipoh took over, and it still carries itself with quiet dignity. This is one of the wettest towns in Peninsular Malaysia, and all that rain has made the Lake Gardens — the country's oldest public garden, laid out in 1880 on the site of an abandoned tin mine — impossibly lush, with rain trees so old their canopies touch across the paths.
The town was built on tin. Chinese miners flooded in during the 1870s, the British followed to keep order, and the resulting colonial infrastructure — a railway station, a prison, a museum, a rest house — still stands. The Perak Museum, opened in 1883, is the oldest in Malaysia and worth an hour for its natural history and Orang Asli collections alone. The old town centre has pre-war shophouses, a covered market, and some of the best hawker food in Perak: Taiping laksa, made with tamarind and sardines, has a devoted following. The Antong Coffee Mill, roasting since 1933, is another old-town institution worth seeking out.
Above the town, Maxwell Hill (Bukit Larut) rises to over 1,000 metres. It is the oldest hill station in Malaysia and still the least developed — no hotels, no restaurants, just a few colonial bungalows in the cloud forest reached by a terrifyingly steep government Land Rover service. The views on a clear morning stretch to the Straits of Malacca. The Taiping War Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is a sobering and worthwhile stop on the eastern edge of town.