Telok Intan a.k.a. Anson

When we were young, and when it was time for a holiday, my mother would load us into our car and drive 3-4 hours along minor trunk roads to the small town of Telok Anson in Perak to visit my Tai Yee. My Tai Yee, who passed away last year, was my mother's only sister and she was older than my mother by 10 years.

Telok Anson is now of course no longer found on the map. Its name has been changed to Telok Intan, after Malay nationalists decided to change all names, with the slightest reference to our anglo-colonialist past, to local names.

Anyway, in those pre-Expressway days, travelling on the road meant navigating through narrow roads that were mostly one-lane each way. Sometimes, if we were behind a slow-moving vehicle, we would need to wait for the right opportunity to overtake it. That took a lot of patience. Road trips were somewhat more interesting as the scenery was not bland, unlike what we have now along the highway. We would jot down the names of towns that we passed in a little note book. And to break the journey, we used to stop along small towns, like Tanjong Malim and Bidor, sipping Fanta Grape and shopping for local delicacies like the famous Bidor Chicken Biscuits.

My Tai Yee lived in a single-storey semi-detached house in a quiet neighbourhood in Telok Anson, or Telok Intan. She did not mind that we invaded her home and disrupted her peaceful life. When we reached her house after our tiring road journey, she would welcome us with my favourite dish - steamed kampung chicken. The chicken had that to-die-for firm golden yellow skin that could only be found in genuine home-reared chicken. As a young child, I had loved chicken skin - oblivious, like everybody else, to its unhealthy dietary effects. Ah, what blissful ignorance!

Telok Intan is not that small, as far as small towns go. In fact, in the league of small towns, it should rank quite high. At that time, the town already had more than one cinema, a couple of schools, a town center that was built in a mini-grid structure, a hospital and even its own landmark, the Leaning Clock Tower. Later, some entrepreneurs started a department store and a small hotel, but that's about it. Much still remained the same when I visited the place briefly last year.

So what did we do during our holidays there?

Our holidays in Telok Intan had always centered round food. In the morning, we would go to the the famous Great Asia coffee shop for breakfast where my Tai Yee and my cousins were such regulars that everybody knew their names. My favourite was the kaya toast.

In the afternoon, we would wait for the tinkling of the ice-cream man who came by on a trishaw. It was not the Walls or Magnolia ice-cream that he peddled, but even better, it was a locally manufactured ice-cream that was less milky but just as creamy. You couldn't get it anywhere else! The delicious sweet corn ice-cream which would melt in your mouth was also cheap, and that was always good, because we could bring our own bowl or saucer and greedily ask for multiple scoops. Yeah, that would be our first Earthquake, lol!

For tea, we would have rojak which I remember was special because it had lots of mangoes and prawn paste. And for supper, we would go for the assam laksa which cost only 20 sen a bowl. The various local kuih were also very cheap. No wonder we stuffed ourselves silly and thoroughly enjoyed it.

At that time, most of my cousins were already working in the city and it was only my youngest cousin who was still around to entertain us - sometimes. Most of the time, we were left to our own devices.

In between the makan times, we would sit at the corner of the mahjong table, quietly watching my mom and her friends play mahjong. Or we would run up and down the long corridor which led to the three bedrooms. In retrospect, I do not think the corridor was that long, but it sure seemed long at that time.

Those were the days. Road trips only meant one destination - and that was fine by us.