Dining and wellness in Ipoh’s limestone caves

One does not go hungry in Ipoh.

Deep within a limestone cavern 260 million years in the making, a glistening mound of Malaysian caviar arrives at our table for dinner. Harvested from Russian sturgeon reared in Malaysian waters, the black pearls crown a plump scallop, still nestled within the elegant symmetry of its shell.

Jason Chuah, sous chef at Jeff’s Cellar, The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat’s signature restaurant, says the caviar comes from a farm in Tanjung Malim, Perak that has achieved an unlikely feat: raising six of the world’s 27 known sturgeon species in tropical Malaysia – far from the frigid northern waters with which these prehistoric fish are usually associated.

It’s only the second of eight courses at this upscale establishment, yet the interplay between the caviar’s briny intensity and the scallop’s delicate sweetness already feels difficult to surpass.

Jeff’s Cellar is named after Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, the Ipoh-born entrepreneur and philanthropist behind Sunway Group, one of Southeast Asia’s largest conglomerates which also operates The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat. Before opening to the public, the cave served as his private wine cellar, where he entertained friends and family and housed his collection of rare vintages and aged whiskies.

Refurbished and reopened late last year, the restaurant has taken on a new layer of drama and grandeur, with water trickling down ancient rock formations, chandeliers suspended from the cavern ceiling and a VIP section accommodating up to 16 diners.

As strains of opera music drift through the space, it is easy to imagine oneself in a grand European grotto rather than Ipoh, a sleepy Malaysian town just over an hour’s flight from Singapore.

Ipoh has already been transformed once by the riches of its land. Now, long after the discovery of tin ore in the late 19th century turned it into one of Malaysia’s wealthiest towns, its ancient caves and geothermal springs are drawing visitors for an altogether different reason.

The latest chapter in the town’s evolution began in 1995, when Cheah acquired the scarred tin-mining terrain of Tambun, a limestone-fringed enclave just 20 minutes from the town centre that would eventually become Sunway City Ipoh.

His connection to the place stretched back to his childhood days of visiting the town to bathe in its natural hot springs. Little did he imagine that he would one day transform this landscape.

While building his family home elsewhere on the estate, he discovered that ancient limestone formations, natural grottoes and geothermal springs had survived largely undisturbed – and chose to build around them.

The jewel of this development, The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat, remains Ipoh’s most premium luxury hotel. Here, the surrounding limestone has been imaginatively repurposed: Jeff’s Cellar occupies several chambers, while others have become a natural steam room, with vapour rising from the geothermal waters below, and a secluded meditation chamber.

Yet the area’s geological wonders extend well beyond its polished confines.

Within the neighbouring theme park Lost World of Tambun lies Gua Datuk, where a forest hike and a 600-step ascent lead to the aptly named Picasso Cave, where its stalactites and stalagmites are transformed by shifting light into abstract forms reminiscent of the artist’s paintings.

Our nature guide, Anas, tells us that the surrounding jungle is also part of a rapidly diminishing habitat for Malayan wildlife, including tapirs, wild boar, snakes, langurs and the occasional black panther or tiger,.

It is also home to the Rajah Brooke’s birdwing, Malaysia’s national butterfly, although Anas says sightings have dwindled since construction began nearby on what is set to become Perak’s largest shopping mall.

As we hike through the jungle, Anas tells us that some of these caves served as hideouts for Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Visitors can still see kanji characters they inscribed at the entrance to The Banjaran’s Sky Bar, a lofty limestone lookout where guests can linger over an evening tipple as the sun slips behind the surrounding hills.

Ipoh’s limestone hills also conceal dozens of atmospheric cave temples, many with roots in the city’s early Cantonese and Hakka migrant communities. The rapid expansion of Perak’s tin industry brought an influx of Chinese miners, who by 1889 had become the state’s largest population group. During this period, they began using these natural chambers as places of worship and meditation.

The scale of this subterranean heritage became apparent during research for the 2017 book Trails of the Nanyang Chinese: History and Legends of the Cave Temples in Ipoh of Malaysia. In just two months, a team led by academics Dr Tan Ai Boay and Toh Teong Chuan from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman located more than 30 such sites in Ipoh alone.

Among the best known is Perak Cave Temple (also known as Sam Poh Tong temple), established in 1926 by a Chinese immigrant couple. Inside its immense central chamber, a golden Buddha presides over walls covered in vivid murals and calligraphy. Their son, Chong Yin Chat, later inherited stewardship of the temple and contributed some of the artworks that adorn its interior.

After consulting the resident fortune teller, visitors can continue upwards, climbing past Buddhist figures to a series of hilltop pavilions with panoramic views across Ipoh.

Seeking shelter from the blazing midday heat, we find ourselves at the lesser-known Da Seng Ngan, where hundreds of small bells tinkle in the breeze.

Among its many sacred figures is a rather more domestic object of devotion: a stone memorial to Rocky, a Pekingese pooch so beloved by his family that they built him a shrine here after his death in 2017.

The temple, with a history believed to span more than a century, has been granted an unusual second life. In 1974, a mudslide swallowed it, leaving it hidden for the next 32 years. Its remains resurfaced only when the Ipoh Benevolent Society began excavating land for another retention pond.

Months of careful digging uncovered the temple’s surviving walls and entrance, together with an assortment of religious and domestic objects, including copper and porcelain figurines, urns and antique chinaware.

Since then, the temple has grown into a tranquil collection of shrines, statues and gardens woven around the limestone cave.

Other caves hold far older stories still.

The cliff face at Gua Tambun bears hundreds of prehistoric paintings rendered in iron-red pigment, their human figures, animals and geometric forms thought to date back 2,000 to 3,000 years.

North of Ipoh, the UNESCO World Heritage Site Lenggong Valley has yielded Palaeolithic stone-tool workshops and the 11,000-year-old remains of Perak Man, the oldest and most complete human skeleton ever discovered in Southeast Asia. Today, visitors can see his skeleton at the Lenggong Valley Archaeological Gallery, about an hour’s drive away, where it returned in June 2025 after undergoing conservation work in Kuala Lumpur.

For millennia, people have sought something different within these ancient formations: shelter, sanctuary, spiritual meaning, healing and, more recently, pleasure.

Ipoh’s caves may have been forming for 260 million years, but its story, it seems, is still being written.

Welcoming guests aged 12 and above, The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat is an intimate sanctuary of 44 private villas.

Rates start at RM1,535 (about $480) a night for a Lake Pool Villa, while the newly refurbished Grand Garden Pool Villas, from RM3,569 ($1,120), offer expansive living and dining areas, marble-clad bathrooms and private swimming pools. Every villa also comes with a geothermal soaking pool that transforms into a bubbling whirlpool at the touch of a button.

Wellness facilities include mineral pools of varying temperatures, an ice bath and a Garra rufa pool, where tiny fish gently exfoliate the feet. Day visitors can access the facilities with passes priced at RM350 ($110) nett per person.

At the foot of a limestone hill, the award-winning spa draws on Malay healing traditions, traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. Among its more distinct local treatments is a body scrub made with finely ground Ipoh white coffee.

Guests can also borrow complimentary bicycles to explore the estate, following a trail past the resort’s vegetable farm to a tranquil lake framed by soaring limestone karsts, with sparrows flitting across the water.

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