The Kedah Paddy Museum is a 20 minute drive north of Alor Setar, taking you out into the beautiful countryside. The building is certainly impressive and we had it almost all to ourselves.
The monumental feeling of this structure is mimicked in the statues around its base. There were bright white concrete flying birds, and a very solid-looking buffalo and his farmer with plough. Even better… a plot of real rice plants!
On entering the museum, you climb upstairs to find a revolving 360-degree panorama, painted by artists from North Korea. Quite extraordinary!
Back down on the floor of the museum we saw bowls of rice varieties from countries all over the world, and it seemed that Malaysia was the country with the largest number of varieties.
Here you could learn everything you needed to know about growing rice, harvesting rice, cooking with rice, rice products, and more besides. The size and scale of this museum make it more suitable for group visits (e.g., school children), as there is so much reading to be done. So we followed the direction arrows on the floor until we found something of interest in the lower floor, and that was this guy in the photo below.
On the ground floor was a sales area advertising rice tea, and I thought I’d like to buy some, but there was no-one to buy from. It turned out that the MCO arrangements had meant some things had been moved elsewhere and the poor chap was now down in the basement in the museum shop. We sampled some rice tea and chatted to the guy who’s family had been in the business for several generations. And, yes, I bought some rice tea to bring home.
As we returned to the very hot car park, we spied an ice cream vendor so bought some and found a covered seat to sit and enjoy some coolness before continuing our exploration of Kedah. Naturally, the rice museum is surrounded by paddy fields, so we took this opportunity to stop to take some photos.
The other feature you cannot miss here is Gunung Keriang (Elephant Hill), a 250 million year old lump of limestone rock. There is a Recreational Park at the base of the hill, from which you can arrange walks/treks/visits to the caves. The signposting misled us when we were looking for the caves, and it seemed that the entrance was now in an area used by the hotel complex, so not entirely sure if the caves are still open to the public. Back around in the park area, we looked at the options and decided it was far too hot today (37C) to attempt a walk anywhere, so would return to the town and enjoy the airconditioning in the car!
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