What A Tour At Arlene House (Chung Thye Phin Building) Is Like
Arlene House is one of the newer heritage galleries and museums that you can visit in Ipoh Old Town. It’s walking distance from tourist hotspots like Concubine Lane and what’s great is that you don’t have to make any reservations for it!
If you’re thinking of giving this place a visit, here’s what you can expect!
Entrance Fees
Entrance fees come with a guided tour of the multi-story restored heritage building. It costs RM30 per person (for foreigners) and RM20 per person (for Malaysians) to enter and take a tour inside the building.
For us, we had to show our identity cards to get the lower entry fee rates.
What’s not included in the entrance fees is costume rental. This is for those that wish to dress up in rental kebaya or hanfu for taking photographs. We didn’t go for this ourselves as it’s expensive at about RM80 for 30 minutes’ rental.
What You Can See Here
The building has 3 levels beginning with the ground floor where the main entrance, gift shop and ticket counter are. They display the buildings original signage right behind the counter. As well as many old toys and games.
There’s a gorgeous MacFarlane cast iron spiral staircase that goes up to the highest level of the building. Visitors cannot climb it. Instead, there’s a very solid wooden staircase in the middle of the building that enables access to the upper floors. We had to remove our shoes before we went up.
At the next level, there is a neat hall with Qing Dynasty costumes, photographs and a long timeline illustrating Chung Thye Phin’s life. A video constantly plays in this room and the staff encouraged us to watch it. We warn you that it’s quite lengthy, but it does give a good overview of the tin mining background that was key for the success of Chung Thye Phin. It also details how he eventually became the last Chinese Kapitan of Malaya.
Apart from this hall, there are two other rooms on this floor, and they’re saved for the end of the tour. One has antique paraphernalia from surrounding shops while the other is dressed as an office befitting a Kapitan’s rank and status.
The top floor of the building houses a Chinese bridal chamber albeit it was not as nice as the ones we’ve seen in Penang, let alone at 22 Hale Street Gallery in Ipoh.
On this floor there are also two halls dedicated to old-time entertainers – both local and foreign. We didn’t know many of them, so we didn’t find these exhibits particularly interesting. There are mainly just old photographs and posters here.
PS: You can see the J.W.W. Birch Memorial Clock tower from one end of the top floor!
What The Tours Are Like
Tours can be brief or long since they follow your pacing. The staff that we were with, was polite, cheerful, and extremely patient. She never rushed us and was always present when we had questions.
She showed us some old games upstairs at the first level. And asked us some questions along the tour too – like to guess the number of wives that Chung Thye Phin had!
There was an instance where we wanted to know more about a curious looking table at the entertainment hall, but she didn’t have anything to say about it. We determined for ourselves that it was indeed built for 3 mahjong players instead of the usual number of 4.
We spent a total of an hour at the museum. A big chunk of the time went to watching the video upstairs and even then, we did not fully watch it to the end!
The tours begin right after purchase of the tickets. You don’t have to follow another group if they still have an available staff to guide you. There was one group ahead of us, but it did not feel crowded or noisy while we were exploring the museum with our assigned guide. That said, our visit was on a Friday afternoon.
Conclusion
With so many galleries to see in Ipoh, we think that Arlene House is not a must-see in our opinion.
But it is a comfortable (air-conditioned) and beautiful place to explore with a fairly interesting, guided tour. We just wish the admission fees weren’t so high!
Han Chin Pet Soo Musuem
Reservations are a must if you want to go for the guided tours at Han Chin Pet Soo Musuem and we highly recommend that you do so. The tours are very informative and interesting. They give a great perspective on the tin mining background Ipoh and especially, the Hakka migrants that benefited from it.
22 Hale Street Gallery
22 Hale Street Gallery is also housed in a well restored heritage building. You don’t need to reserve a spot if you want to visit this museum as the tours are pretty much self-guided with audio guide cues along the way. The souvenir shop is worth checking out as well as there are knick-knacks by local artists for sale here.
OLDTOWN White Coffee @ Heritage Centre (Earthcare Cafe)
This is a new gallery too and we recommend the OLDTOWN White Coffee @ Heritage Centre (Earthcare Cafe) if you don’t want to pay any admission fees at all. There are no guided tours however, and the gallery is relatively small.
