Bidor

Bidor is a town and mukim in Batang Padang District in southern Perak, Malaysia. It lies about 59 kilometres southeast of the state capital Ipoh and 116 kilometres northwest of Kuala Lumpur, south of Tapah, north of Sungkai and west of the Titiwangsa Mountains. It is believed to have begun as a small village on the banks of the Bidor River in the late 18th century, where villagers moved goods by boat toward Teluk Intan, and the later tin-mining boom brought Hokkien, Hakka and Cantonese settlers. The area was tied to the Battle of Kampar in the Second World War and hosted army and police units during the Malayan Emergency; the Gepai Falls were reopened to the public in 1989 after a peace treaty. Today Bidor is mainly an industrial and plantation area of guava, oil palm and rubber, with kaolin clay worked locally, and it was long a favourite stop for travellers on the federal trunk road who came for its local food. Federal Route 1 and the North-South Expressway serve it.