Tanah Rata, CH

We arrived yesterday after a very rough 6hr journey- it reminded me of being back in Jamaica- soo many twists and turns! But as soon as we hit the mountains it felt as if we had moved into a different country. It was soo beautiful! and each time I thought, right this is it- were at the top we just seemed to keep on climbing! There is such a divers community up her- Hindu, Buddist, Taoist, Roman Catholic and Muslim, it is pretty much the same all around Malaysia I am told- everyone lives so well together.

We are staying at the Cameronian Inn ( in the LP), we did check out Fathers Place ( which also has LP reccomendation) but were very disappointed, the rooms we basic and not very clean. When reading recent reviews in the guest book in the Cameronian Inn we also found out that they have a problem bed bugs (3 different sources) and app the manager also had an attitude problems esp when he has to deal with complaints! the CI has hot water, is exceptionally clean, good food and you can make your own tea/coffee and do your own washing! Pretty much self-service you just have to fill out a form when you use something ( very trusting- but works very well)

Today we did the Countryside Tour(20R) and visited the Cactus flower centre, the Strawberry farm - soo delicious we had a strawberry sundae and 2 punnets of strawberries, a temple ( don't know what the name of it was), a butterfly and insect farm (both beautiful and gross) and a Honey Bee farm ( too many bees flying around) and of course the Boh tea plantation ( it didn't know Malaysia was famous for making tea but apparently so). We did all of this in one morning, which I thought would be a bit much, but everything was really close together so we got to spend a fair amount of time in each place, got to ask questions and got a good history from our tour guide. The tea plantation was pretty cool, we saw how tea was made and then went to the shop bought a load and had a nice cuppa with a scone and an apple pie!

Things are a bit more expensive in Malaysia than Thailand but still relatively cheap compared with our English pounds ( we are soo glad we are from England the Currency is soo strong- everything is soo cheap -I hope we don't ever join the Euro!!!!)

We had Lunch/Dinner today in a restaurant on Tanah Rata high street called 'The Orient', it was expensive but we thought we would treat ourselves- I wish we hadn't bothered. The food was crap and expensive and they had the cheek to add of gov't tax so 44R for a crap meal- our advice- don't bother!!! Try out one of the other ones, this one is not worth experimenting with! I feel a bit sick now and I hardly ate anything- I really fancy some more strawberries!!

Soo, we are heading down to KL tomorrow, don't really know what to expect, we are hearing mixed reviews about it. One thing is for certain it will be very hot and muggy. It is really cool up here in the afternoons- it rained yesterday- which was nice as we were not stranded up the side of a cliff top like yesterday and sat in our restaurant and had a nice cream tea (lovely). Its beginning to feel like we are back in England, Rain and a nice cuppa.....

---

---

---