Blogs from Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia, Asia - page 14

This has potential to be quite a long blog, as Malaysia has turned into a little bit of an unexpected treat. We thought we would more or less be passing through Malaysia, en-route to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. However, we have now been in Malaysia for 7 days so far, and we love it. Its a beautiful country aesthetically, the people are all very friendly and smiley, and the food is great. We have been to a few different places, and each has been very different from the last, yet just as amazing. Its a country that seems to be over-looked in this region - and we are guilty of it also - but we would highly recommend it to everyone heading in this direction. 7th February 2009 Waaaay back when we were in Kuala Lumpur.....we ... read more

Off we set at 8am in the morning bound for the alternative destination (to the one we'd hoped for anyway) of the Cameron Highlands. As we said we had planned to go here at some point anyway, it's just we'd planned it for when we returned in a few months so no harm done by doing it now instead. The coach journey was very painless and we arrived in the beautiful Cameron Highlands mid afternoon, instantly grateful of the temperature when we stepped off the bus as it was much cooler than we'd been used to in KL. Another bonus was that the hostel we'd intended in staying at had sent down a minibus to collect any new arrivals so we headed on up the hill to Father's Guest House and checked into one of their ... read more

The drive to Cameron Highlands was pleasent, we had to make an ascent of 1500 meters from Kuala Lumpur so it was a windy road with some good views as we got higher up. We'd heard lots of things about the Cameron Highlands and only decided to add it to our itinerary after chatting to a Malay bar owner in Melacca, one point in particular that stood out was that it was very English, which was hard for us to imagine while we were anywhere else in Malaysia as it's a hot and quite dry country and all we had seen so far were very Asian towns and cities. Cameron Highlands was named after William Cameron, a British surveyor who stumbled across the plateau in 1885 during a mapping expedition. Once a road was constructed to ... read more

After the expense that was Singapore we were looking to save as much money as possible. So the thought of shelling out 30 quid each to get there wasn't the most enticing - there must be a cheaper way. As it turned out there was but it wasn't easy. We first had to get the public bus across the causeway back to Malaysia - which we stupidly decided to do at half 5 on a Friday (the same time as probably the whole population of Singapore - it's cheaper to live in Malaysia on the weekend apparently). The crossing actually involves 3 buses meaning you have to lug all of your stuff through both the Singapore and Malaysian immigration. We got to Johor bus station about half 7 and brought tickets to Tapah - a town ... read more

After the craziness of Kuala Lumpur, we headed outside the major cities to a small city called Tana Rata, a small town in the Cameron Highlands. The Cameron Highlands is a highland region about 214 km north of Kuala Lumpur at an elevation of around 5,000 ft above sea level. This means that we are not always in a constant state of sweat and we can actually wear jeans and a sweatshirt. The Highlands were named after William Cameron, a British colonial government surveyor who discovered the plateau during a mapping expedition in 1885. The fame of Cameron Highlands then grew during the colonial era when British planters realized the potential of its fertile mountain slopes for growing tea, then a prized commodity. Cameron Highlands is still home to many tea plantations, being Malaysia's largest tea-producing ... read more