Blogs from Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia, Asia - page 16

Hi people, So I think I left off being miserable in Vietnam. Luckily we left pretty quickly, but first as a final farewell we were screwed over at the airport with stupid exchange rates that I think they made up! It was like in the airport they didn't want you to use their own currency, which doesn't make any sense! Anyway, I'm slowly getting over my Vietnam problems and trying to remember the good things about the country (mainly the South) so I won't dwell on this too much. We are now in Malaysia. Have been here for about a week and a half and it is really nice. The people are helpful and speak English which means everything doesn't have to be such hard work! It's also as if they aren't trying to rip you ... read more

After leaving Penang I took a couple of local buses to Tanah Rata the gateway to Cameron Highlands. As I predicted it has taken me a couple of days to learn how to say thank you in Malay, as I keep saying in Thai. During the bus ride you mostly see dense jungle, and mountains at both sides of the road, and also some fruit farms. It was a beautiful scenery and couldn't wait to get to the mountains to do some trekking (and finally use my trekking boots, that I've been carrying since I started the trip!). After checking in at Father's guesthouse I started talking to an English guy, Martin, and we decided to do one of the trails tomorrow. I walked around town for a bit, but there was not much to see, ... read more

Another post on the wall! So Erin and I decided that we were going to shop our faces off in KL for the entire duration of our stay there, and so now our legs are hating us for it. We did, however, see some of the sights in KL: some temples, the giant square that is used for all sorts of important events in the city, and the giant park they have (which included full-on orchid and hibiscus gardens). We went to see the Orchid garden, and it was pretty breathtaking, just the amount of flowers they had there and how cheaply they sold them for (a large Orchid plant --with tonnes of flowers-- sold for about $3.35 CAD... CRAZY HUH?). By the end of our time in KL, we began to slow our incredibly persistent ... read more

The 6 hour bus trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur goes through a fair amount of southern peninsular Malaysia. Aside from the occasional village tucked underneath the acres and acres of palm plantations, there’s not much change to the landscape. The bus stopped for us at the border for customs (more police and security wandering around with rifles) where we could stand between Singapore and Malaysia looking ahead to all the mosques and back to the Singapore skyscrapers. The bus trip was our first ‘encounter’ of the trip; as the booking on the net had said 1000 o’clock departure (presumably 10am) but upon arriving at 10am for check in we were told that it was a 10pm journey. So we argued with the ticket lady who was a hard, old lady who apparently ‘give no refunds’. ... read more

We left Penang and arrived in the Cameron Highlands after an eight hour coach ride (If we see another squat toilet I can not be held responsible for my actions!) The journey took us up and up winding mountains and everywhere is surrounded by tea and strawberry plantations, it’s a very beautiful setting. The weather up there is a lot cooler and greatly appreciated! We only have two halves of a day here so we headed straight out to see a strawberry plantation, and to be honest we were a little disappointed. All the plants were in peat bags and up on shelves, but we did have strawberries and cream - yum!! For dinner we went to a local Indian, and afterwards we took advantage of the DVD player and English films on offer at the ... read more