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Published: March 15th 2007
The Highlands
As Roy Walker once said "Say what you see. Say what you see". The Journey to the Cameroon Highlands was made on a Super VIP bus no less. It was about a 5 hour journey, and it set us back about 4 pounds each. I can't stress how comfortable these coaches are, the seats are pretty much like sitting in a first class airline seat, and its just the best way to get about. Why people take long distance taxi's here I will never know.
The Cameroon Highlands is about the nearest you will get in Malaysia to British weather. The temperature hovers at around 23C and it rains (and I mean good old fashions Lake District Style Downpours) mostly every day. Plus usually the downpours are prolonged and accompanied by Thunder and Lightning. Its great. If you know my wife, and how much she likes hot weather and abhores the rain you'd know - when I said that she loved the Cameron Highlands - just how flubbing hot and humid penninsular Malaysia is. Its one thing being in Singapore and jumping between a/c shopping malls, its quite another lugging a 80 litre back pack and a day pack a mile or two across a city in the process of trying to
find a hostel at the height of the day.
The Cameron Highlands. They're FAAAANTASTIC.
After a very long and slightly precarious journey up questionably thin roads, in a wide coach, round hairpin bends with no barriers in some places, we got there. Fortunately, the Malays have their heads screwed on driving in these parts and slow down and beep on blind bends.
We arrived in the Budget resort area - called Tanah Rata - and stayed in a place called Fathers Guest house. It sounds either very friendly or very creepy. Fortunately it was the former. We stayed in a basic dorm and it was fine, in fact, on the first night even I got a bit cold... so we broke out the sleeping bags.
The Highlands are sort of a old colonial resort, which gives it a comfortable flavour for an Englishman. It seems to be caught on with the wealthy Malaysians, who come up to the Highlands to experience the wonders of non-tropical temperatures and play Golf. Yes - Golf. Either they found a particularly unusual flat plane up on the mountains here to build it on, or there was a lot of civil
Agro Tourism
Its like normal tourism, but with more shouting and pushing. engineering works going on when this place was thrown together... Days here were a pleasant affair, getting out early in relatively low temperatures in the 20's and doing a bit of walking either in the rainforests or over to another town in the area or a tea plantation...
We did a few routes in the rain forests, including one up to and down from one of the highest peaks, which was an interesting experience. At times, Aristi was quite literally having to us my bent legs to step on to climb up... It was very very very steep and pretty slippery... but fun. Part way through this particular route we bumped into a chap from the Czech republic, whom we'd met in KL and also a Malaysia who had schooled in bournemouth and lived in leeds and felt like a good natter... We were slightly relieved to get back in one piece, especially as exactly the moment we arrived back in the hostel, a (familiar) torrential downpour started. We'd noticed that a lot of the paths looked like riverbeds on both the way up and way down, and we were glad we didn't have to test the theory 😉
Beremang Peak
Worth the climb. Another day we walked over to the Boh tea plantation, the largest in Malaysia, and saw not only the vastness of the plantation, but also saw a slimmed down factory (which although was mainly for show) showed all the stages of tea production, and using old British Engineered machinery from around the 30's, still going strong. They also had a nice (but expensive in Malay terms) restaurant, where we got a pot of cinnamon tea... it was strange, but drinkable.
We enjoyed CH, it was a unique place, and definitely deserves a trip if you are on your way through Malaysia...
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