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Published: December 22nd 2008
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Polly:
We had a scenic drive up to the town of Tanah Rata, in the Cameron Highlands. The Cameron Highlands is a plateau to the northeast of Kuala Lumpur, on the edge of the Malaysian jungle. The climate is ideal for growing all sorts of fruits and vegetables on the man-made terraces cut into the hillsides. On arrival we were both relieved by the drop in temperature, from about 32 to 20 ÂșC in the day. We got a lift to our guest house, KRS Pines, just up the hill from the town.
A bit hungry after being on a coach and missing lunch, we dumped our bags and went in search of food. There weren't many restaurants in the small town, so we settled on the 'Steamboat' and enjoyed Nasi Goreng & Beef Rendang.
Fed & watered, we went to book a guided trek for the following day. There were a couple of tour operators in town offering similar tours so we did some bartering and settled for the cheapest. Ross did some outstanding haggling and negotiated us a full day tour on the Saturday and a half day tour on the Sunday, all for 200 Ringits.
We then indulged in some R&R - Ross went to the barbers and I had some more reflexology.
That night the rain held off so we sat in the garden of our hostel with jumpers on and had a couple of beers. The hostel was run by brother & sister, Roso & Kris from Java. Roso made us a bonfire to keep warm and got the guitar out. We had a bit of a sing song to the likes of Damien Rice, Roberta Flack and The Eagles which he'd recently been learning.
When we got up Kris made us a breakfast of eggs, toast, some slightly dubious chicken frankfurters & coffee. The pair of them were as good as gold and worked so hard, but never got a rest as they both had to be there to man the desk, clean the rooms & cook 24/7.
After breakfast we wandered in to town to our tour operator. We met our guide, Kuma, and then jumped in the minibus to pick up the rest of our group, 2 dutch couples and 3 friends from Malaysia.
We started the day with the Ulu Geroh trek in the
jungle, a 4-hour hike along a seriously muddy track. We had a few submerged & sinking feet moments along the way! After walking for about an hour Kuma pointed out some tiger footprints on the path. At first we thought he was kidding us and that another guide had gone on ahead with a very good tiger footprint mould but it turned out, much to our alarm, that he was telling the truth. We didn't see any of the stripy fellas though, I think they prefer to go deeper into the jungle where humans don't bother them.
Along the way Kuma hacked down some wild ginger plants for us to use as walking sticks and chopped down some bamboo to get fresh drinking water, of which Ross had a gulp. The walking sticks were much appreciated as the ground became more treacherous, and we had to balance on the edge of sloped tracks to stay out of the mud.
After 2 hours of walking we finally reached our destination - the rafflesia flowers. We had never heard of these before arriving in the Cameron Highlands, but they are in fact the largest flower in the world. The rafflesia
season had just started and we were promised a view of a new flower which had been partially open since the previous day. When we got there it was fully open and easy to spot from some distance away. It was huge, almost a metre in diameter! The rafflesia can grow on the ground or from branches of trees. They flower for only about 7 days and then die, so we were really lucky to see this one. We also saw one other which was 5 days old and slightly smaller, but still impressive, as well as a very withered one that looked a bit like Jabba the Hut.
On the way back down we stopped at a picturesque spot where we swam in pool under a waterfall. Despite being a bit hot & sticky in the jungle the water was freezing.
After a bit more slipping & sliding in the mud we reached the bottom where we had a look around a small aboriginal village and had a go with one of their hunting blow-pipes. They're pretty nifty and only need a short, sharp blow to make the dart go flying. We all did some target practice
and were amazed at their accuracy, hitting the bullseye (or tigerseye) nearly every shot.
Our next stop was the Boh tea plantation. We were parched by then so a cuppa was very welcome, and what a great cuppa the Cameron Gold Blend turned out to be. The setting of the tea plantation was in a valley, surrounded by tea on every side. In the distance we could see some pickers though, unlike picking by hand as we had expected, they use a machine to crop the leaves. We went on a tour of the factory to see the process of tea production from leaves to bagging.
After the plantation the rest of the group went to the butterfly farm, but as it was on our schedule the next day, we went around Brinchang market instead. I was curiously looking at one of the food stalls as the smells were really good, when a local man popped up and bought us some of what they were selling - fried battered bananas, yams & shiitake mushrooms. He then caught up with us a few minutes later and handed us some corn on the cob. When we offered money he said
no but thanked us for visiting his country. This is typical of what we experienced with the Malaysians, they were very generous and would go out of their way to help you.
Our final stop that day was at the strawberry farm. Although it wasn't picking season they had a great little stall where we sampled some of their products. Ross had strawberries & cream & I had strawberry milkshake.
That night we were exhausted and the rain had returned, so we stayed in the hostel and Kris made us a noodle omelette.
The next day we got up early and went to town for breakfast, not wanting another chicken sausage experience. We then joined our group, 4 German friends, and our guide, Segar. We were due to go for a walk first but as the weather wasn't great and our destination was in the clouds, we did our itinerary in reverse. We started at the tea plantation, but this time gave the tour a miss and enjoyed the scenery with tea & cake. I tried one of their speciality vanilla tea-cinos, like a cappuccino, but made with tea and a flavoured syrup of choice.
We
then drove to the butterfly farm, which not only had an amazing butterfly enclosure, but all kinds of creatures. Our guide was handling some of the strange, oversized bugs which made me a bit jumpy. Ross got friendly with a few too, but gave the snakes a miss.
We were also going to visit the cactus farm, but didn't see the point.
Finally, we went up to Gunung Brinchang, a view point on top of the highest local peak at 2032m, but unfortunately ended up sat in a big, wet cloud with nothing to see. Instead we went for a walk in the nearby 'Mossy Forest'. It was a totally different environment than the previous day, colder & bleak, and covered in (as the name suggests) moss.
Back at base we used Starbucks' WiFi to catch up on some e-mails, banking & stuff. We were annoyed we had to even enter Starbucks as it seemed to ruin the otherwise quaint little high street, but it had the only decent connection.
We then ate tandoori chicken, naan, and a few curry sauces at one of the street cafes. At 7 Ringits the meal was a bargain and
tasted great, but we think it was laced with MSG as we were both quite twitchy all night and found it difficult to sleep.
We took a bus the next morning to Penang, on the coast, in search of sunshine.....
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