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Published: July 28th 2006
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I've had such a great time during my two days in Tanah Rata! It is such a laid-back town with great weather. The funny thing is - 'great weather' is now defined as cool, clean mountain air with a lovely breeze. That's what happens after spending a month in 30+ sun! The first morning in the dorm I realised why Allison had been complaining about the amount of sleep to be had in the mornings....everyone was up and about by around 8, making you feel like a fool if you wanted to sleep more.
So what could me do? We got up. Keith and I headed into town for breakfast - going to the same stalls to have some egg-roti which you dip into some brown, tasty sauce (or SOS as had been written on the bottles). Once we got back to the guesthouse the rain started. It continued for a good few hours, 'forcing' us to read, write, + relax! I had a chat to Allison, and once we had had a bit of a nap while watching 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' and the rain had stopped, we decided to find Keith and go on our walk.
However, when we went back to the dorm, Keith was no longer there! So we walked into town, and when we STILL hadn't met him, we decided to go on the hike together. We headed to the jungle, and found the beginning of trek #9. It turned out to be quite a non-strenuous walk, just a stroll through the jungle, really.
Allison and I were a good pair, because both of us kept wanting to stop and photograph every flower, plant, and insect. It turned out to be a great walk - perfect weather, fresh air, and really nice conversations. Allison is the type of person I would be friends with anywhere. When you travel, you rarely meet people who you truly click with - but I knew we'd get along well after the giggling fits we were both in the previous night during our card games. The night before we had both abused Tom and Keith for cheating, and just for the damning fact that they were male. We had the same humour, and were practically rolling on the floor.
In the jungle we had a chance to get to know a bit more about each other,
and turned out Allison had been teaching English in Taiwan for the past year! She sounded like a very passionate teacher, and it was great to hear her talk about her students. She also told me all about her large family, and her different travelling experiences in SE Asia.
Soon 4 hours had gone by, and we were back on the main road, assuming to be headed toward Tanah Rata. BUT when we came upon a small shop and asked for directions, the shop-man told us it was a further 7km to the city!! After another half hour of walking, we were quite tired (especially Allison who had not even had breakfast!). We sat down on the side of the road, and just as we did, a large bus drove past. We waved our hands frantically, and, THANK GOODNESS - the bus driver stopped!! So we got a free ride into town!!
By then it was already around 5, and we went to a restaurant where I had a MANGO LASSI + naan, while Allison had a meal. I decided to wait and have dinner with Keith - feeling bad since we had missed each other earlier during
the day!
Back at the hostel it turned out Keith just hadn't seen us snoozing on the couches earlier in the day, and had gone on a walk on his own. He had befriended an English guy named Haj who also joined us later when we headed back into town for dinner.
We went to an Indian restaurant in town, and I had a fantastic meal of rice with chicken & cashew nuts! The four of us got on really well, and ended up chatting in the restaurant for hours. By the end it must have been around 11 and we headed to the bottle shop for some drinks for the evening card game!
Once again we found ourselves in the 'drunk corner' - a corner of the hostel to which loud guests get thrown after the 11 - quiet time! We got out the cards, but didn't touch them all night. We were joined by two Dutch Boys (who were christened 'Jean Pierre' and 'Mr X' after a discussion on the lack of importance of names while travelling). We ended up playing games like 'would you rather', and random singing games - 'JUST THREE WORDS'. The
evening was fantastic, the 6 of us got on brilliantly, and there was definitely more giggling from Allison and myself.
We stayed up till about 4 or 5 in the morning, which made the 9AM wakeup to say buy to Allison, Haj, and the Dutch Boys quite painful! But we had promised to all go to breakfast together, so we did. Allison had to walk down to the bus station, so Keith and I joined her. We also took our laundry (ALL my clothes) downtown.
We got to the bus station at exactly 10:30 - when Allison's bus was scheduled to leave...and they told us it had just left :o ! Luckily, after some pleading on behalf of Allison and myself, she successfully changed her ticket to 1:30 with no charge! So she left her bag at the bus station and we headed to a restaurant for breakfast. We ended up sitting and chatting for about 2 hours before going back to the hostel to get some proper walking shoes for me, and some money for Keith. Back in the dorm Allison and I were once again in hysterics after taking pictures of ourselves looking through the see-through
bit of the Malaysian Ringgit notes (you had to be there).
Once we had walked Allison to her bus and said our goodbyes, Keith and I headed to the strenuous jungle hike...TREK #8 (background 'evil' music). Allison had told us horror stories of the tough trek, so we were mentally prepared for some steep hills. It turned out that the trek WAS quite vertical, but not as extreme as I had feared. The path wasn't very well marked, though, and at times we weren't very sure if we were heading the right way.
Hiking with Keith was also entertaining, although in retrospect I believe I talked about 80% of the time, chatting about anything and everything, from stories of my grandparents to explanations of videos of baby Mona dancing. hmm...I guess you had to be THERE, too. The weather was PERFECT today, and the trek was great fun.
At one time, though, we had finished trek 8, but we ended up on trek 3 without any intention to do so....this added another 2km to our trek. Once we finally found the way out of the jungle, we found ourselves at a golf course outside of town. Once again we were stuck. And then the rain started. First very light, but within minutes it turned very heavy, and we had to find shelter under a large tree. We ended up hailing a taxi and getting a ride into town.
Once in town we went to a well-deserved meal at our favorite indian restaurant! They now know us there, and we had some great rice&veg with naan. We even bought some provisions for our trip tomorrow - when we head to a nature reserve east of the Cameron Highlands called Taman Negara (a whole day's trip away - due to the mountains, rivers, and jungle inbetween).
Once back at the hostel I attempted a nap...but failed. So I came to update my travel blog!! Hope everyone is well - I'm really looking forward to Taman Negara, I've heard some great things about it!
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