Tea, strawberries and highlands!

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After 6 days on the Perhentians, it was time to go somewhere with a bit less sun.. The Cameron Highlands! We went there by a surprisingly comfortable minibus we only had to share with a Dutch couple we had met on the island and arrived a bit later in the afternoon. There we would immediately notice the weather was indeed a bit more chilly and rainy, as we had already expected. Our original plan was to stay there for a bit more than 2 days, but already on our first evening we discovered the things we really wanted to see and do wouldn't necessarily take more than one day. And since we could use the time well for the remainder of our travel plan, we decided to leave a day earlier.

Tanah Rata, the city we are staying in now, appears to be not too big or interesting, but at least you can get some good food. On our first afternoon we had some kind of a high tea with real scones, delicious. You have to know that one of the things the Cameron Highlands are known for, besides the strawberries and great nature, is its tea. Another fun thing we did at our first evening was to have a ' steamboat' for dinner, some kind of boiling pot with bouillon in which you prepare your own food. The selection of food we were offered was amazing, including some interesting things like e.g. jellyfish (' kwal' in Dutch). Despite the fact that Emma and me are almost professional eaters by now 😉, we didn't even get close to finishing all the food. And it was a fun experience, for sure 😊!

The next day, today, we had to get up early cause our tour would start at 8.45am. Well, at least the tour was worth it! We started with a visit to a tea plantage, where our guide told us a lot about tea plants, the producing of tea, etc, quite interesting. And of course we tried some tea! We had a pot of ' Masala Chai' , some spiced tea our guide advised us. It was lovely! Actually we hadn't expected it to be good, but it was amazing! Tasted a bit like cinnamon. And although I normally hate both milk and sugar in my tea, both fitted very well to this tea. Hmm.. Great start of the day. Then we were driven to the highest part of the mountain, we enjoyed the view there, and then it was time for our little jungle tour to start. Well, it wasn't exactly a walk, more like a hike, but it was great. So many gorgeous flowers and plants, and our guide knew a lot about them all and didn't mind sharing his knowledge with us. Afterwards we visited a butterfly farm, which didn't only house butterflies but a variety of insects and plants and one of the many strawberry farms, which was less interesting, I mean, my parents also used to have strawberries in their garden, nothing knew. But we did enjoy a strawberry juice/shake with our lunch.. A good change after so many pineapples and watermelons!

Then it was time to head back to our guesthouse. We had been told we could walk to the closest city, which would be like 5 kms, and then we could take a cab from there. However, that had forgotten this walk would be along some kind of highway, neither very interesting nor very safe. Well, we survived and were very happy to find a cab later. Now we're back in the guesthouse, just booked our bus to Kuala Lumpur for tomorrow, where we'll transfer to Melaka. We'll go out for dinner in a bit, probably at an Indian place, and then we'll have to see what we'll do, sine the major part of this city closes around 10pm or so :S.. But there are supposed to be one or two bars, so guess we'll be fine 😊..

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