Turtles, Elephants and a Nice Cup of Tea!

Having flown back to Kuala Lumpur late at night, we were picked up the next morning for our Elephant tour! We were expecting a bus or minibus but a man came to drive us by car. We went first to the Batu Caves which are a Hindu place of worship on the outskirts of KL. You can see the giant gloden statue from miles around and we climbed a huge staircase next to it to reach the mouth of the cave. Inside, once we'd passed the souvenir stalls, the caves were a very dramatic space , like a natural vaulted cathedral. All of the walls had little statues of Gods in the rock and smoke was rising atmospherically from next to a temple at the far side. There were monkeys running around everywhere in the cave, as well as a few cockerels! We climbed some more steps to reach another shrine and listened to a man chanting which added to the "sacred" feel of the place. The Batu Caves were a great sight, particularly in light of the fact that we were only able to see them because it was Friday so the usual stop of "Deerland" was closed!

Our next stop was a pewter factory (not top of our list it has to be said, but that was where we were taken!) because apparently pewter is only manufactured in Malaysia?! The free "factory tour" consisted of a man briefly explaining what pewter is, forcing Phil to try on rings and bracelets, making Elly wear a big hat (without any explanation as to its significance - we think it was traditional tin mining gear), before hustling us into a huge showroom filled with really expensive pewter items! There weren't really any things we wanted and needless to say we could afford nothing in there, which made it difficult to leave as we were being stalked around the showroom by various attendents trying to flog us 100GBP tankards or tiny crappy saucers with Malaysia's landmarks on! We finally escaped without making a purchase and were taken to a Batik factory with a similar drill - we sawe someone doing Batik, a lady dressed Elly in a sarong in various styles and then we were sent into the big shop full of scarfs, shirts, cloths etc, all of which were either really pricey or not Batik! We managed to make another swift exit and were finally on the way to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Centre.

When we were almost there, we pulled up in a little village for lunch at a roadside cafe where we were given fried rice and a fried chicken drumstick, which was all suprisingly bland. We ate with the driver and chatted away about his family. At the Elephant Centre we watched a video about the work done there: when a herd of elephants destroys a farmer's crops due to their diminishing food reserves in their natual habitat they are often shot, so to avoid this the rangers from Kuala Gandah try to catch the elephants and translocate them to the huge Taman Negara National Park. It's a really difficult process to capture a wild elephant and ther footage of it was a bit jarring - having to tranquilise it, chain it up, put it through the distress of splitting up the herd etc - all looked so cruel, but if they do nothing the elephants would be killed. The rangers are helped by some worker elephants, who aid in the capture by soothing and calming down the wild elephants. The trained worker elephants were themselves rescued by the centre, for example one was found caught in a tiger trap, and these were the elephants that we were able to meet.

First we saw all of the elephants having a wash in the river, and then we were allowed to feed them with fruit - they either used their trunk to take it out of our hands or lifted their trunk for us to pop in the food. We then rode bareback on one of the largest elephants which was a very bumpy ride! Next we climbed onto the back of a big elephant who was standing in the river and proceeded to take a few steps and collapse on its side, dropping us into the water. Then we splashed around for a while bathing the baby ones. The whole thing felt a little odd - being at a conservation centre but hearing the rangers shout commands, it seemed a little like a 'performance' - although in reality the centre has saved the lives of those elephants and this is all part of their training (following commands and being calm around lots of people and noise) which will ultimately help to translocate wild elephants that would otherwise get shot. We got a lift back to KL, and walked the last bit of the journey as the city was gridlocked as it was a friday night.

We were catching an afternoon bus to the Cameron Highlands and so had a free morning. This was manily spent in search for a new battery for Phil's camera. We then walked to the station via the guest house to pick up our bags. It is a huge bus station with a concourse full of ticket booths and shops selling snacks, with all of the platforms down individual staircases where the buses pulled up. Ours however pulled up an hour late, but when it did we were in the lap of luxury - it was an actual coach rather than a bus, and to us the seats were like armchairs! We arrived in Tanah Rata several hours late and after checking into town to find some food - it was really cool in the mountains, so much so we had to wear jumpers for the first time in over a month! We ate at a Southern Indian restaurant - a rough and ready place but delicous curry that was really different to what we have had at home.

The next day we visited the Boh Tea Plantation. We were disappointed to find when we got there that the factory was temporarily closed for its free tours, but we were still able to walk through the plantations up to a viewpoint. They stretch as far as the eye can see over the undulating landscape of such a strange 'texture' - the tea plants form little clusters, hexagon-like in the overall green. We went to the cafe to try a couple of blends of the Boh teas, which were really good, accompanied by a scone - the most English of things to do whilst sitting in Asia! In the evening we went out for the local speciality - a chinese steamboat. We ordered one (not sure exactly of how it worked) and mounds of raw food were brought to the table, some of which we could identify eg. prawns, chicken, noodles, eggs, tofu, mushrooms and some of which we couldn't! We were then brought a camping stove, a metal pot and our utensils. The pot was split into two, containing two different flavours, one spicy and one not. So the steamboat was a fondue style meal, where you essentially make your own soups by throwing into the stock whichever ingredients you fancy, putting on the lid and waiting for them to cook before spooning some into your bowl.

The Cameron Highlands was a place of bizarre contrasts, with big black and white half timbered buildings here and there, but also street food stalls in corrugated iron shacks! We were picked up early the next morning by a minbus to take us to Kuala Besut where we caught a 'Fast Ferry' to the Perhentian Islands. The little speedboat whizzed us to Long Beach on Perhentian Kecil (the smaller, cheaper island). It was lovely and sunny and the islands were beautiful with white sand and the clearest water imaginable! We waded ashore and found a cheap hut to stay in (though it was a complete dive!) We went straight for a swim in the warm sea, and the sun was casting those squiggles of light onto the sea floor!

We changed accommodation the next morning to a little hut at the end of the beach which was arguabley no less basic than the previous night's (eg. it had shared bathrooms in a corrugated iron shack outside) but to us it was so much nicer, with a view of the sea, a little verrandah complete with hammock, it was clean and had a rustic charm! We spent the day on the beach, mainly in the water as it was too hot to sunbathe. Even though we've been out in the sun for a couple of months and got used to the tropical heat, the sun in the Perhentians seemed stronger than we've had elsewhere. So we decided by mid-afternoon that we'd had enough for one day and headed back to our hut to laze in the hammock before taking another dip in the evening as the sun was sinking over the hill behind the beach. We ate at a beach BBQ which had all sorts of meat and fish but we decided to sample the shark and the stingray!

The next morning we went on a snorkelling trip with an old man who runs a cafe on the beach. We'd seen lots of snorkeling trips set out in groups of about 10 people but for some reason we were the only two on ours in a little rowing boat with a big motor on the back. The first stop was 'Shark Point' where we hoped to see a Black-tipped Reef Shark but none appeared so we just swam with the fish and coral. Getting back into the boat was a challenge as there were no steps and we were in deep water so we had to haul ourselves over the side, way above head height! We stopped at another site out in the straight between the two islands to try to spot a turtle and we weren't disappointed - after a minute's looking from the boat, the old man spotted a dark shape on the sea bed and we jumped in. Sure enough it was a big Green Turtle on the sea floor eating sea grass. We swam along with it and dived down for a closer look. It ate and ate on the sea floor then began to swim up and surfaced, taking a breath before dartin gaway underwater. We managed to find another one a minute later and swam closely alongside, again completely undisturbed by any other snorkelers. It was an amazing experience to see the turtle so graceful underwater, having seen one look so cumbersome on the sand at Turtle Island. We were taken to "Fishing Village" (the only village on Perhentian Kecil) for lunch, before making a final stop where we were met by a shoal of fish who swam along with us. There was plenty to see around the coral including lots of Nemos and angelfish, but we also saw the biggest fish we'd ever seen - it was larger than your arm span and dark grey with a big lump on its forehead. It seemed to be a giant parrotfish as it had big teeth and was eating coral, it's completely harmless of course, but anything that big makes you jump! Back at Long Beach, we predicatabley spent the rest of the afternoon beaching and lazing in the hammock.

The next morning we walked through the forest across to Coral Bay on the other side of the island, but aside from that the next day and a half was spent doing more of the same - swimming and basking in the sunshine. Perhentian Kecil grew to be an addictive place - we were doing much the same things every day, but it was such a perfect beach that it never got boring. It was just a very chilled out place to spend a few relaxing days.

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