Cameron Highlands

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Cameron Highlands

The Cameron Highlands are about five hours south of Penang on peninsular Malaysia and are a tourist hotspot for the locals due to their cool climate (relative to the lowlands) with temperatures in the mid 20's during the day. The main town of Tanah Rata sits at about 1500m and is surrounded by tea plantations, strawberry farms and a whole host of other fruits that enjoy the cooler temperatures and year round sunshine.

Our journey from Penang was doomed before we even got on the minibus. We were picked up on time and were the second ones on board: the first were a middle aged couple , the woman being set on antagonising the driver. It didn't help that the driver was new and didn't know his way around Penang so we circled around for over an hour looking for the hotels on his list. This obviously stressed the driver out but the woman added this by demanding that he turn his music off as it was “not good music” (a retro mix of songs like Mr Boombastic and some Vanilla Ice), which he complied to after some heated words.

A few hours down the motorway we turned off onto the windy mountain roads and the driver exacted his revenge by driving at crazy speeds and doing some Nepali style overtaking on blind corners. This successfully annoyed her but also scared the life out of the other passengers who shouted at him to slow down a few times. When the couple took their turn at shouting, he pulled over and suggested that they might like to get out by the side of the road...sigh... If its one thing we've learnt, don't piss off the driver as you often rely on him at the other end to tell you where abouts you are and point you to where you want to be.

Anyway, he decided to drive normally in a sulk and arriving in Tanah Rata, he pulled up at the company office and refused to go any further despite his obligation to drop people off at various hotels. The couple refused to get off the minibus until he took them to their hotel but we'd seen how busy the place was (it was the weekend and it was like being in the lake district on a bank holiday) so we gave up and went to find a room, luckily securing the last room at the backpacker hotel “Daniel's Place”. We met the couple later on and it turned out that they'd had a reservation somewhere else but their room had been given away as they were late getting there. They'd had trouble finding a room after that as most of the hotels were full for the weekend so planned to complain to the minibus company.

Safely securing one of the last budget rooms around, we went out to explore the town which was really one main street with a range of shops. Competing Indian restaurant worked to get us in for dinner and we were treated to a delicious tandoori chicken set meal for just over a pound each. The evening was blissfully cool so we relaxed in the hotel garden planning our hike route for the next day.

Bright and early the next morning we set off to climb to the top of mount SOMETHNG along one of the trails on a photocopied map that we'd bought for 1 ringet (20p). Although there are plenty of companies offering minibus tours of the place, they were pretty expensive at about £16 each so we decided to spend the next three days seeing the place and getting some use out of the heavy hiking boots that we've been carrying for ages (they had not seen the light of day since our big trek). It was the closest thing to hiking in England that we've done since Nepal, but realistically was a world away in the heat and high humidity as we scrambled up muddy paths in the tropical rainforest, watching out for the giant centipedes and millipedes that seemed intent on running underneath where Stacey was about to step.

The trek was surprisingly steep and slippery but a pleasant change to the usual sightseeing. At the top of the mountain, we met a group of Malaysians in their late teens who were on a college trip to raise environmental awareness or something like that so it was with great irony that we sat and watch them set fire to all their rubbish (mainly plastic bottles) amongst all the trees and plants instead of carrying it down and start to walk off back down the mountain without even waiting for the fire to go out! At least they had good intentions I guess. We scrambled back down and went for a big cup of delicious masala tea feeling slightly achy after not having done any exercise for a while.

The next day we decided to hike to the 'Boh' tea plantation for a tour of the factory and a cuppa T in their cafe at the top of the valley. The trail started off well but gradually disappeared and became a muddy track which had eroded in places and needed careful foot work to avoid slipping into the valley below. We eventually reached a road after scrambling over several huge fallen trees and were thankful for a decent route to follow since progress had been slow on the jungle trail.

It was about 7km uphill to the top of the valley passing chilli farms, strawberry plantations and a honey bee farm. The huge fields of tea plants came into view and we walked through them noticing how they managed to grow on the very steep hillsides. The air had become cooler with the height and we reached the entrance to the Boh estate and looked with horror as we saw a sign saying “Closed Mondays”. Oh dear. Our reward of fresh tea and a factory tour after a long hike had suddenly vanished.

We weighed up our options and decided to keep on walking the remaining 2km to the top of the valleys to see the views of the estate over the surrounding hills: well worth it. It was a long walk down and it was getting late in the day so we decided to keep on going past the jungle trail down to the main road in the hope of getting a bus or taxi from the small town back to Tanah Rata. When we got there, the small town on our map actually turned out to be a tiny hamlet of a few farms with neither a bus stop or taxi in sight. The road sign said 9km in Tanah Rata and it was uphill all the way.

Faced with the prospect of walking it and arriving back after dark, we decided to hitch-hike instead. It didn't take very long for us to get a ride as an Indian guy in a clapped out Toyota stopped to pick us up. He kindly moved the huge truck battery over on the back seat so Stacey could sit down and proceeded to show us how quickly he could drive up the windy road, occasionally without any hands on the steering wheel as he fought to get a ringing mobile phone out of his pocket. Safely arriving back to town in one piece, we celebrated our good fortune with some tandoori chicken and masala tea.

On our final day, we woke up to find our legs and ankles were aching badly with two days of hard hiking so were torn between staying in Tanah Rata or venturing off to find an open tea factory. We decided to compromise by catching the bus north past Brinchang, getting out at the turn off and walking the remaining 5km (and a dash extra: they only make to the start of the estate, then have a long winding path to the buildings) to another 'Boh' tea plantation/factory. The views on the walk weren't as stunning at the previous day but were still pretty and it was a much easier walk.

We walked along the road through the tea fields watching the working harvest the tea. They were using giant lawnmowers that required two people to manoeuvre, and were run over the tops of the bushes, plucking off the new shoots - 'or tender-leaves' as their packaging proudly states. It was a big contrast to seeing this in India where hundreds of women picked the tea by hand and carried in for miles in big baskets to the factory.

The factory tour was engaging and showed how the tea is processed from the leaves into the finished product. Interestingly, the company was set up by a British business man in the 19th century as he saw the opportunity to grow tea in these fertile highlands. We were also rewarded with the cup of fresh tea that we had been denied us the previous day, sitting in a cafe with panoramic views over the plantation valleys. On the walk back to the main road, we faced the prospect of waiting up to an hour for a bus but to our amazement, one pulled up after only two minutes.

That evening, there was a weird thunderstorm high up in the clouds - no rain and the lighting seemed not to crash to earth but stay up in the clouds, illuminating the countryside for miles around. We would be leaving the next day back to the lowlands and to the heat of Kuala Lumpur after having a great time relaxing and hiking in the relative cool of the highlands.

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Comments

[valda]

hi
It must be very fertile land as they don't half grow big vegetables over there.