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Published: January 27th 2010
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TEA!!!! Lots of tea. We don't drink tea ...
During the journey I mainly read my photocopied book, Memoirs of a Geisha that I bought in P1040648
Cate jokingly pushing the bus. She didn't volunteer to do this when it actually broke down though! Hanoi from a young lad who took us off the street into his “bookshop” which you and I would call a cubby hole with a book shelf in and Matt mainly listened to music on my Ipod. At one point, I took a break and was staring out of the window, thinking how beautiful it was out there and then Matt put an ear phone in one of my ears and started to play our song, the last song we danced to on the night of our wedding. I sat there feeling I was the luckiest person in the world, being able to leave work and travel in far-away lands with my own, incredibly special husband with no worries in the world. Sometimes I forget that we are enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as seeing different places becomes routine but every now and then, I comprehend just how lucky Matt and I are and I am unbelievably grateful for that.
To reach the highlands you have to go up some hills, and I’m only talking about slight inclines, but for long periods of time. And basically, the bus couldn’t manage it. The thick black smoke that was pouring out of
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Our crazy/loopy/frustrated bus driver the exhaust pipe at the rear as the engine was being revved was actually making it alongside the bus and to the front, overtaking us and travelling up the hills quicker than we were. There was also a misty haze in the air inside the bus and a distinct smell of fumes throughout the journey, so much so that when we stopped for a toilet break (where I had to pay to use the most disgusting squat toilets I have ever seen), both myself and Matt complained of feeling woozy and lightheaded!
Well, about four hours into the journey, (it was only supposed to take four hours to get there,) the bus driver started to make some very strange noises, kind of matching the ones that the bus was making. The bus couldn’t cope with being in anything but first gear and thus was groaning and going very slowly. I was trying to read my book but the bus driver really was making it difficult for me to concentrate. I’m not sure if he was singing strangely, chanting, chatting to the bus, swearing, or having a conversation with himself and I was hoping to God myself that he wasn’t
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The view from Father's Guesthouse praying. He looked a bit crazy anyway and I did wonder why on earth we sometimes put our lives into the hands of strange people like that.
So anyway, after passing through beautiful jungle areas, and reaching the little town of Ringlet, 13km from our destination, the bus broke down (or the driver decided he wasn’t going to go any further) as he got out of the bus in an angry manner and went off to a pay telephone. We didn’t really know what was going on and wondered if we’d ever reach Tanah Rata. Pretty much immediately I began to feel increasingly annoyed with the whole situation and then the heavens opened, (first rain in two weeks apparently) pathetic fallacy at work. We ended up getting on a replacement door-less bus which was just as poor as the first bus and were picked up from the little town bus station by Father’s guesthouse. Thank goodness for free pickups. The rain was torrential for a couple of hours but soon cleared up and after eating, we wandered down into the town to take a look around.
A cute little market had popped up selling a huge amount of
strawberry merchandise along with food stalls, clothes stalls etc. We meandered around then walked further along the street. Unfortunately my stomach had bloated out from the food so we needed to head back to the hostel fairly quickly but spent the rest of the night chilling out in the lounge room and bedroom.
We had booked a half day ‘Countryside tour’ for the following morning, which meant an early start so we got up early, again, (I want a lie in!) and went downstairs to wait for our pickup. Our guide introduced himself and then told us in a very English Gentleman (but Indian) way that we may call him Mr Singh. How proper!
The tour was quite good fun. I think we have been lacking in actually doing things recently so it was good to be led around, being given snippets of information about the place and generally enjoying the scenery. We visited the Rose centre which is a flower centre - lots of flowers, and statues of Disney characters - kind of strange. The first flower that the lovely Mr Singh showed us was called Jade Vine - a jade coloured vine, very pretty. Thankfully, he
let us go off by ourselves soon after this. The view from the top was lovely and after an hour of looking at flowers, (the time actually went by very quickly oddly enough), it was time for us to leave. Next stop was the strawberry farm, I think. Rows and rows of strawberries being grown from bags of soil and coconut husk I think he said - and then a taster of homemade strawberry jam - delicious - and the opportunity to buy some strawberry based products from the cafe there. It would have been rude to say no so we had a strawberry milkshake, warm strawberry cake and a strawberry tart between us. The milkshake was definitely a winner for me.
Other stops included a honey bee farm (where we refused to buy ridiculously expensive honey), a Chinese Buddhist temple (not as grand as most temples we have seen), a fruit market where we tried some guava, tea plantations - Cameron Highlands has extensive tea plantations and produces the ‘Boh’ brand of tea out here. The tea factory was closed as it was a Monday but Mr Singh was able to tell us how the tea was made
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Jade vine anyway. Oh and we went to a butterfly farm which I loved - the butterflies were landing everywhere and I got to hold a gecko!!!! Wow! I love them and want one so I need to add that to the list of things to get when we get back to England... So far the list includes geckos, a monkey, a tiger and an Asian baby I believe.
After our countryside tour, we had worked up a bit of an appetite so we went for a lovely curry - well, Matt had some sort of concoction placed on a banana leaf, and I had naan, chicken tikka and some curry dips. Yum. We thought it would be rude not to test out the local home-made scones and strawberry jam so we found a place called Cameronian Inn which had been mentioned in one of our guidebooks for their great afternoon tea, and ate a scone each. They were really really good!!
Sometimes being a traveller can be really hard work. It’s really difficult deciding where to go, what to cut out, how long to spend in places, what to do there and how to get from one place to the next. We sat in our room for an hour or so researching Penang, Langkawi and the Thai Islands, bearing it in mind that we had only two weeks left before we needed to leave for Bangkok. Eventually, after reading many blogs, looking at many pretty pictures and maps and reading our guides, we decided to skip all of the Malaysian coastline and head to the Thai islands, Phuket first, via a bus from Cameron Highlands to KL and from KL airport to Phuket. That was the idea anyhow. It was a complete mission to book it as we came up against so many annoying obstacles.
First, the office selling bus tickets at our guesthouse was closed so we had to wait around for it to open so that we could book our tickets for the following morning, as no bus tickets would mean we wouldn’t get to the airport in time.
Then, the price of the flights online increased for two people. So we had to work out whether to book flights separately and risk not sitting together and possibly the second person’s flight being more expensive anyway.
Upon deciding to book separately (trying to
save £30), the web page told us that we would need to ‘proceed to your nearest Air Asia office or to the airport sales office’ because the flight was under 24hours away. 24 HOURS AWAY BY 5 MINUTES! SHUT UP!
By this point we were thinking that maybe we shouldn’t go to Phuket, that maybe something was trying to stop us from going. So the only real option was to hope that the bus company would let us move our bus tickets back a day, stay longer in Cameron Highlands, and book flights for the following day. Luckily the formidable lady at the guesthouse was in a cheery mood and was really helpful (despite Tripadvisor reviews to the contrary), and probably more than happy to have us staying in a room for another night (more money for her), so she got the bus tickets changed for us. AirAsia eventually let us book flights for the following day, and in the end we’d actually saved money by going a day later (although less time on the beach; but this meant we could go for a nice little mountain walk the next day, and maybe more scones!).
We did just that and went walking (after another amazing Indian curry) along trail 9A. It was about 3pm by the time we reached the beginning of the trail and we were trekking for about an hour and a half. This trail goes past Robinson Falls which were quite pretty, and through the jungle. No-one told us that there would be fallen down trees blocking our path, that the path becomes overgrown and extremely narrow and that the path is next to a steep drop for most of the trail. It was really cool to be in the jungle, I was particularly excited as it seemed so exotic and we could see so many different types of vegetation and the tallest trees we will probably ever see, but we didn’t bump into much wildlife, (although Matt did turn to me looking serious at one point and asked if I thought that sound we just heard might have been a tiger! Muppet.) The trek did become a bit hairy towards the end but the weather held out and we just about made it without falling down any of the steep edges, thank goodness. We were on our own without mobile phones which I realised
after was a bit silly (not that I would have known who to call if we had been in trouble anyway.) Oh well.
When we finally made it out of the jungle, we were pretty hot and sticky and still needed to get ourselves back to Tanah Rata. You can imagine how happy we were when we saw a sign for our little town that said it was 9km away! How we managed to walk 2.5km or thereabouts away from the town and end up 9km away, I have no idea. Anyway, my feet were really painful even before the walk so by the end I couldn’t wait to take my shoes off and walked along the road in socks to try to ease the blister pain! We had been told that to get back to town we could either try to flag down a bus going past or hitchhike. We chose the latter and tried flagging down everything we saw, not really knowing if we were being rude by sticking thumbs/hands out etc! A lovely man had dropped his tour customers off at a hotel and had seen us walking up the main road so on his return,
he stopped for us and took us all the way to our guesthouse. We paid him 80pence for his efforts. So generous of us but a bus would have only cost us 40pence you see so we actually were being generous. I think.
The trek was really good fun, a bit challenging at times but we are glad we made the effort and did it after our initial problem of not being able to actually find the beginning of the trail! We were so tired after that that we just chilled out and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
So that was it for our Cameron Highlands trip. I recommend going here, it was good fun and Father’s guesthouse was great - not in the little shacks but in the main building. The next stop is Phuket, back to Thailand!
Love Cate and Matt x
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