Tea for Two...

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The bus journey. Yes I know I go on about them, but when you don’t have the pleasure, and believe me it is a real pleasure of having your own transport there’s a good chance you’ll be traveling by bus, coach or minibus or a combination of all three in order to reach your chosen destination. After a while you too would learn to loath buses. Apart from being driven by someone who clearly shouldn’t be given a driving license soley as a potential danger to others health, the constant delays and unscheduled stops (I kid you not. We stopped this one time at what was presumably the drivers home so he could collect in the washing hung out on the line) really add to the experience of never getting where you want to go fast enough. You look back and think of all that time you wasted sat on that BUS!

Anyway, back to the good bit about traveling. On the way to Tanah Rata, where we would be staying the views as we approached were just amazing. We sat there smiling at each other and feeling all excited about what laid ahead. Deep caverns of forest swept over
the ground in all directions and like rings drawn around a cup the roads wriggled their way through the mountains and off into the distance. There were huge embankments of stone cut and staked into the hillside to make way for the roads. They were just enormous and looked like gi-normous temple steps, which impressively rose high above and below the roads only to just as impressively blend in and vanish into the hillside.

So as you might have noticed we were very impressed with the place. Just getting there was a pleasure, but that was nothing to the feeling you got while exploring the real attractions of the cameron highlands, the tea plantations. The first of which was Boh. Started in 1927 today Boh tea sells its brands all over the world. I hadn’t heard of them myself, but that didn’t stop us going. Already we have had first hand experience of where potatoes come from and milk come to think of it and here at Boh Tea Plantation we would discover the ins and outs of where and how the tea gets into our tea bags.
The trip almost never happened. After an earlier miss guided detour around the local hospital grounds, due to poor directions from our guesthouse and a lack of signposts on the way. Quickly, I just have to say, if you’re going there do a right at the 500m to the hospital signpost as going straight on will only lead to a heffing steep hill and most importantly a dead end. So after reaching this dead end we thought that with the time we had wasted we had better hike back into town and get a Taxi to the plantation otherwise we’d be walking all day. So as it so often happens, it turned out for the best as when I stopped to take a photo of the view back down into the town I discovered that I had left the memory card back at the hotel and without it the camera would be useless. Not that significant at the time, but that afternoon whilst we sat on a rock high above the plantation factory, a carpet of tea plants rolling out over the mountains in front of us we couldn’t help but imagine the severe effin and blinding that would have come out of my mouth had I not been able to capture the incredible views.

As I said earlier we had caught a taxi to the tea plantation. Our mode of transport couldn’t have seemed more appropriate for a visit to a tea plantation. As we approached each of the blind bends along the winding road upwards through the sweeping fields of tea the deep manly sound of the 1970s Mercedes Benz horn signaled our impending arrival. We sat in the back feeling like the man from ‘Del Monte’ if a little less well dressed!

After exploring the surroundings and having a free guided tour of the factory we were gagging for a cuppa! It was at the tea shop that we bumped into an exhausted looking couple we had passed on our ill fated walk that morning. To say the least they looked a little surprised to see us!! Could it be they were surprised to see us there before them after all we had passed them that morning heading in the wrong direction? I could see the guy’s cogs ticking as I gave him a patronizing smile and wink as if to say remember us son shine. Yes, I know that although this was both childish
and immature it made me feel much better. The way I saw it, they deserved it, as from their reaction when seeing us and fact that they were standing in front of us meant they were obviously on their way here too when we passed them earlier in the morning. I even bothered to say hello. Pity they couldn’t be bothered to tell us we were headed in the wrong direction. I could be completely wrong, but we did pass them in a hospital parking lot and it was highly unlikely that either of us, when fully kitted out in walking gear were there to see a doctor.

After we finished our tea and biscuits we left for the hour or so walk back down the hill to the main road to catch the bus back. The walk took us past many tea pickers who were busy doing their jobs, but nevertheless not so busy that they couldn’t stop to say hello or even from miles away stand up tall and do a big wave. It was priceless and as we walked along the road the tea fields gave way to smaller terraces in the hillside where allotments of
vegetables and fruit were being grown. They were covered by plastic sheeting in just about every nook and cranny you could possible have planted something. It was beautiful and as we walked, this is well gay but you almost felt like singing….. the hills are alive with the sound of music!!

Anyway! An hour had quite quickly passed and we hadn’t reached the main road yet. If not our minds our legs were getting tired and I was beginning to think that we really could do with a lift. At that moment I turned around to see a school bus that had passed us in the opposite direction earlier. At the time we had stopped at the side of the road as it passed to wave at the school kids onboard, but now as it approached I could see it was empty. So you guessed it, the bus stops and we get a free ride all the way back into town. We sat on the bus grinning like school kids a perfect end to what
would be the perfect visit.

To finish off this blog I have a couple of random observations I would like to make. Apart
from the stunning scenery you will see by the bucket load you will also see a worrying amount of rubbish, in particular waste plastic strewn just about anywhere where there’s people, like in the hill towns and places where they grow things. It’s as if they just don’t get that plastic isn’t biodegradable. We saw with our own eyes people just lobbing large amounts of used or ripped plastic sheeting into the hedges and worst still into the streams and rivers. It really is unpleasant to see and why they can’t dispose of it properly is a mystery.

The other thing I would like to make note of is the large gathering, that’s the wrong word, well grouping really. I don’t think cars are that intelligent that they can choose where they are sold, but anyway. I have noticed on our travels that you appear to get large groupings of different types of vehicle depending on the country you are in or sometimes the different towns and cities within a particular country. For instance in Australia it was the Ute and Holden’s, in Cambodia everyone drove a Honda Accord or a Toyota minivan. In Thailand you aint worth a thing if you aint got a brand spanking new 4x4 pickup. The Cameron Highlands are no different. It’s as if everybody got together and bought bulk. Every other vehicle is either, in frequency order from least to most, a 1970s ‘Del Monte’ style Merc, an old beat up Land Rover, you know the one’s off ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ the ones with the spare wheel fixed to the bonnet. And the most popular car in the Cameron Highlands and in the parts of Malaysia that we have visited is………… a Proton!! If you’re not familiar with them, then don’t be surprised because most people aren’t. But for me I am familiar with the Proton. However, I have only ever seen one Proton car on the road in England and funnily enough that measly one was driven by a man who worked for the Proton fleet management company. Furthermore, I have witnessed the likes of Jeremy Clarkson give this car maker a particularly ruthless bagging. So you can understand my surprise at seeing all these Proton cars. And this leads me to my point, if you too have witnessed the aforementioned JK bashing and lack of Proton cars on the roads in England then surely like me you would have thought to yourself ‘How exactly do Proton manage to stay in business?” Well now we know.

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Photos

Life lesson 23089 - How Tea is Made
1st it is grown in an idyllic place