Blogs from Tanah Rata, Pahang, Malaysia, Asia - page 11

My Christmas this year was certainly not a traditional one in most senses. No tree, no family, no turkey dinner. However, my body made sure I kept one Christmas tradition alive--my Christmas cold! Yahhh! For at least 5 years running I've had a cold on Christmas, usually due to the end of an intense season of cramming and caffine, and this year is no exception. It's not a really bad cold and I don't feel particularly poor, but I just thought it was kind of funny that even on the other side of the world I can't escape the Christmas cold bug. Oh well! A taste of home, I guess =) We're loving the Cameron Highlands, but unfortunately I haven't been able to update you on our great surroundings, until now, because the internet has been ... read more

THIS PLACE IS EERIE!! We left Penang bus terminal at 10am. Our coach wasn’t too bad, surprisingly full of young travellers. We thought that most people who were interested in going would have been locals or middle aged peeps. We decided to go just for a change of scenery. The Highlands were described in our Lonely Planet as ‘Malaysia’s most extensive hill station’ which is at an altitude of 1300m to 1829m. We had managed to pre-book a hostel for under three pound each and we had planned to stay 4 nights to take in all the picturesque scenery. On arrival at Tanah Rata, our home town, the first thing to hit us was how cool it was there. A man from our hostel met us off the bus and drove us to our hostel. We ... read more

Our trip into Malaysia has turned into a hunt for all things British, although this was hardly intentional. We've just spent five days in the Cameron Highlands, a mountainous area covered by jungles and waterfalls, with a micro-climate that keeps the temperature around 20 degrees. Here, we discovered was an area which felt British, looked British and tasted British. The towns here are made up of mock Tudor buildings, new and old, from colonial cottages to high rise flats rendered in the afforementioned style. On top of that (and we must admitt we were really excited about this when we heard) the main attraction for many home-sick Brits is the locally grown tea and the scones, which are served with jam grown on the local strawberry farms! We could hardly do a whistle-stop visit to somewhere ... read more

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 ... read more

Today we travelled to the second of our destinations in Malaysia: Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. I was really excited about this leg of the trip as my step-dad, Edmond, went to school here way back in 1959. We took the bus from the long-distance bus station at 9.00 am but the bus left 45 minutes late. For 25 MYR each, we discovered to our surprise that we were on a VIP bus like the ones in Thailand - big comfy seats and good air-con :-) The journey took about 4 hours, the majority of which was spent winding our way around hairpin bends and up into the jungle-clad mountains. The roads were excellent although the traffic on them was prone to speeding, making for some hairy moments on the way. All credit goes to ... read more