Melaka & Cameron Highlands

---

Melaka - lots of european influence, especially dutch - noticeable in architecture. quaint little shophouses & chinatown. really horrid smell of sewage around here - apparently it's a malaysian thing & will stay with us throughout!! oh great! interesting seeing buddhist temples this time, contrasting hindu theme of bali. most intersting was seeing a bunch of chinese women line dancing inside a temple to 'who the f@@k is alice'?! not sure what that was about, but think it probably wasn't part of prayer!!
great little becak's running around the place with tacky flowers all over them & loud music blaring! went out for a drink with karen - first drink since singapore! it was ladie's night! whoo-hoo (no other ladies there tho & spiderman was being played on a trampoline hanging from some poles - very strange!!)

Cameron Highlands - my first jungle experience. went up a great little mountain, nice view, then onto tea planatiaions & seeing how the tea process works - with of course some wonderful tea tasting! onto butterfly farm to play with pretty butterflies & strange little insects. karen too scared to touch any of them - very amusing! i had a good play tho.
then onto a great 5-hour trek in the jungle to hunt down the world's biggest flower - the rafflesia. chucking it down with rain, hence extremely hard to trek through the very wet & slippery soil, trying to manoevre over streams, precarious little log things, up & over things in the jungle, rain falling heavy trying desperately not to fall over. really great fun, but bloody hard work! we were knacekred at the end of it & completely drenched & covered in mud!! well worth the effort i say, although karen may disagree!! however, we decided to give jungle a break after this, for the time being anyway, since we were so unfit & in pain!

---