The Cameron Direlands

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Leaving Penang, at the ferry terminal there were some scales which cost 20 sen (just like a dollar, one Ringgitt is divided into 100 sen). I put in the coin and the machine told me I weighed 4kg. I may be looking more and more like the Machinist every day but somehow I don't think it was correct. That was 20 sen down the drain. I could have used that coin to throw at a pigeon, or try to skip it across a pond. Sigh.

The bus to the Cameron Highlands cost 35 Ringgitt (about NZ$12.50) and took five hours. When I bought the ticket I had been told the bus left at 9.30am, and to be at the station at 9 or 9.15. In fact the bus left dead on 9am, so too bad if anyone was turning up later. I had never been to the Cameron Highlands before due to it being a backpacker den and Bukit Fraser being much better, but because there is cheap accommodation there I thought I would give it a go and see what it was like. I don't think I'll be going back. Accommodation at Bukit Fraser may be more expensive by quite a way but it is so much more pleasant being up there. All the way through the Cameron Highlands to the backpacker town of Tanah Rata the winding road is lined with nothing but strings of hotels, tea farms, and fields covered in tunnel-houses for growing strawberries and chrysanthemums. Anywhere without fields or hotels has great ugly scars where the remaining forest has been bulldozed and the land is awaiting more hotels and farms. Up at Tanah Rata the surrounding hills are still covered in forest and there are some nice trails through them, but there are also lots of those same bulldozed areas. Soon there will be nothing left up there at all.

Once off the bus I found a place called Daniel's Travellers Lodge which had dorm beds for 12 Ringgitts (c. NZ$4.30). The rain had started as soon as the bus arrived in town, and it kept going on and off for the rest of my stay. One day it rained solid for the entire day; other days it mostly rained morning or night and the rest of the time just drizzled. After checking into Daniel's I went off to find some food, and then wandered round the town in the rain to see if I could find somewhere even cheaper, which I did. The next morning I moved to the nearby Twin Pines where I got a single room for 15 Ringgitts (c. NZ$5.40). It was an attic room, roughly the size of a clown's shoe-box, but I only needed it to leave my bags in and sleep without disturbing or being disturbed by other people so it suited me fine.

I wasn't really expecting to see any “new” birds (lifers) while at Tanah Rata, not even any birds new for the trip because most of what is there is the same as at Bukit Fraser which I had already been to back in December, but I was expecting to up my year list significantly. That didn't really happen because I couldn't find any birds! I mean seriously, where were all the birds?! At Bukit Fraser there are bird-waves constantly – you just about need a tennis racket to beat your way through them all – but here I saw no more than a handful of bird-waves in like five days! (Well, three days really because of rain). And the individual birds were just as absent. Mostly I was just seeing the same few species over and over again. I tried various trails (I liked number four the best) but all were much the same. I also tried Titiwangsa Road which runs off the main road from beside the police station, but while there is still good forest on the uphill side, on the downhill side it is all being cleared for more building. I did see a green magpie along here though which was brilliant; the Malaysian subspecies wears a bright yellow hat! And there were a couple of fire-tufted barbets that morning as well. For the whole time I was at the Cameron Highlands I only saw 39 species of birds. Pretty lousy. My year list did tick over to 400 though, so that's something.

Most of the bird-waves were composed of mountain fulvettas, black-eared shrike-babblers, golden babblers, yellow-breasted warblers, blue-winged minlas and black-throated sunbirds, with occasional chestnut-capped laughing thrushes, little pied flycatchers and greater yellow-naped woodpeckers. The silver-eared mesias mostly kept to themselves (the Malaysian subspecies is particularly colourful I might add), as did the long-tailed sibias. Large niltavas seem to be very common – I kept seeing them everywhere I went. On the ground I saw a few streaked wren-babblers and once a male Siberian blue robin. I futilely looked out for mountain peacock-pheasants, especially on trail 4 by the watch-tower (although the watch-tower is no longer there, having fallen down!).

White-thighed langurs are pretty common up there – I saw several troops along the trails – and there were quite a few squirrels although most were too nippy to see well enough for ID. One was a slender squirrel though, and better was a three-striped ground squirrel running across a trail carrying a baby in its mouth! I tried some spot-lighting on one of the nights (the one without any rain!) and found some black-spined toads and some very cool as-yet-unidentified green frogs – almost as cool as a slow loris but not quite.

After several days of much rain and no birds I got sick of the place and caught a bus to Kuala Lumpur. There are buses leaving about every half an hour so no problems. The end destination is the Pudu Raya bus terminal in the middle of KL. Last time I was in KL (in December) I had stayed at a very good hostel called Sunshine Bedz but I wasn't staying in KL long this time – only overnight before continuing on to Singapore – so I was just going to stay next to Pudu Raya, it being where the bus to Singapore leaves from and also fairly close to the KL Bird Park. Usually if near Pudu Raya I stay at a cheap dump called the Anuja Hotel but as the bus pulled in I saw there were now a few new cleaner-looking budget hotels present as well, and so I ended up in a pretty good place called Hotel E.V. World. Because I had recently been to the Penang Bird Park and would soon be going to the Jurong Bird Park it made sense to fit the KL Bird Park in in the middle. It is easy to get to from where I was – I just got the LRT train-line to the Pasar Seni station and then walked: across the overbridge, through the KL Railway Station, round the KTM Building, past the National Mosque and then follow Jalan Perdana until you reach the bird park (and there are direction signs along Jalan Perdana so you can't get lost). It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes walk. Once there I stopped at their shop to buy a bottle of water. Four Ringgitts!! I wasn't paying four Ringgitts for a one Ringgitt bottle of water, so I just went to the ticket counter. Forty-eight Ringgitts entry!! That's seventeen NZ Dollars! I was going to be spending enough money in Singapore – because the Singapore bit is mostly a zoo bit – so I passed on the KL Bird Park. I understand Aquariums being expensive because it is expensive to run an Aquarium and they have a much more limited customer base than zoos, but a bird park should not be that expensive. For comparison, the Penang Bird Park was thirty Ringgitts and the Zoo Negara in KL (with vastly greater overhead costs) is fifty Ringgitts. I had a wander round the next-door Botanic Gardens and saw a few common birds, and then walked back to Pasar Seni. Just as I got to the station the sky burst open and it absolutely thundered down. When I got back to the hotel the streets were literally flooded. Perhaps it's just as well I didn't go into the bird park after all!

Tomorrow Singapore.

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