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Published: November 19th 2008
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After the craziness of Kuala Lumpur, we headed outside the major cities to a small city called Tana Rata, a small town in the Cameron Highlands. The Cameron Highlands is a highland region about 214 km north of Kuala Lumpur at an elevation of around 5,000 ft above sea level. This means that we are not always in a constant state of sweat and we can actually wear jeans and a sweatshirt.
The Highlands were named after William Cameron, a British colonial government surveyor who discovered the plateau during a mapping expedition in 1885. The fame of Cameron Highlands then grew during the colonial era when British planters realized the potential of its fertile mountain slopes for growing tea, then a prized commodity. Cameron Highlands is still home to many tea plantations, being Malaysia's largest tea-producing region.
We checked in to Daniel's Lodge, a backpackers with a "jungle bar" attached that has nightly bonfires. Our first night there it rained too hard to have a bonfire though so we were able to actually sleep early and try to actually get some rest after our crazy Kuala Lumpur adventures.
The next day, we booked on to a 1/2 day
tour of the city sights. A small van picked us up and took us outside Tana Rata to the country. We stopped at a Rose Garden first where they had tons and tons of jungle type flowers. Some of the prettiest roses and craziest flowers I had ever seen. There was even a flower that looked like a high heel shoe and these crazy blue called jade vines. I never thought I would actually enjoy a flower garden, but it was actually pretty cool. There was even a bunch of wannabe Disney statues everywhere around the garden.
After the Rose Garden, we went to the Strawberry Farm. The Cameron Highlands have a huge strawberry market and there are plenty of farms around. They can produce strawberries year round here because of the weather and the amount of rain they receive. Jeff even tried some chocolate covered strawberries from the local market and he said they were delicious. We got to see how they produce strawberries here. They can't just plant them in the ground because then they would receive too much rain so they have to irrigate them with a system they have. It was kind of cool to
see, but strawberries are no big deal- we have them at home.
After this, we went to the main attraction of the area- the tea plantations. We went to the Boh Tea plantation, the largest black tea manufacturer in Malaysia. The Company produces 4 million kgs of tea annually which translates to about 5.5 million cups per day. Now that is a lot of tea! We toured the factory where they showed us how they make tea. California has our wine production and the Cameron Highlands has their tea! It actually reminded me a lot of a winery tour. After this, we were able to take some photos with the rolling hills of tea trees and some workers getting the tea leaves from the plants. They only take the top leaves so the workers manually cut the tops of the plants. It must take them forever considering there are tea trees for as far as the eye can see. We even managed to try some of the tea in the tea shop. We had a good mix of traditional tea mixed with vanilla, iced peach tea and a chocolate mint teacino. All of them were amazingly delicious! I guess
if you want good tea, you go straight to the source.
After the tea plantation, we had a couple other stops on our half day tour. We to a bee farm, a local market, a butterfly farm and a Buddhist temple. We were able to avoid getting stung by bees at the bee farm and got some great local produce at the market. The sweet corn on the cob here is amazing! The butterfly farm was actually pretty cool. There was not only a huge room with tons of butterflies flying around, but also a room with tons of insects, frogs and snakes from the local forest area. There was a giant rhinoceros bug that was probably the biggest bug I've ever seen in real life. There was also a spider that was the largest spider I've ever seen. I'm not sure it got me excited about jungle trekking, instead it scared me quite a bit. I don't think I want to see these crazy things in the wild. Jeff was in heaven getting to hold all these crazy things in person. He once again was pulling out all his National Geographic knowledge. The Buddhist temple was also pretty
Love Love Love
And you thought Love Ln was the cheesiest we would get... cool, but sorry to tell you again... we are quite tired of visiting Buddhist temples. I know we should be enjoying it all, but we have seen the best temples in Tibet that nothing quite compares anymore.
The actually city of Tana Rata is really cute. It looks as if you are in a little ski town in the states. The building have V shaped rooftops and it is actually chilly so it feels nice. I never thought I would want some cold, but after sweating my brains out for four months the change is nice. The town is really tiny and you can walk everywhere. We have found some great small Indian food stands where we can get some good cheap food. It's really nice to be able to chill out with some fresh air in the wilderness for a while. We really haven't been in an area like this since Laos.
Our last day in Tana Rata, we decided to do some jungle trekking in the nearby mountains. We had heard it is best to hire a guide, but it was super expensive and after talking to a few other people who had no problems on
their own, we decided to brave the jungle on our own. We set off on Trail #7 to hike to the top of Gunung Beremban, which is at 1812 meters high. At the beginning of the trail you had to hike and push plants out of your way because it was so overgrown. We managed to actually get past all of these bushes to an actually trail. The hike up the mountain was not very fun. It was straight up hill, through the jungle, and it was raining half the time. Luckily, the trees were so thick that we didn't feel much of the rain because the canopy actually guarded us. It was still super muddy though and by the end of the day my pants and shoes were covered in mud. We reached the summit of the mountain, but it was quite disappointing and there were no views. The only reason we knew that we were at the top is because of the sign posted there. We decided to not take trail 7 back down, but instead head down trail 8 so that we could pass a waterfall on the way back to town. Trail 8 was also really
steep and slippery, but I found a great walking stick to help me a long. I called it my magic stick since it helped a lot! Unfortunately, when we were heading down a very steep area, my walking stick broke in half and I slipped down the muddy slope. Yep- leave it to me to be a klutz. I survived though and we mad it to Robinson Falls. It was a pretty cool waterfall with the water coming out of three places in the rocks. The way the water had carved the stones also looked pretty neat. We were definitely sore from a long day of hiking though, especially since we are all quite out of shape. It was a good warm up though for what is to come when we get further inland in Malaysia.
We really enjoyed the Cameron Highlands and all the outdoorsy stuff it had to offer. It was nice to be out of the cities and into the smaller areas of Malaysia. Now here we go, further into the jungle...
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Nins
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yay for scruff
andddddd GOOOOOO BEARD MONTH!