We arrived at our “hotel” with what can only be described as shock and horror….the place looked like it had been transported from Beirut but without the bullet holes. By far the worst place we have stayed so far this trip. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t mind slumming it when we have to but we don’t expect to have to pay a premium price for it. Our room consisted only of a very manky looking bed, with no other mod cons and no windows, instead just some dirty slatted glass covering a hole in the wall. To top this off the place looked like it had never been cleaned. We dumped our stuff (very reluctantly I might add as neither of us wanted to put anything down on that carpet except flee powder) and went for a walk to assess the place and hopefully find more joy in the town itself. After 5 minutes of walking we had pretty much covered it and realised that three nights here was going to be a challenge.
It took about a 30 second discussion to reduce our stay to two nights giving us one day to at least visit some of the jungle that this area is famous for. The guide book which has been our trusty bible whilst travelling so far had started to let us down, promoting places and suggesting that there is much more to do than there actually is. This we think is partly due to Malaysia not really being set up for anything other than holiday resorts where you sit by the pool, eat, then fly home (I know, that sounds your idea of a holiday too).
After something to eat and nothing else to do we had no option but to go back to the room from hell and try to settle down for the night. After about 20 minutes, lying on top of the covers on the bed both wrapped tightly in our sleeping bag liners in an attempt to protect ourselves from bed bugs, the noise started. The high street became after dark a race track for the local youff (youth for those not down with the kids) and their modified cars. Up and down the street they went drag racing each other with their popping exhausts and burning tyres. This lasted until 1am, during which time Emma and I had numerous conversations about wanting to shove potatoes in the exhaust pipes both on the car and the youff! We heard loads of sirens but non seemed to come to the aid of the town. This place is certainly leaving a lasting impression on us, just not a good one.
So with our one day to explore we embarked on a half day tour in a 4x4 to take us for some trekking, to see a tea plantation and a strawberry farm (yeah, we thought the strawberry farm sounded lame too). Our tour guide drove a long wheelbase Land Rover with cow horns attached to the front and he wore a leather Stetson. Bal was Indian by decent and had spent all his life in the Cameron Highlands. As the only guests on the tour it meant he could pretty much cater it to what ever we wanted. First stop was climbing the highest mountain in this region at 2100m (when I say climb I mean that he drove us to the top in the 4x4). On reaching the peak, there was a radio repeater station and a viewing platform which you could climb to get amazing panoramas of valleys and jungle clad mountains (yes before you ask, we did get our lazy behinds out of the 4x4 to do this).
Next was a walkway into the jungle. Bal told us that this part of the jungle was around 150 million years old and along with the Taman Negara jungle that is further east, it is some of the oldest jungle on the planet. At the end of the walkway the path turned to mud and descended much deeper into the jungle. Given the choice to stop and return or get a bit dirty we jumped into the jungle for something a little more adventurous. Its one of the many environments I have always wanted to visit to see what it would be like to walk in such an alien and difficult environment. Due to the many tree roots and wet areas filling in the low lying ground, progress was difficult and slow and very different to hiking up a mountain. Then there was the heat. Even with the tree canopy blocking out most of the sun light the heat and humidity was oppressive, making you very sweaty from the exertion. I can imagine it being extremely challenging spending any sort of time in this type of place. We were both glad we saw it but neither of us will be booking on to a week long jungle trek anytime soon.
Due to the high altitude and temperate weather in this part of Malaysia it is also the producer for many Asian supermarkets for strawberries, flowers, vegetables and tea. The tea plantation that we visited was first cultivated in the area by a Scotsman in the 1920s and they are still producing from the same tea trees that were first planted. There was a ultramodern visitors centre where you could see how the tea was processed from being freshly picked to ready to sell (just takes a mere 5 hours from start to finish) and also a little shop and café where you could sample the tea and taste how proper tea should taste.
The tour was free (a word that has been missing from most of this trip so far) and was guided by a very enthusiastic tea fanatic. As he explained the process and what we were looking at he asked questions about how we took our tea in our respective countries. Already knowing the answer, he would ridicule you and tell you how you should make a good “brew”. A nice guy who loved what he did and wanted to pass on his knowledge without anything in return. His enthusiasm rubbed off on us and we purchased our first souvenir to send home….some authentic loose tea leaves and we also had a cuppa in the café!
It’s a shame about the Cameron Highlands because it was such a beautiful place and had so much potential to keep you busy for ages, but after a day we had pretty much done it. As Bal said to us, the Malaysians just don’t do outdoors and certainly not walking (unless it was around a shopping mall he joked).
Hoping for more to do at the next place we booked a 6:00am bus transfer to Georgetown in Penang, an island just off the west coast.
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