One thing you can say about the Cameron Highlands is that they are not going to have a drought anytime soon, it has rained nonstop pretty much the whole time we have been here. It is warm, about 22 degrees, but is constantly raining. Pleased to say however this hasn’t dampened our mood.
We got the bus from Ipoh without any troubles, it was a large air-conditioned coach and was only half full (or half empty depending on your outlook on life). The driver can only be described as a Malaysian Delboy – he kept stopping the coach in the middle of nowhere and collecting/dropping off parcels, all with a dollar note going in his back pocket of course. The roads were pretty twisting and turning around the mountains, we think Delboy thought he was driving a Formula 1 car rather than a coach, taking some corners a bit too eagerly and trying to overtake on blind corners. However he proved his worth as a driver in the end and we made it safe and sound, in about 2 hours.
We are staying at Tanah Rata, the largest town in the Cameron Highlands. I say ‘town’ loosely, it is a row of shops and stalls, no more than 500m top to bottom. Our hotel is nice enough, double room, kettle and tea facilities, we have even got our own bathroom (which we weren’t expecting).
Yesterday we did a hike along one of the many trails in the area, all the trails leading into the dense forest which surrounds the Cameron Highlands. The start of the trail was initially hard to find (located in someone’s back garden) and almost impossible to follow, with the GPS on my phone coming to the rescue on the final part (which was actually on the road back into Tanah Rata, so should have been the easy bit). The trail was very good, taking us about 4 hours to complete and went uphill through thick forest. We were a little scared at first after reading to watch out for leeches, snakes, spiders, leopards and even tigers! But luckily (or unluckily) we didn’t see any, just one orb spider in it’s web and a huge beetle.
Today we went on a tour which took us around the main attractions in the area. The first stop was a butterfly farm which was exactly what we expected, it had lots of butterflies but not a wide variety, and most of them were unfortunately too far away to see. The main call and the only one we were interested in was the stop at the tea plantation, it is the largest plantation in Malaysia and is owned by a company called BOH (Best Of Highlands), it was founded by a British fellow way back when and is some 1,500 acres. We took some great pictures of the plantation then had a look around the factory learning all about how tea is made. They say ignorance is bliss, which we found to be true learning about how they make the tea we drink – an unwelcome truth being that tea is graded into 4 categories, the 4th one being “dust” – which are basically the scrapings off the floor which end up in teabags! Delicious. We finished up at BOH by going all English and having tea and scones looking out over the hills.
The other stops of which there were four were quite shoddy time fillers; a bee farm which looked like someone’s back garden and the bee hives had been put together by me. A strawberry farm which did have strawberries, but I’ve seen strawberries before. A Buddhist temple which was small, and Chinese! Finally a rose garden, which we didn’t even go into.
Tomorrow we are getting the bus from here to Penang, located in the north-west of Malaysia. The bus leaves at 9:00am and takes about 5 hours. Next post should come from there.
Tanah Rata
Hike Directions
Ready to go
Helen hiking
Deep Forest
The trail
Big beetle
Spider
Plantation
Tea
Cream tea
‘bee hives’
Indian dinner