Cameron Highlands

Next on the circuit came the Cameron Highlands. The Cameron Highlands are, unsurprisingly, the Mountainous region of Malaysia. It was the last part of the country to be opened up to tourists, finally being wrestled free from communist control as late as 1989. The slopes are host to hundreds of tea plantations and other fruit orchards which thrive on the cooler slopes, particularly strawberries. The place is strawberry daft. It seems every shop in the Highlands has a giant smiling strawberry painted on it and everyone has some form of processed strawberry to sell, whether its dried, glaced, smoothied, ice-creamed, syruped, jammed, lollipopped, chocolate coated, skewered or a combination of the above. It was even possible, if you looked deep enough to find strawberries that were fresh! Once you've eaten your way through the crop, and washed it down with a cup of strawberry tea, there's strawberry cushions and everything else you can imagine too, to take home with you afterwards.

There were plenty of tea plantations too, that were happy to let you stroll through the grounds, and if you did it discreetly, pick a leaf or two to sniff. They really smell like tea but don't quite match a good brew in the taste test - guess all that processing has some effect after all.

After taking in the local industry, the Cameron Highlands next main attraction is hiking. There are plenty of footpaths and trails that lead up slopes, through forests and around and about. We dutifully explored a few of these, taking as much care as possible to set off in the heat of day and get lost at times when it would maximise our exhaustion. For getting lost, we have the map to blame. There is a published map that every shop sells and every tourist buys and it is completely useless. What also contributed to the confusion was the fact that a lot of the paths actually lead you past the side of someone's house, and in more than one occasion through their back garden/allotment. This is probably because people's houses and farm land just sort of spread out and about without any real regard for permission or planning or land ownership so where a trail maybe once weaved through a field, it's now surrounded by shelters and hoses and plants and such like. As it was though, no one seemed to mind us pushing past their smalls as they hung out drying.

The Cameron Highlands, although a large area geographically, consists of just a couple of small towns really. The rest of the area is agricultural or jungle with farmers or peasants living in very rural villages, where the communities live together in a handful of largish wicker and rattan sheds. These community houses are usually built on stilts because of the monsoon rain that washes down the hill slopes. These villages are invisible to the tourist's eye as they do not lie on the road. The best clue to their existence is the occasional person who seems to be standing in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bus to come past. The poverty visible in these communities, who live by means of subsistence was all the more startling when taken into consideration that Kuala Lumpur was only two hours down the road, where people live almost entirely within Western Standards.

Nic and I stayed in a backpacking guest house in the town of Tanah Rata. This is the town where most people come to and as such is well prepared for tourists, comparatively. We had shared the hired car up the road with my parents who were staying in a much nicer hotel on the other side of town. As we had the car this meant there was no problem in getting around and spending time together. The car also meant it was much easier getting up to the Highlands as the buses, which are not comfortable, quiet or safe, race around the roads as though the driver is penalised for every minute it takes to make the trip. It took about four hours in the car driving from Lumut to get to the Highlands, a feet that would have been a nightmare on the bus. The roads, are of a decent standard in terms of being sealed tarmac but the route they ply is utterly horrific. At no point did our car reach more than 40kph as twist after bend kept your foot mostly over the break. Road kill was exotic, with big lizards about two foot long (more if you included the entrails) and snakes lying victim to the less than admiral driving standards of most of Malaysia.

We spent about a week in the Cameron Highlands before returning to KL briefly, to return the car and launch ourselves up the East coast of the country, where we would rendezvous once more with my parents for a few days before they would head home and we would continue our adventure solo.