Tea. Everyone's seen it, everyone's tried it, and most people would agree that it's great. Including the Malaysians, who grow lots of tea up in the Cameron Highlands.

We arrived at the main town of Tanah Rata and were immediately struck by how much like the Lake District it is. A small town, surrounded by cloud topped hills and crammed full of coffee shops.

The other striking thing when you clambered off the bus - saying a quick prayer of thanks to the God of windy-road travel sickness for sparing you - was the temperature. It's cool enough to need blankets on the bed and hot water in the showers. It even got a bit chilly in the evening - amazing.

On our first full day we took advantage of the reduced temperature and subsequent reduced need for tissues to mop your face dry, and went hiking. Mt Brinchang's superlative is that it's the highest mountain you can drive up on Peninsular Malaysia. It wasn't that big really, but made for a jolly good walk and scramble up muddy tree roots to the top. I was pleasantly surprised to find that after months of near-professional levels of coffee-shop frequenting and hours of sitting down on different forms of transport, I can still get up a big hill in pretty good time.

After reaching the summit and climbing to the top of the little viewing tower to take some photos, we trouped down the superlative-defining road that came up on the far side of the hill. After half an hour or so of walking we were rewarded with a stunning view of tea plantations. The low tea bushes spread for miles over very rolling hillsides and made for some top notch photos.

We carried on our way and eventually arrived at the Boh tea plantation. Boh tea is an international brand incorporating various different types of speciality tea which we learnt all about in a corporate video shown in the visitor's building. Or, at least I would have learnt all about them if I hadn't fallen asleep on the sofa that someone had recklessly put out for people to sit on when watching the telly. It was interesting to find out how they harvest the tea though. They use a combination of a handheld tea-bush-top mower and some funny giant scissors to chop the fresh tops off the bushes every three weeks.

The next day we had planned to do some serious reading of the Lonely Planet guide to find out about Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam before we actually got there. To break up the work we decided to have a quick trip to a nearby butterfly park. As we waited for the bus there we had a quick look on Trip Advisor to find out more about the park, mainly to kill the time. What we found were horror stories of cruelly caged animals and thick carpets of dead butterflies, interspersed with heartfelt pleas that other tourists did not give their money to the company. Given that being surrounded by animals begging me with their eyes for freedom is not my idea of a good time, we skipped it and walked to a little waterfall instead. Though the water was a muddy brown and the scenic little bridge over the falls was falling down it was actually a really nice spot and mercifully bereft of any animal rights dilemmas.

The rest of the day was spent dutifully reading the LP, chatting to some lovely folk we met at our hostel and eating lovely food, as usual. The next day we had an early start to catch the bus for Penang Island and the city of Georgetown.