The Cameron Highlands are in the middle of the peninsula of Malaysia and are renowned for their beautiful rainforests and their tea plantations. We stopped by to give our livers a break from the local beer and try the elixir of life in these parts - a nice cup of tea. The tea plantations cover tens of thousands of acres and look like an intricate jigsaw puzzle spread across the rolling lush green hills. In the distance we could see some people meandering between the bushes to pick the choicest leaves, which they do every 7-10 days, each person picking an incredible 200kg's per day. As far as we could see there was little mechanisation for this process - back breaking work done by hand. We were also able to tour the processing factory, which was a little more advanced (with emphasis on the word little). The leaves being crushed, dired and sorted into various grades of tea, for commercial sale, over the space of the day. We even had a lesson on the correct way to make a good cup of tea and Carol will ensure that Chris practices this when we get home. As we are back in the hills, the temperature here has dropped significantly but mopst dramatically the rainy season is still in evidence. We sat on the verandha of our hotel watching the most amazing thunder storms that poured a months worth of rain in the space of an hour. Landslides seem to be a common occurrence up here which put us off walking in the forests and I am not sure whether it was reassuring or not that all the roadworks in the area seemed to focus on shoring up the mountain sides to keep the road from washing away. All that said it has been nice to have a few days out of the searing heat but we feel in need of a little more R&R so are off to experience island life further north on Lankawi.