Cameron highlands

Be warned this blog entry won't be pretty. I accept that not all places will be to our liking...... Yep you've guessed it this wasn't!!

After leaving Melaka we were looking forward to cooler weather and some different scenery.... When I say cooler I mean cooler not freezing English type weather! Anyway before I start ranting about the place I will update you on our travel to the Cameron highlands.

We left Melaka early on Friday excited to be moving on again, we had been finding it hard since leaving Hollie and Cat in Singapore. I think it had been such a great week that anywhere else would have a hard time living up to it.

We hopped on the bus and settled in for our 4 our journey...... Some time later we arrived at our dropping off point (6 hours later to be precise)

We had been told that from here we could quite easily pick up a bus to the Cameron highlands and it would take an hour to get there. We started asking around and everyone kept saying no buses to the highlands after 3pm ( great we are stuck in a small town without another tourist insight) after a bit more walking and asking we found a restaurant who were able to arrange a bus for us. We sat on a bench until 4.45 waiting and waiting..... Judging by the restaurant I didn't have much hope for a decent bus I was expecting a run down rust bucket with 4 wheels, well what turned up was a 5 star luxury coach with air con and leather chairs that reclined, pure luxury!! Ed and I didn't look like their normal clientele.

Anyway we made our relaxing journey to our destination, so what it took 2 hours instead of 1 hour and there was someone snoring loudly, we were just enjoying the luxury for a change.

We passed through a town call Ringlet which looked basic and slightly run down however the scenery around it made up for it. We soon arrived at our stop and jumped off with excitement woo hoo we had made it......then it hit us...... It was freezing, we were stood by the road in our flip flops, shorts and T-shirts.

We quickly grabbed our stuff and started our walk to our hostel. We spotted a couple of signs for the two sister hostels that we were booked into, the first one we arrived at was not the one we were booked into. It had a tin roof and looked very run down, we kept on walking up a incline to be faced with a pink building with neon lights... Yep this was us our hostel.

It looked run down and grotty from the outside however I knew not to judge until we checked the rooms out. The rooms were basic but clean and the shower faculties seemed to be in the same condition, we could live with this for 5 nights no problem. After assessing the room I was keen to put some warm clothes on... Bearing in mind that I only have hot weather clothing I was not very well equipped unlike Ed who had hoody, jeans and trainers. I ended up in leggings under linen trouser, socks, my 'once were white pumps now brown and grubby pumps', vest top, long sleeve top and cardigan and I was still cold. Bedtime was a whole other matter!!!

Everything looked ok in the dark and we were so tired that we had dinner and went straight to bed.

We awoke the next morning and decided to start looking into things to do as our guide books and said there were all matter of things to entertain us.......... They were wrong!! Get ready, my rant is coming.......... If you like garden centres, cactus centres, rose centres and strawberry farms then this is right up your street!! Tour operators offering days out visiting the above "attractions" apart from the above there wasn't anything to do. The highlight was the tea plantation we went to.

We tried to embrace it as we had 5 nights booked, so we went to a strawberry farm which in fact was another garden centre in the middle of a town, I enjoyed a cream tea(not to Devonshire standard!) and Ed over indulged in strawberry smoothy and strawberry, honey and yogurt which admittedly was rather tasty. There was absolutely nothing to do apart from trying to keep warm.

Our 2nd night at the hotel wasn't as great as the first, we were still awake at 4am due to the noise. Someone was snoring next door so loudly it kept us awake, luckily we found our ear plugs from the grand-prix and made good use of them. Ed got us moved the next morning, a slight upgrade on our other room. We cancelled one night so it meant we only had to try and occupy ourselves for another few days, easier said then done.

For the first time on our trip I have really disliked a place, we are starting to see more and more often that our guide books are so wrong about things..... Maybe we should have burnt them to keep warm ;0)

Friday couldn't come quick enough it was so boring and cold, we were happy to be getting on our next bus to Georgetown. Another step closer to Thailand!