Cameron Highlands
Cameron Highlands is located in the centre of Malaysia, its altitude is around 1500 metres above sea level which means it has a significantly cooler weather than other parts of Malaysia. During the British colonial times the region was first used to grow tea, fruit and vegetables, and was also a popular retreat for the rich to have a break from the oppressive heat elsewhere in the country…end of geography lesson.
The reasons for the visitors in the middle of the last century were the same things that attracted us; coolness, fruit and tea. The first was achieved as soon as we disembarked our supposedly VIP bus, the temperature was only in the low twenties. The hostel we had chosen on the recommendation of Matt and Emily was really good and what lay in front of us was three really pleasant days.
The first day we set off on a hike up a nearby hill and down into the next village. We had been warned that some of the paths are not that easy to follow and were told various scare stories about people disappearing into the dense jungle. The walk we took was spectacular and at times was through really dense jungle. We managed to keep mostly to the correct path and reappeared into civilisation more or less where we were supposed to.
We continued our walk to various strawberry farms to test the excellent produce in various forms before taking a much more straightforward path back to the hostel, for a fine evening meal of mutton curry with roti cooked by a chef in a circa 1988 Wimbledon FC shirt.
With the strawberries taken care of, we spent the next day in search of tea. We took another jungle path this time to the Boh tea estate. The walk took us past a number of fairly unimpressive waterfalls before we were forced to scramble over a section of the walk that had some time ago been submerged by a landslip. According to Lonely Planet we then had just a breezy 45 minute walk along a lane to the tea plantation. This advice turned out to slightly undercooked, so you can imagine we were gasping for our tea when we arrived 90 minutes later.
The size of the tea estate and how it was laid out on both sides of a valley was really impressive and picturesque. It felt almost like we were walking into a different era. The tea factory and machinery were from the 1930s and were equally impressive.
The tea tasted great as did the food which included scones and jam. Refuelled we then embarked on the identical walk home. Having spent the last three weeks in Thailand's and Malaysia's rainy season and having avoided the occasional heavy shower that passed by, our luck finally ran out. It began to tip it down and continued for the whole three hours of our walk back. The walk over the land slip section was pretty slippy which made progress slow and our thoughts that the heavy jungle canopy may protect us were a bit was fanciful. However, the waterfalls were really impressive on the way back.
Our final day was spent relaxing and drying our clothes and shoes. We briefly went to a local market and purchased more fruit which we spent the afternoon working our way through.
With our vitamin C levels at a trip high we now head to Taman Negara National Park.