our 5 hour minibus journey to the cameron highlands was very scenic.. liking it already! though i have to wear my one jumper for the first time on my trip as its much cooler here. we decided to stay at fathers guest house as we heard it was the best one around, and we are staying in the 15 bed dorm room.. sarahs first experience of a dorm so she was pretty excited! not such a novelty for me but im glad we did as we met some lovely people who we were sharing a room with. not liking being woke up through the night from the door rattling and what sounded like an elephant stomping backwards and forwards on the ceiling, oh and some guy making strange noises in his sleep.. though that was quite funny!

on our first day we decided to do some of our own exploring by following one of the walking trails.. brave considering how we always take a wrong turn somewhere (which did happen!) the walk took us deep into the jungle. we kept hearing strange noises and were freaking each other out.. omg what the hell is that rustling sound?! a tiger? a snake? no, it was just the sound of rain on the trees! haha! we passed a waterfall which was nice, and continued climbing over and under fallen down trees ( i whacked my head on one much to sarahs amusement of how did you not see that?!) then the trail spilt in two, we thought we would take the path on the right as it looked a short cut. never does end up a short cut though does it! we had to scramble down a steep embankment which was slippery wet mud. i dont know how we didnt fall over, and ended up on someones private farmland! whoops! there was no way we could climb back up so we just casually walked through it.... until a dog went crazy at us and we ran screaming! luckily it was tied up!
we then found ourselves back onto a main road and had the bright idea of following it back to town. not so wise as it was sooooo far... too far to walk, and to make it worse it started pouring down with rain so we looked drowned. luckily one of the locals felt sorry for us and pulled over to give us a lift. he didnt look dodgy and had his son with him so we felt safe enough to get in! couldnt wait to get back and clean up... in a lovely COLD shower. great. not.

no getting lost on the second day as we took an organised tour!! it took us around all the highlights of the highlands. first stop was the boh tea plantation. very scenic and was shown the different parts of a tea leaf (im now an expert on tea production!) then onto a viewpoint for photos and a small walk through mossy trees ( bit strange, didnt see the point, only got muddy) went to the butterfly farm and saw lots of different interesting insects and insisted the guy keep the insects safely in their cages.. though he didnt listen and let loads of scorpions loose on the floor. not amused! ( yeah i know i had one on my neck, but thats one of those i'll do it once only things) also went to a a boring time tunnel thingy and a mosque. finally we went to the strawberry plantation which we had been waiting for!! we stuffed our faces with strawberries and cream which was AMAZING! very yum. cameron highlands is strawberry crazy... shops sell everything you could possibly imagine with strawberries on them... strawberry bathmats, towels, cushions, clothes, etc... and strawberry earmuffs!!!!! wow, i had to try them on and get a photo haha!

i think we had had a strawberry/sugar overload as we became very hyper when we got back to the dorm room.. couldnt stop laughing, much to the amusement of everyone else. what was in those strawberries???? you have been warned!