So after sometime away, we're back updating again. All your nagging has paid off.............and yes we are backdating these so that it follows on and makes sense! So we wave goodbye to our lovely hostel owner who even drove us to the bus station at 7am, how nice. And again we're left standing like lost sheep waiting for a bus that might come on time or might just not bother turning up at all. Fortnuately for us the bus did turn up. But not how we were hoping!!!! When we arrived in Malaysia we came in on a big super VIP bus that we thought was awesome, and then we got another one to Penang. But not so lucky now.......it was a normal boring 4-seater bus with very little leg room. Now rumour has it that all the old buses come here to die, so the buses are rather dishevelled and old. But the best bit is the amount of bends that are on the road up........4hrs of motion sickness in a moving old creaking bus, wahoo!!!!! Health and safety galore!!!!!! Luckily we'd read up about the Cameron Highlands before going so knew where we wanted to stay - so for the first time in our trip we were glad to see the usual array of vultures surrrounding the incoming buses and headed straight for the one we wanted - Fathers. A strange name you may think, and even stranger lodgings. Although there are some normal style guesthouse rooms, the majority of the accommodation is converted army barracks (guess who's idea is was to stay here?!) This was actually suprisingly good - apart from the run to the shower block in the rain. Oh yes, it really does rain all the time here - just like home! So after settling into our room and booking our tours for the next day we headed off into the town of Tanah Rata to see what it had to offer. Tea. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere! It's been a while since we booked onto an organised trip and although looking forward to the prospect of being chauffeured around all day, we were a little apprehensive about the added extras that will once again crop up. However it all started very amusingly with a rather dim couple of girls hopping on our minibus in full trekking gear. After covering themselves in mozzy spray they offered it around the bus - why do we need that to go to a tea plantation we all asked? Huh?? You guessed it, they got on the wrong bus, even though not one of us was dressed for hiking and the driver asked us all where we were going before we got on - very amusing! So our first stop was a rose garden. Hmm, an additional entrance fee and not really much fun inside - think we'll pass! Instead we wandered up to the market while everyone else went in. The theme here was suprisingly not tea, but strawberries - and not just in the food form, oh no you could buy ANYTHING you liked in the shape of a strawberry. Well it tickled us ;o) Next stop was appropriately a strawberry farm. The most intersting part of this stop was learning that they grew them off the ground so the workers don't hurt their backs picking them! We then got to visit the shop where, you guessed it, everything was strawberry flavoured or shaped! Having snubbed the rose garden we caved and bought a milkshake - a very nice one too I might add. Stop three was a butterfly farm. How on earth can we have been to two butterfly farms in under 6 weeks?!? Still, in we went and oohed and ahhed in all the right places. We did however get to see the national butterfly. In addition to butterflies there were all sorts of massive creepy crawlies and snakes. It's safe to say we both kept a safe distance from our respective fears! Our next stop was the one we'd actually been waiting for - the Boh Tea Plantation, the main draw of the Cameron Highlands. The road into the actual factory left a lot to be desired and was defintely not for the faint hearted. Very curvy with lots of blind corners - oh and only room for one car at a time! Here we got to see the process of turning tea plants into drinking tea. From here we walked through a display of the company's history, with original artwork and advertising. Then onto the cafe for a sample of the famous tea - and a scone of course! The best part of the cafe is that all the walls are glass and give an amazing view of the plantation from every angle. Back to the minibus and onto stop number five - a honey farm. Not a great deal to see here as I'm sure you can imagine! So a quick run round the gardens and onto the local market - stop number six of the day! Much the same as the one we looked around earlier. Last stop of the day was a traditional Chinese Buddhist temple. Luckily we hadn't seen one of these in a while, so wandered around quite happily! Amazingly we managed all this in half a day, so when we got back we headed out for lunch. Our restaurant of choice was a packed Indian where we feasted on a whole tray of delicious food for a ludicrously small amount of money. We shopped for the statutory tea souvenirs on the way back, and even haggled over some cardboard boxes to send them home in! A lazy night in our guesthouse's cosy tv room before an early rise to Taman Negara the following morning......