21st - 23rd July - Cameron Highlands

Since you have all been having so much rain at home we decided to go to the Cameron Highlands next and sympathise with you.....but only for a few days mind!

The Cameron Highlands is Malaysia's most extensive hill station and has an altitude od 1300m to 1829m. The Cameron Highlans is a vast area of rolling green hills, tea plantations and forests stretching along the road.

The Cameron Highlands takes its name from William Cameron, the surveyor who mapped the area in 1885. He was soon followed by tea planters, Chinese vegetable farmers and wealthy colonialists seeking a cool escape from the heat of the lowlandsas the temperature ranges from 10 degress to 21. Therefore with all the rain and mist etc the land is fertile for growing strawberries, flowers and many vegetables.

This place was my idea as Ive always wanted to come here...plus you quessed it they make excellent tea and scones with jam and cream! (an i wonder why i have put on so much weight!)

We set off from Penang at 3pm and arrived in the dizzy, misty, rainy heights of the Cameron Highlans at around 10pm/ We were not suitably dressed the entire time we were here! I have one fleece top and two pairs of trousers and Simon has similar so we wore the same clothes for nearly 3 days and were constatnly cold and wet! We were definitely sympathising with you all at home as it did not stop raining the whole time we were there and what with all the colonial buildings we really did fell like we were back home.

We checked into our gueshouse, had a wander round and had an early night. The next day we visited a Strawberry Farm and picked our own strawberries then sat down and ate them. Si pointed ou we could have easily have done this in Eastham! We then went for a walk through the highlands in the rain and stubled in the mist upon Ye Old Smokehouse. It looked like it had been lifted straight from deepest Surrey complete with a Red British phone box outside. It had a typical English garden while indoors the exposed beams and open fireplaces and chintsy decor completed the picture. It of course sols English food and Devonshire Cream teas so we felt obliged to sample one whilst sitting in the conservatory watching the rain and grey skies, we thought it was very fitting for our surroundings.

Tha tnight we went to a Chinese restaurant as I wanted Si to try a steamboat. You get a steamboat of either herbal soup or half chicken half tom yam soup all boiling away. You then get all the raw food on plates, you then pick what you want to eat and place it in the steamboat for 2 minutes, it will then beready to eat. You get tons of food for 2 pounds each such as chicken, beef, fish cutlets, prawns, squid, wantons, 2 types of noodles and 6 types of veg etc. God we were stuffed! We rounded the night off in a bar showing the Queens jubilee concert, they love anyhting English!

The next morning we were picked up early for our half day countryside tour and yes it was still raining! We visited yet another temple, The rose gardens, the Butterfly farm which was home to many tropical butterflies including the rare raja brooke, it also had all sorts of beetles and scorpians. We also visited a Honey Bee farm, market square and the Raju's Strawberry Farm where we had a strawberry shake (you can get anything here with strawberries in it!) and we ended up buying some homemade strawberry jam!

We also visited the most famous tea plantation the BOH Tea Estate, you can see from the photos how vast and beautiful it is. I think there is aphoto of us in the plantation. (Si does the photos i do the journal blogs)

That afternoon we managed to get one more cream tea in as we wrote our postcards home as it was going to be our last, as we were due to leave all the rai nand mist behind for the beaches again the following day! We didn't last long did we?

That night we had a Banana leaf, again another meal we ate regularly when we lived here. There is a photo of it, your plate is a banana leaf and you are served little dolups of curry etc all along the leaf to eat, again we throughly enjoyed it! Malaysia so far had been all about food hasn't it?

so next stop Perhentian Islands! xxxx