Cameron Highlands is a former British Hill station. Paul's Mum and Dad, Jean and George were here in 1995 and it was one street with one restaurant. Tanah Rata, at the heart of Cameron Highlands, has developed into a tourist hotspot for western and Malaysian tourists alike. At 1500metres above sea level, CH is cool at 25 degrees in the day and 16 degrees at night with a lovely breeze. There are tea plantations and 'pick your own' strawberry farms around. Most buildings are loosely styled around a Swiss chalet, not the best imitation! Whilst the Malaysians take their 4WD cars around to see the plantations and farms, western tourists have a go at the jungle treks. The Lonely Planet guides and local maps show 14 jungle treks that you can do, we were looking forward to a bit of exercise.
We stayed at an apartment, which we booked through Air BnB online. The apartment was a 5 minute walk from the main strip, it was at the heart of the local community and had 3 bedrooms, cable TV, two bathrooms and a fully fitted kitchen including a washing machine. All for 95 Ringgits per night £17.60. So we were able to cook our own breakfast and lunch and watch the start of the World Cup!
To be fair, you could sum up our two weeks here as lazing about and eating great food, but we did get out a bit. Paul made our breakfast every day - his speciality of French toast, with peanut butter and chocolate spread.
On our first day, we walked along the highway, south of Tanah Rata, to the Bharat tea plantation. We spotted some amazing little birds in the forest on the way. (See photos) At the tea plantation cafe, you can choose from a selection of teas and cakes and look out over the plantations. We had masala tea and fruit cakes. We then followed a path down into the tea plantations. The Malaysians walked 10 metres down into the plantation, did some selfies using their iphone/ipad with extension poles and then headed back for more tea and cakes. Unlike Munnar, India the scent of the tea bushes didn't hang in the air and the tea leaf tips were not hand picked but cut off with an electric chopping machine. Still the scenery was like a tellytubby landscape, quite beautiful for a manmade environment. Our evenings were spent eating some delicious Indian food at Restaurant Kumar, where they served up moist and spicy chicken tikka fresh from the tandoor. We also sampled chicken murtabak (a Malaysian/Indian speciality), which is like a pancake filled with chicken, onion, egg and flavoured with star anise - gorgeous! Another Malaysian speciality that we had at Uncle Chow's was Curry Laksa, a noodle soup with pieces of chicken, fish balls and tofu pieces.
We also chatted with an Indian guy at the local minimart, he was togged up in his England kit for the World Cup and had an Anfield Road sign and a 'Don't Buy the Sun' poster in his shop. He had been to England twice and had been lucky enough to see a Liverpool-Everton derby.
We decided to do jungle trek 3 up to Gunung Beramban with views across the valley. The trek started at an apartment block and it was pretty steep climbing through tree root steps. At the top, we stopped to talk to a guy from Preston with his girlfriend who lived in Borneo. They told us that some of the 14 treks were now not possible because of the development of the land into holiday apartments. Also, they said that trek 9 was a 'no go' as several people had been robbed and/or sexually assaulted at knife point by a man in a ski mask. The most worrying thing about this was that the guy had been at large for several years, he worked at weekends mainly, always on the first part of trek 9. What the hell were the local police doing to not have caught him in all that time? Later that week, we had heard that a girl had been attacked and robbed on the Saturday - another incident reported to the police with no action. Clearly no-one is really bothered about these jungle treks, soon local development and crime will have done away with all of them!
On another day we walked 5kms to Brinchang, the next tourist town in the CH area. On the way, we spotted the Smokehouse hotel, (check it out at smokehousehotel dot com) a mock tudor 'English' cottage building, built in 1937. We had heard it was quite expensive and that sometimes people were turned away if not appropriately attired. There was a guard on the entrance too. We thought that afternoon tea would be nice, albeit expensive. With the tight budget we are on, it is necessary sometimes to have a little blow out - just to treat ourselves. In for a penny, in for a pound - the afternoon tea was soon overlooked in favour of fillet steak and black pepper sauce. A bit of a heavy lunch really, but whatever. The meal came to around £36 for two steaks/sauce, veg and chips and drinks. It was a whopping 10 ounce steak, however, perfectly cooked and melt in the mouth. You would struggle to get anything like it for that price back in the UK. Take a look at the photos of the place, very strange! Brinchang, when we eventually got there, was pretty ugly and charmless, so we headed back.
Our landlady called round every other day to supply us with various offerings - mango, bananas, Chinese buns (rice pastry filled with spicy pork filling) and Zongzi (pork-stuffed sticky rice dumplings cooked in bamboo reed) to celebrate the Dragon Boat festival. We were spoilt.
We also did jungle trek 10. We had to ask for directions as the start had been redeveloped and a nearby sign for trek 11 said "Closed due to building work". We enjoyed great views at the top, once we negotiated round the electricity pylon. We heard lots of monkey noises on the way up, but didn't see any. We chatted to a couple on the way back down, who now lived in Kuching. We swapped travel stories and they told us how the area had changed in recent times. We loved our cool walks in the forest and the jungle.
All in all we loved the cool respite of the Cameron Highlands and left there a few pounds heavier and not too hopeful for the future of this pretty part of the Malaysian wilderness.