This one goes out to Garfer, who I know is up there in some highlands himself...
Sniff that tea, it smell good, ja?
Today we will start by talking about The Cameron Highlands which is in the middle and up a bit of Malaysia (ignore Borneo for a minute). It's a lot cooler than the rest of Malaysia which is mostly hot and humid (baby).
The most interesting thing about this place is that they make tea here and it's very much like where I was brought up - Great Malvern, Worcestershire, in the sense that they are both hilly, green, boring and wet.
No one makes tea in Malvern, well, obviously loads of people make tea, but not many people grow it - you know what I mean. They mostly make old people and frustrated kids in Malvern and the occasional Morgan motor car, which is like a normal car only a lot shitter, massively over-priced and that's all there is to them.
They also have water in Malvern, which is now owned by Coke.
We visted the 'Boh' tea plantation, as in; "I've dropped my tea, b'oh!". The plantation was nice. Had a tour of the factory which took literally about 2 minutes.
"Here we shred the tea leaf, here we put them in tiny bags..."
Malvern, in Malaysia... with tea plants and a bit of sun.
We stayed in the Cameron Highlands much longer than we really needed to, we stayed 3 nights when about 45 minutes would have been plenty of time.
Tana Rata which is the main town *cough* in the Cameron Highlands has a new Starbucks with great free internet and compfy sofas, y'know just like all Starbucks have - except this one was empty most of the time, presumeably because a cup of tea and a muffin costs about as much as an average months pay in Malaysia. Which is a shame for them but great for us as we didn't have to fight students and fucking mothers meetings to get a sofa and a plug socket.
Our hotel was a depressing mock-ye olde England with horse brasses and tudory exterior - like all the really shitty pubs in the UK. It was also very damp - my rucksack now weighs about four times as much as it did when I arrived.
Before this we were at Taman Negara which is a massive national park. It was shockingly hot and humid (quite moist), packed with critters and very hazardous to my health. In the space of an hour I got savaged by mozzies (again), cut my face almost taking out my eye on a branch on a trail and almost sucked to death by leeches that had found their way into my shoes (like a fuckwit I didn't wear socks) giving my multiple nasty sucks. I lost almost a pint of blood to all the fucking insects in Taman Negara, and that's almost an arm full.
The 'kinda' highlight was a river boat trip to Lata Burkha, a waterfall about an hour from the main resort compound. The river trip was great, almost got murdered by a harmless bright green snake (looked well plastic) however the waterfall was shite, I've seen better waterfalls when filling a bath.
Jungles are bastards... also, I appear to be pulling a chimp face.
Interestingly or not, Taman Negara was chocka with German coach trip tourists, which my girlfriends assures me makes me racist for noticing.
Jumping back to the Highlands - we finally left there this morning, thank gawd.
I am now in a much fancy Ye Olde style hotel in a place called Bukit Fraser (Fraser's Hill) which is another Englishy get away located way up in another set of highlands, but much closer to Kuala Lumpur.
Our room is massive; we decided to go for the best suite here which is not damp, has it's own heater, jucuzzi (I know!) little lounge area and four poster bed. Best of all the bathroom is decent, with said jucuzzi, his and her sinks, big shower and best of all, comfortable clean trustworthy toilet.
The food here is dead bland; no asian food on the menu at all. Tonight I will be dining on roast beef, yorkshire puds and roast potatos, which I have to admit I have been craving...
Fuck off I'm English, I can't help it.
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