The Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

After leaving Melaka we caught a bus back to Kuala Lampur, then another one to the Cameron Highlands so it was a long travel day. We asked for the Express bus which we supposedly caught but the driver seemed to stop in random places along the way. Here he is stopping to pick up flowers from the back of a car. I saw the driver give him some money so I think he was doing deliveries on the side!

Once we turned off the main highway we kept going higher and higher on an increasingly crooked road, but the scenery was beautiful as we went along...

We passed many little clusters of houses on the side of the road that looked rather shoddily built...

We arrived six hours later at a town called Tanah Rata which is one of the two major towns in the area. Interestingly enough a lot of the buildings were white and black and gave the feel of a British town. 

The oldest hotel here is the Smokehouse which was built in 1930 by the British...

We stayed in a development just above the town in an apartment with three young women, two from Belgium and one from Germany. Here is our apartment building...

 

The British feel to the place is due to their influence as this area after being discovered by surveyor William Cameron in 1885 was settled by them in 1920s when they established a hilltop town and called it the Cameron Highlands.

This area is quite high being over 5000 ft above sea level so with the mild temperatures, sun and rain the first tea plantation was established in 1929 and now the area is known for its tea production.

We only had a couple of days here so we hired a guide for a day to tour around the area. It was a rainy day so not the most pleasant for touring but we made the best of it.

We visited a Buddhist temple which belonged to the large Chinese population who came after the British and own many farms producing vegetables and flowers.

There were many fierce looking Buddhas... 

Don covers all of his bases...

Though if he wished for sun it didn't work!

One interesting fact in the next picture is an area where once people are cremated and have no family the temple keeps them in these urns with their pictures on them...

The temple was getting ready for Chinese New Year so they had lots of flowers and plants for the celebration...

The Highlands don't have wild animals but they have lots of interesting insects, this one is called the leaf insect and you can see why...

Also beautiful butterflies...

And big beetles that like to eat sugar cane...

Also everywhere you look there are beautiful flowers...

One of the highlights of the day was our visit to the tea plantation which is 600 acres and started by a Scottish family which still owns it today.

The fields are so green and manicured as the process of growing tea requires continual pruning to ensure the plants grow low and bushy to produce more leaves. 

We stopped to walk through the fields and came across some workers mostly from India who come on two or three year contracts and are paid 25 cents a day! 

Us in the fields...

In this picture you can see some of the ladies who pick by hand and ensure higher quality which results in a better price than leaves harvested by machines...

Here is a picture of the workers' camps...

And this was one of my favourite pictures of the day...a lone workers cabin surrounded by the lushness of the area...

We also visited the tea factory where the tea is processed and sorted depending on grade. The tea in this area is mostly consumed locally and is not of a high quality because it is harvested by machine and not by hand....

The tea plantation also has a neat tea room built out over the fields where we stopped for tea and treats...

The view from there...

We decided even though it was rainy to go to the top of the second highest mountain to see if there was a view, we climbed this tower but all we saw was cloud...

The top of the mountain is surrounded by the Mossy Forest, an old growth cloud forest which is a protected area that is being destroyed by the locals and therefore not readily accessible anymore. Our guide however had his own secret pathway in so being wet we decided to now get muddy!

At its peak condition all the surfaces are covered by moss but this day everything was slippery and muddy, we climbed up and down, hung on ropes and slipped our way through the undergrowth. However with the rain it was still quite beautiful...

The guys said the forest in the movie Avatar was fashioned after this place, who knows?

Us half way through...

We were interested in these flowers that they call pitcher plants which are very similar to ours at home except bigger and grow on trees, same principle though in that they open and catch insects.

This area is called the green basket of Malaysia because it produces lots of vegetables and is also well known for its strawberries. We visited some green houses and saw that most of them were growing hydrophonically...

Another interesting fact about the Cameron Highlands is that they have one of the largest concentration of Land Rovers in the world, over 2000 just in this small area. They were introduced by the British and were ideal for the terrain here. We spent the day in a 1980 model that still had all the original parts. Here is a picture of Don and Mike, our guide, who really knew how to drive that thing!

They are also quite cheap here about half the price they would be in Canada...

 

Some sights around the town...

On the way to school...

Enjoying a coffee, Starbucks are everywhere in Malaysia, from the smallest town to every corner in the larger cities!

One of the advantages to living in such a fertile area!

Finally what did we eat? Well here most of the food is either Indian or Chinese and sometimes it looks like Chinese and tastes like Indian!

Our most interesting meal was called Steamboat where they place a burner on your table with a large pot of broth, one side being chicken and the other being hot and sour. Then they bring out a platter of food like the one below, don't ask what it all was! With two types of noodles and two eggs we throw it all in and then wait for it to cook.

Enjoying the delicious results!

And that's it from another beautiful spot in Malaysia! The Cameron Highlands were completely different from any other area we have visited so far and even though the weather wasn't the greatest we enjoyed the cooler weather. Now off to our last stop in Malaysia.