Cameron Highlands, Malaysia - 2007

Hi everyone

After a few beautiful, relaxing days in the Perhentian Islands, Erik and I headed to the Cameron Highlands. After leaving the chalets, we boarded a boat taxi to the mainland and then took a minibus from there. On the bus, we met Helen and Melanie, two very friendly South African girls who now work as physiotherapists in London. The 6 hour drive to the Highlands seemed very short as we chatted with them the whole trip. Once there we checked in to the Cameron Inn, drank beer and relaxed for the rest of the night.

The following morning Erik and I took a trekking tour around the highlands with a tour guide that asked us to call him “Money” since is real name was too hard to pronounce. Money is 52 years old and lived his whole life in the Cameron Highlands. He’s worked several jobs all over the area and was very knowledgeable. He took us to a local tea plantation and explained how the workers pick the tea leaves. The many plantations in the area are a key source for the local economy. Money then took us trekking through the jungle where he showed us some very cool plants and we even got to climb a tree vine that looked like a gym rope. This guy knew every plants name and he had the sense of smell like a dog. He would just smell an area of the jungle and would find a particular plant that he wanted to show us. He then brought us to a strawberry farm (also a source of the local economy) where we had sundays and local jam. Our last stop on the tour was a butterfly farm where we got a chance to see thousands of butterflies, snakes, turtles, scorpions and a variety of weird insects. We then headed to back to the hostel and just relaxed and chatted the rest of the night with our new South African friends.

The next day we just relaxed and walked around to explore the town. Afterwards, we then took a bus to our next destination: Kuala Lumpur. The bus driver was a crazy person that was screaming and honking at everyone on the road. Also the road was on the edge of a cliff and not very straight. The driver was taking the corners pretty damn fast so sleeping on the way to KL was out of the question.

I’ll talk about KL in the next post.

Take care,

Jason