Cooling off in the Highlands

Five hours later and after a very hairy bus ride from Tapah up a narrow, hairpin-highway we made it to the Cameron Highlands main town of Tanah Rata. When I say hairy, I mean scary. Beth and I sat at the front of the bus – it was a nice bus with a huge front window that provided great views of the countryside. But when we started weaving back and forth up the side of the mountains, often times looking directly out and down the front of the window we couldn’t say the ground. It wasn’t as terrifying as a flight we would take a couple of months later in Myanmar, but it was pretty bad.

Tanah Rata wthe definition of sleepy, and with great food, cool weather, great accommodations and fair bit to do, we didn’t meet anyone who stayed as few days as they had originally planned. Like us (we ended up staying there for four nights), most people extended their day. We had heard a lot of good things about the Cameronian Holiday Inn from other traveler’s notes in the travelogues in Penang, and we had thus made a reservation. We were lucky, others were turned away that night.

The Cameronian was run by a Tamil family, mainly Ganesh, the father. They’d owned the place for about two years and seemed to really take pride in their place. Everything ran on the honour system and you were billed at checkout. Ganesh was looking to improve too – including access to the Internet and email, a new TV room and an improved library, but the two best things there were the hot water and the common room. You needed the hot showers after long hours of jungle trekking, and the common room was a great place for meeting the other guests and picking their brains – some common rooms worked this way, most didn’t.

After a great night’s sleep and a few hot showers, we were off to trek in the jungle. There were a dozen trails in the highlands, and as we had heard a lot, they were not well marked which could cause panic among the weak hearted tourists. We had no problems. We set off in the morning for trek #9 and #9a which were quite easy. The walk was gently sloping down through dense jungle consisting of palms and very tall trees. The wildlife was limited to birds and butterflies, but the sounds of the jungle were awesome. After about an hour and half, we came to the end of the trail. A small road went to the main road in one direction and one of the Boh tea plantaions the other way. We decided to walk the 5km up the winding road and were glad we did. The tea plantation was truly breathtaking. At the top, we relaxed and had some iced tea and the snacks we had brought – luckily we did bring something to eat as there wasn’t a whole lot to eat there! We then took a free tour of the place and watched a video which pretty much told us everything we wanted to know about tea, and a whole lot more. We managed to hitchhike down the road to the main road as there weren’t too many other options, and from there we caught another ride up the steep winding 9km road back to Tanah Rata. Beth suggested walking back, but we were really glad we thumbed it. We saw another couple walking up the road several days later, and they did not look happy at all!

For more of a challenge, we tried treks #5, #3 and #2 a couple of days later and they were indeed more difficult, as well as harder to follow. #5 starts out similar to #7 and #8 – a fairly steep, uphill walk that would quickly leave you out of breath and drenched in sweat. #3 and later #2 were much more up and down, to the point of having to use your hands to climb and descend, and the walk was quite a workout for the legs and lungs.

Unfortunately, and I’ll explain why soon, we had hooked up with three Canadians, two of which were very hard to handle (the other one, Heather, looked just as frustrated with her two friends). One of them had come the day before and spent the day crying in her room due to the “frightening” drive up and the terrible rooms at the Inn – she had been staying in resorts for the last 10 days, so you could just imagine her on a jungle trek. The other one was a “doubter”, constantly questioning whether we were on the right trail, and suggesting we turn back, which set off the worry wart. However, we did make it through in about three hours of non-stop hiking at a pretty brisk pace. We emerged on the backyard of a famous house. We promptly split up, and Beth and I hitched back to Tanah Rata. As for other treks, #4 was supposedly paved and took 20 minutes, #10 was difficult to follow and apparently #11 was cut off due to construction.

Ganeesh had one of just two motorbikes for rent in town and gave it to us for 25MR. When you bought the cheesy 2 ringgit tourist maps they had in town, it looked like there was plenty to do – market, strawberry and cactus farms, a butterfly park, a bee aviary and the tea estates (sounds exciting, doesn’t it?) and the colourful maps were probably why people took the “8 point tours” (15MR/3 hours) that they offered in town. But after seeing some of the stuff ourselves on the motorbike (yes “on” – we never got off the bike for most things) we were glad we didn’t take the tour. We ended up driving up the main road, past Brinchang and up to the other Boh Tea. This plantation was bigger and I thought a little better than the first. Later, we drove up Mount Brinchang, the tallest mountain in the. At the top, we learned how to properly dismount from a motorbike – the left – as Beth got off on the right and severely burnt her leg on the exhaust pipe. (Note: I just checked – it has disappeared, so I’m off the hook for that one!!).

The view from the observation tower was great. On our way back to Tanah Ratah, we went by the Orang Asli (native) village, which was worth a quick look.

The food in Tanah Rata is excellent – a great mix of Indian, Malay and Chinese. The excellent food center was good for breakfast, some Western food and their fruit juices. We also tried the claypot rice at No. 14, which was hit and miss (mine was great; Beth’s was oily with huge chunks of ginger). The best Indian place, by far, was located in the new buildings off the main road on the the way to the Cameronian - it was between the billiards hall and the laundry service (which, by the way, was excellent – 5kg for 5 ringgit, done the same day and, as usual, everything was ironed – Beth and I even washed our clean clothes there just for the ironed effect!), and it had great vegetarian or meat sets, and amazing tosai (or dosai, dosa). A tosai is a potato pastry that looks like a thin pancake, and usually comes with different sauces and dahl (lentil soup/sauce) and you could usually get it stuffed with something, the best being spicy marsala potatoes and veggies. We didn’t try the “famous” steamboat, a kind of do-it-yourself seafood fondu, as we had heard a lot of negative reviews. One day, we went to Brinchang to Shre’s Curry House, which came highly recommended from some people who had written in the travelogues at the Cameronioan, but it was crap – expensive, oily, small portions – although the lassi (yoghurt drink) was decent.