More Malaysia - The Cameron Highlands

After leaving Kuala Lumpur, we headed to our only other stop in Malaysia, a refreshingly cool and incredibly lush area known as the Cameron Highlands, about four hours north of the capital.  The area is becoming increasingly popular as an eco-focused travel destination, and it’s known for producing much of Malaysia’s best strawberries and tea – and strawberry tea!

The bus we took from Kuala Lumpur was incredibly nice, but the ride was pretty nerve-racking – on extremely narrow and incredibly curvy roads, right on the edge of the mountain.  Fortunately, our bus driver – as well as the drivers of the numerous other buses, trucks, cars, and motorcycles on the road – drove very slow and courteously, and we made it with no problem.

Our base in the Cameron Highlands was Tanah Rata, one of the main towns in the area.  It was small, but much busier and more bustling than I would have expected.  There were a lot of tourists walking around, though the vast majority of them were Asian, many from Thailand, I imagine.

Our hotel, KRS Pines, was decent but nothing special – and, at $27/night for a double, another reminder that your money just doesn’t go as far in Malaysia as in other nearby countries.  Thailand had spoiled me!

Nearly all of Tanah Rata’s restaurants (other than a very out-of-place Starbucks, the town’s only remotely Western place) served Indian cuisine – good thing Ryan and I really like our dahl and naan!  The highlight food-wise was definitely a vegetarian banana-leaf meal, consisting of rice, chickpeas, and several vegetable dishes, all served on a large banana leaf.  And the whole thing cost only $3!

We knew there were a lot of things we wanted to visit in the Highlands, and we didn’t have much time, so we opted to spend one day on a tour, which took us to several eco-tourism sites in the area.  Along with a group otherwise comprised of French and Dutch people, we started the day with a hike into a beautiful, lush jungle to get a glimpse of a rafflesia, the world’s largest flower.  The hike only took about an hour each way, but it was harder than I had anticipated, with several steep and slippery areas, as well as a couple very narrow rickety bridges.  The flower itself was unlike anything I’ve seen.  Rafflesia, which are red, are so big that it’s hard to even recognize them as flowers.  The one we saw had grown flat on the ground and was about 29 inches across, though they sometimes hang and can get up to four feet across.  In the pictures we saw afterward, the rafflesia look almost pre-historic.

We made a quick stop outside a nearby village, where our guide talked about a new government program in the area.  Traditionally, people in this part of Malaysia have lived in houses constructed from bamboo.  Recently, however, the government has started paying to build concrete houses in rural areas, so people will live in these more modern houses instead of their traditional ones.  Our guide, a native of the Highlands, was pretty upset about this initiative, both because he believes it is unnecessarily changing people’s way of living, and also because he thinks the government should be putting money toward education, healthcare, or food instead.  I know hardly anything about the government’s program or how it’s affecting people there, but it was really interesting to hear a local person’s take on it.

After an Indian lunch, we visited a tea plantation and factory and got to see how the tea grows and how it’s processed.  I don’t remember a lot of the details of processing tealeaves, but I do remember how green and hilly the plantation was, with the tea organized in chunks and growing about waist-high.

We also visited one of several strawberry farms in the Highlands.  To our surprise, the strawberries were growing not in an open field, but rather in long containers under a large tent.  We had strawberry milkshakes and strawberry muffins, and bought some strawberry tea, strawberry jam, and chocolate-strawberry candy to take with us.  All of it was delicious.

Having seen most of the “sights,” we used our second full day in Tanah Rata to do some independent exploring.  The town is essentially surrounded by jungle, which has a few not-very-well-maintained trails running through it.  We started down the trail nearest town and ended up hiking about four hours.  Because the trails loop back and forth, you can hike for quite a long time, despite the fact that none of the trails actually go that far from town.  It was a gorgeous hike, and it was nice to be out in nature on our own and completely alone.

The following morning, we were up early to begin what turned out to be a long and pretty arduous journey through northern Malaysia, across the Thai border, up the Gulf coast, and out to the island of Koh Tao, our next destination.