Tanah Rata, The Cameron Highlands

On Sunday I decided to head up to the cool Cameron Highlands, north of Kuala Lumpur. There wasn't too much information around for how to get here so I headed to the bus station early and got a ticket for the 9.30am bus. It was meant to be around four and a half hours to Ipoh and then another two or so hours to Tanah Rata. Things work a little slower here so I didn't actually get in to Tanah Rata until after 8.30pm. There were a few other nervous travellers around doing the same trip and they were getting quite antsy about buses not turning up and how long they were taking. My big achievement that day was using a squat toilet with my full backpack on - it is possible!

So far the bus journeys from Singapore up to here have had largely unspectacular scenery. It seems they have cut down most of the primary forest in Malaysia and replaced it with palm plantations for the lucrative palm oil industry. Its not that palms aren't attractive trees, but when that is all you see it is a bit heartbreaking when you know the beauty of old growth tropical forests.

The Cameron Highlands is a food bowl for Malaysia and grows a lot of the fruits and vegetables for the country. Driving in the other night was quite surreal. As we curved our way along the mountain roads in the dark, the sides of hills were lit by huge greenhouses with lamps over all the plants. It reminded me of that scene in ET where they construct that temporary hospital/science lab in the street and had all that plastic tubing going into the house.

The weather is noticeably cooler up here and it gets quite cold at night time. The first day I just bummed around, got a massage and wandered around town a little bit.

Today I did a tour around the countryside, visiting several places including a strawberry farm, rose garden, bee farm, tea plantation, butterfly farm and a Buddhist temple. All were quite interesting but didn't really blow my mind. It is pretty up here, that's the best part.

As in Melaka, there's pretty much three food choices - South Indian, Chinese or Malay. Today after the tour I hit a Chinese restaurant for the local specialty, Steamboat. It was an ambitious order and for about $4 I got a huge clay pot on a burner with three separate plates of ingredients to go into the soup including noodles, vegetables and various meaty and seafoody things. I made a bit of a dent in it but it really could have fed a family of four.

I'm heading to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning and the following day - Burma!