Tanah Rata: Day 2

The adventure tour guide showed up half an hour late this morning, leaving me sitting in front of the Cameronian Inn to soak in the crisp mountain air. It wasn’t really much of an issue because I had preoccupied myself with a tiny snail slowly making its way across the patio. I named him “Put Put” because of the dotted trails he left behind.


When the rickety Land Rover finally pulled up, I moved Put Put over to the side so nobody would step on him. Godspeed, little guy.

Our first stop was a brief visit to the Boh Tea Plantation, higher up in the mountain. It is, apparently, the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia. Nothing too exciting here except for a nice view and a good cuppa & curry puff. It was good to relax a bit before our long trek into the jungle.



I admit, when I signed up for this, I didn’t really expect the adventure to be all that much of, well, an adventure. I just figured they’d cart us to a bunch of tourist traps, followed by the associated gift shops. The guide takes a cut of the profits, we come out with cameras full of photos and stories to tell the kids, everybody wins. Seeing the jeep packed with Japanese senior citizens reassured me of this.

Our surprise came when the Land Rover turned off into a steep and muddy dirt track, barely wide enough to allow safe passage. We didn’t have time to worry about sliding off the cliffs (which we almost did a couple of times) because we were being thrown around in our seats. The old Japanese men and women were really good sports about it. I think they fared better than I did.

This is one of many old Land Rovers around the Cameron highlands. The new models have become luxury vehicles and I don’t think many see this kind of action. The front passenger window was gone so we had to stop to put up a plastic sheet when the rain came.


We disembarked at the overgrown trail and made our hour and a half trek through muddy hills, jungle rivers, bamboo forests and dozens of biting insects. All this to track down (read: be led like cattle to) a Rafflesia in bloom. What makes it so special is that it’s the largest flowering plant in the world. It takes 5 years for it to bud, then another 8 months to bloom. The flower only lasts for a week. It smells like rotting meat to attract insects for pollination.

I slipped and fell a few times, hurting only my pride… and my head (on a tree stump).

The trip was a success:

To prove I was there:

Flecks of gold in the river sediment.


Foot modeling is tough work sometimes:

Next stop was an Orang Asli (Malaysia’s indigenous people) camp for a blowpipe demonstration. It’s not nearly what it’s cracked up to be. It’s a couple of huts by the side of the road where a group of people live. They have motorbikes and TV so it’s not like something you see on National Geographic. That said though, I did get some National Geographic-esque photos of the kids.



We ended the day with a stopover at a butterfly farm before going back to our respective hostels to crash. I made a quick stop at the bus terminal to book a ticket to Penang for the morning.

A nice British couple from today’s tour is heading the same direction as I am so it looks like I have some travel buddies now.

Tanah Rata: Day 1

I had initially planned on going for a cheap morning tour of the highlands today but I instead opted for a lazy morning, exploring the bustling main road of Tanah Rata. Breakfast was an order of Marsala Thossai (an Indian crepe stuffed with curry, then dipped in more curry), washed down with a Milo ais (like hot chocolate with ice) as recommended by my uncle just before I left. The curries in the Cameron Highlands are quite renowned because of the large Indian population here. Many were brought in as labourers for the surrounding tea plantations during the British occupation.

I took a few snapshots of the town for posterity - and to keep you all from falling asleep.

The town of Tanah Rata:


Perpetuating the Asian stereotype. Thanks, buddy:


The town’s main road is only a couple of blocks so it didn’t take too long to drink it all in. At about 11 o’clock, I decided to take my chances with the neighbouring village of Brinchang, which is a 5 minute bus ride away. The Lonely Planet pegs the Cameron Highlands as the place where buses go to die. They weren’t wrong. The rickety bus was coming apart at the seams and I could feel the side panel popping out a bit at every curve.

In case of emergency - you're boned:

My seat had this interesting piece of graffiti:

What makes this particularly interesting is that the first couple of characters spell out my Chinese name. I’m dying to know why I’m firing dotted lines out of my pud (I have a pretty good idea but whoever did this wrote quite a commentary on it). I think the artist got caught while writing his second point. Translations please?

As a side note, what you see above is not actually my real name, though it’s stated on my birth certificate as such. The person who penned in my name wasn’t Chinese and went with a different phonetic spelling. My real (but not legal) name translates to “one who has attained enlightenment/wisdom.” My birth cert name literally translates to “little intelligence.” I use the birth cert one because it’s easier to write. Did I prove them correct?

My first stop in Brinchang was the Sam Poh Buddhist Temple, fifteen minutes off the main road by foot. The closer I got to my destination, the clearer the Buddhist chanting became. I was expecting a place of peaceful contemplation. Instead, I was greeted by gift stalls and a bunch of tourists. The chanting was for show and had stopped by the time I got there.


I don't recall reading of Buddha doing this:

Worst super heroes evar:

Another long walk past the main road led me to Cactus Valley (another tourist trap), where they grow all sorts of flowers (which, I admit get boring after the first couple) and cactus plants.

Cactus plants grow in all sorts of shapes...:

Posterchild for Clearasil?:

Kicking Off

I set off for KL’s Puduraya bus station early this morning, a little tired from another late night playing Call of Duty, a little worried that I may have left something important behind.

Today’s adventure was a 4 ½ hour bus ride up to the town of Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. I arrived at the bus station around 8:45, hoping to snag a ticket for the 10:00 bus; instead, the guy at the ticket counter sold me one for the 8:30 bus, assuring me that it’d be there. Sure as sugar, it was sitting at platform 18, waiting for the last few stragglers. It left at 9. It’s too bad I didn’t have enough time to wander the bus terminal because it has the same feel as the wet market I frequent by my grandma’s house. It’s quite run down with a lot of hawker stalls all about. Imagine an old multi-storey parkade with lots of people inside. Places like these, I find, have so much character.

The ride itself was rather uneventful with the exception of a police blockade halfway up the mountain. An officer boarded our bus with his loaded MP5 sub machine gun, looking over the faces of everybody on the bus, checking to see if there was a wanted felon amongst us. We never really found out exactly what was going on. Exciting.

I’m always amazed at how people can drive up these winding mountain roads, especially when it’s with a larger vehicle. The roads are much narrower than the ones back home, sometimes narrowing down to a single lane, with many blind corners and no guard rails. I must have seen half a dozen tanker trucks and freight vehicles take the corners like race car drivers, their only safety precaution a light tap on the horn.

Fishing

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you save him from public embarrassment.

My cousin's husband (cousin in law?) and one of his friends took me fishing at a pond out in Subang early this morning. The pond was obviously packed full of fish because we could clearly see them coming to the surface to feed. Also, the other people were reeling them in left right and center.

This is the catch du jour:

It was floating along the bank... To our defence, we did actually use a rod to fish it out so it still counts, right?

Mother Knows Best

As a child, my mom used to warn me about watching TV in the dark. The nagging evolved over the years to include using my laptop in the dark (I'm too lazy to get out of bed to turn the lights off when it's time to sleep). My youthful hubris kept me from paying much attention to her.

As it goes, lessons are best learned first hand.

I was playing Call of Duty on the new notebook last night (with the lights off, obviously), keeping those whacky Nazis at bay, when it dawned on me that something was amiss - I had forgotten that insects are naturally drawn to light. Every single bug in the room made its way to my laptop screen, making sure to pay me a visit along the way. This included mosquitos, a few moths, some miscellaneous buzzing things and a beetle the size of my thumbnail. Wearing a manskirt didn't help the matter any.

Tomorrow's lesson: Plastic bags are not toys.

Opening the New Year

The Spoils:

The meal (I snuck a peek at it before it was ready):

Hob Nobbing

My aunt, a well established Malaysian politician, invited me out to her political party's annual CNY open house today. How could I pass up an opportunity to rub elbows with the Malaysian King, Queen, Prime Minister and social elite?

So the morning started with a light breakfast of roti canai, a twenty minute train ride down to the Ampang Park station and a two block walk to the MCA party HQ. A small crowd of tourists and photographers had already gathered to watch the chaos unfold while the lion dance team busied themselves with preparations to greet the first set of limos.

Luckily for me, my aunt's limo showed up right before the rush of onlookers. They managed to pick me out of the crowd and pull me aside to hang out with the VIPs. I admit, I felt a little under dressed because I had packed to go backpacking, not to meet Malaysia's top brass. The most formal clothes I had were an old collared shirt, a pair of khakis and a pair of Vans. I also should note that I hadn't shaved in weeks. Needless to say, I was a little unprepared to be on the receiving end of the paparazzi. One can only hope they caught my good side.

I'll be sure to check the newspapers for pictures in the next few days.

We were ushered into the main atrium to be seated. I was originally set to sit at this table:

...but a last minute decision placed me at the VIP equivalent of the kids table. It's essentially the table for the VIPs who aren't as IP as the other ones. Nevertheless, I had a nice chat with the Austrian, Kenyan, Australian and Nepalese high commissioners over a couple of drinks. The Nepalese and the Austrian high comms were the most friendly of the lot.

We were then whisked away to a couple more functions elsewhere, but by this point, I was in an absolute state of confusion. I decided to find a table, load up on some fancy taxpayer funded food and enjoyed the ride until it was all over.

Random pics from today:

My new favourite breakfast spot:

Where I had an audience:

They rolled out the red carpet for us:

Bodyguards kept me from taking any good pictures of the royalty:

But I did sneak one of the King's sweet ride: