where in the world is matt

It’s now been about a week and a half since any real update due to the lack of knowing what to write about really for the Cameron Highlands. It can mainly be summed up as

Strawberries. Tea. Chilly. Trekking.

It’s about your lot really.

Set as the largest state in Malaysia, the CH are famous mainly for trekking and trails boasting to have the tallest peak on the mainland. This is all true, but what they don’t tell you till they get there is that they are obsessed with strawberries. It’s like a wicker man style, everything is about strawberries. If they aren’t trying to sell you the jam there’s hats and earmuffs, t-shirts and pens. If it can be turned red and have seeds put on it, they’ll try their best to turn it into something berry related…

Slightly less obvious but still in plain view is their tea. Boh tea to be exact. Something like 108 hectares make up each plantation and thers about 5 of them around the centre of Tanah Rata. Founded by the Scots, Boh is the largest exporter of tea from Malaysia to and around Asia – hence never ever hearing of it back home… – and has excessive amounts of brands including my favourite. The teacino. The vanilla one tasting like a cherry bakewell in a cup, but this aside the CH are used mainly for agriculture due to the temperatures being like that of Europe.

Something that is noted in the architecture. I swear you could have been walking through a valley in Switzerland, the housing style was very tall and free standing in quite a Bavarian manner with the Asian equivalent of pine trees and alot of daffodils growing alongside, making it a refreshing – emphasis on at night – change from spending the past 8 months in shorts and t-shirt sweating it out. By day it was bright with a mild breeze that still allowed for summer wear, but by evening it became quite brisk with the need for hoodies and jeans.

We stayed in the Twin Pines guesthouse in the attic rooms which for 12RM were exactly what they said on the box. A mattress on the floor in a room where standing upright was impossible due to the denting the roof, simple but effective except the walls were rather thin to the point that hearing five different people snoring makes it abit difficult to sleep if you’re me.

Activity wise, it might have been different at another time. The fabled peak season – which you never see because everyone goes on holiday either in summer, or winter if you’re old and rich – might have brought more people as the faces you see are far and few. The majority being Chinese or Indian – which led to delicious thali food – and the odd tourist who disappeared by day because they were following the tour group package of going for a jungle trek at 8.45 every morning. Opting against this and to save some money, we got a map and followed some of the trails separately. One of which leading to Robinson falls, very anticlimactic as a fall, but if you carry on further to route 9/9a (we weren’t sure which we took or if they joined or split at points) then it entails a 3km trek into the jungle coming out at a watercress farm. Brilliant. Except we are now 10km south of where we are staying due to the winding roads, and no-one really wants to go through the mission of the jungle again. Ok, let’s walk. But there isn’t any form of taxi because everyone drives around here as it’s rather remote. No problem, we hail down a truck after four of us stand in the road waving rather camply to hail transport. We are then told to pay money to avoid the police to which we respond with, we’ll just lie down in the truck bay. And so this led to being crushed by metal scaffolding on the bends every time you swing round and getting covered in alot of dirt, but it made the trip more worthwhile.

Trips range from half day to full day, either trekking or sights around the area. We opted for the half day trip which took in a temple – rather naff and built mainly for tourists – rose garden, tea plantation, insect village, bee farm, strawberry plantation and some market no-one was really fussed about.

The temple was modern and seemed added purely because we aren’t meant to have temples in the west. The rose garden was interesting to say the least. Not so much roses as a mass complex of raggedy flowers and cacti that led upwards to a strange boot house – clearly designed for children – and a separate hillside that once climbed provided views around one side of the valley. The tea plantation offered much of the same with views of tea fields with a trip down to the factory and a chance to sample the Boh produce. The strawberry farm a letdown, or perhaps to obvious, that it was simply unbloomed strawberries but a sample of the local jams and fruits again a nice change from having Asian fruits. The insects were pretty cool, not a huge amount but it was cool to hold a leaf insect.

It seems that alot of tourist locations have popped up around Malaysia that are meant to be what people are interested in, but not anything much about the country hence the trails and treks are overshadowed by their income being turned into a show.

From here the plan was to go to the Perhentian Isles, famous for diving and aquatic life, but rumours were around that it was closed already. Every year it closes for 3 months when the season ends for the monsoon season. This was proved to be a lie though as it was just that tour companies were lazy and wanted to fill buses before sending them on their way and we managed to get a minibus that would take 8 or so hours – more than the 5 promised – to get there.