Cameron Highlands – The Chilly Beauty of Malaysia

After KL we cruise north to the Cameron Highlands which is nearly 1,500 m above sea level and with that said is significantly cooler then the lowlands. In fact it is a common holiday spot for many Malays to escape the heat. However there are other reason why I can see the Malays want to visit this area as there endless beauty all around with tea plantations and jungle filling the hills with lush vegetation.

THE RIDE UP

Getting to the Cameron Highlands is have the fun, although it is only 170KM the bus ride takes about 4 hours. The road winds up the mountain and is only wide enough for 2 normal sized cars. As you round each corner, which is blind I might add, you have to honk your horn to let oncoming traffic know you are there. Needless to say this is far from a perfect method! When our bus and another came to head around a corner we had to reef on the breaks to prevent a full sized passenger bus shooting off a hundred foot cliff.

TEA PLANTATIONS

• Cameron is famous for a couple of reasons:
• It is a getaway from the hot atmosphere of the lowlands
• The massive legacy of tea plantations left from the British empire (what didn’t they own?)

We wanted to cruise up to get a break from the heat and check out the tea plantations so Cameron was the best place to be.

When you step off the bus the first thing you notice, besides people shouting about guesthouses, is that it is significantly cooler. Apparently this is an ideal environment to grow tea as evidenced by the multiple plantations surrounding the town of Tanah Rata which is where we bunkered down for a couple days.

We decided to check out the famous BOH Tea Plantation which still uses technology from the 1930′s to process their tea. Prior to this trip I had no idea what a tea plant even looked like, let alone a plantation filled with them.

After driving up a road that made our initial trip up look like a Mickey Mouse ride in a kids park, we arrived to see rows upon rows of lush green tea plants covering every square inch of the hills. It was a cloudy day and the high elevation mixed with the low hanging clouds made for a hallmark moment. About 5 minutes into the trip the skies opened up and it poured for a solid two hours. Good thing there was a commercial tea outlet conveniently located at the plantation! We killed some time drinking some BOH tea with our enewfound South African pals Dale and Claire and waited for the storm to subside.

We finally got a chance to wander around the plantation and it is definitely a place to be seen. If you get there early enough you can watch the workers harvest the plant, we showed up in the afternoon so we poached some tea leaves for ourselves and we were off.

BOH Tea House Cameron Highlands

CHOW DOWN

Food in Tanah Rata was delicious and we found ourselves coming back tok and Indian restaurant that served delicious Banana leaf curry and cashew chicken. Our last night in  Tanah we decided to try something different. We went to a local market and got a ‘steamboat’ set. Let me explain further…

Steamboating is a a meal and an activity all rolled into one, basically you are given a plate of raw chicken, squid, fish, tofu and vegetables and a piping hot bowl of broth that is kept boiling by a butane camp stove. The broth options are spicy and non spicy and the plate of food is MASSIVE, it fed four grown adults and cost 30 ringgits (9 CAD). The meal is like fondue but healthier and it was identical to a specialty that was introduced to us by our pal Rudy before we left Canada where he referred to it as HOT POT. Hot pot, steamboat, whatever, all it can be described as is DELICIOUS!

Self shot of the Steamboat Party

JUNGLE TREKKING

We were planning to do some hiking in the jungle and for some reason I figured we could do it without a guide. After purchasing a ‘map’ which was closer to a souvenir than a navigational tool, we were off.

When we approached our intended path, appropriately named path 4, we realized something wasn’t quite right. The path was overgrown to the point of needing Rambo armed with a machete to make any progress. I’m down for adventure but there is no way I was going in the jungle to become tiger bait!

If you want to go in the jungle it is best to get a guide, something we should have done in the first place. The maps are basically useless, something we came to a consensus on with some other German folks looking for the same paths, and if you get lost out there you are pretty much hooped.

Only with a machete could you get through this

All in all, Cameron Highlands was a great place to hang out for a couple of days and the cooler weather was a welcome change from the +37 we were getting in KL. The tea plantations are a definite must see and unlike anything we have come across on the trip to date.

Typical sidewalk hazard in Malaysia - Massive hole

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