Going to the Cameron Highlands had been Callum's idea and I'm not sure if it was as much for the outstanding beauty of the area as it was for the significantly cooler temperatures.
You see, Callum is, without doubt, the whitest person I have ever met. He only has to as much as flick a light switch to get a rosy glow, and five minutes in the sun gives him a face red enough to stop traffic.
Maybe six months backpacking the Arctic would have been a better choice for him.
Anyway, I was also quite relieved to have a few days away from the scalding 30-something degree temperatures of Kuala Lumpur. I was even more relieved to get away from the millions of mosquitos that had decided to eat me alive on a daily basis, regardless of how much DEET I had doused myself with that day. If I'd jumped headfirst in a vat of 100% DEET, it would have made fuck all difference because I'm essentially catnip for the bastards.
The bus journey to the Cameron Highlands can be best described as like something out of the Simpson's Hit and Run.
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| A live action shot of our bus journey to Tanah Rata. |
*Of course there were no seat belts on this bus, so this was entirely possible.
We were both so relieved to make it alive to Tanah Rata (the town we stayed at in the Cameron Highlands) we barely noticed the temperatures were 15°C cooler than we were used to. We just hopped of the bus and legged it to our guesthouse before the maniac could plough us over on his way out of the town.
The Cameron Highlands reminded me a LOT of Bavarian Germany: the mass of green trees, the light drizzle of rain and the kind of weather that makes you want to sit inside under a blanket with a mug of tea all day. Fortunately, the Cameron Highlands is famous for its tea!
The first day we were there we
The Tea Plantations were beautiful, there's no doubt about that; hill after hill of green tea bushes as far as the eye could see. However, our guide soon explained that the 600 acres of tea plantation were manned by a workforce of only 40 people. These 40 people are almost solely immigrants from places like India and Bangladesh; they have to sign 3 or 5 year contacts and are paid about RM12 a day - that's about £2.
We sat in the BOH Tea Cafe, drinking our tea and eating scones (costing us RM22) with mixed feelings for the place. To us, it seemed like slave labour. Our purchase at the cafe had in itself nearly paid 2 people's daily wages. So, how, were they paying their workers so little? Especially as the place was swarming with tourists.
It was quite sad, really.
The next day, we went on one of the hikes suggested by the guesthouse; in the lobby, there was a board of routes. One of the routes had a note stuck over it, with reviews from TripAdvisor basically saying that there was a creep lurking along the trail who liked to prey on tourists.
I didn't really feel like going on the walk anymore, but we were assured, the other trails were safe and well trodden, so we went ahead with it and I'm glad we did."Let's go on a hike," we said. "It'll be fun," we said. pic.twitter.com/reUbXCVspb— Callum and Emma (@vlogpackers_) 29 September 2016
Walking the trail felt like being in the middle of nowhere and I half expected Bear Grylls to pop out of a shrub somewhere. At one point we must have walked underneath a monkey or large bird in a tree and our presence must have scared it off, because the next thing we knew a branch was plummeting from the air towards us. We scattered. Then, THUMP. The branch landed right next to us.
I was beginning to feel like a cat with 9 lives. The bus driver was strike 1. The branch, number 2.
Amazingly, we didn't get lost on the trail and thankfully, we didn't bump into the forest nutcase either. It was an all-round success.
We ended the day with a curry from our favourite restaurant in Tanah Rata and prepared ourself for the next day's journey to Ipoh. Sadly, that was not to be a success...
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