Tea and strawberries in the Cameron Highlands......

After a few cultural days in Penang, we decided to escape the heat and almost overwhelming humidity for the cooler climes of the Cameron Highlands. A huge relief as my hair was starting to take on a frizzy life of its own (the joys of 90% humidity)!!

So we, in all our wisdom, decided to book a minibus transfer to the highlands during one of the busiest public holidays in Malaysia - Chinese New Year. As we waited for (our very late) minibus, we noticed the front page of the local newspaper showing HUGE traffic jams both in and out of Penang. This did not bode well. Thankfully, once out of Georgetown and off the island of Penang, the journey was relatively painfree. We travelled along a very British type of motorway, stopping at a very civilised rest stop for some lunch - perfect! For me, it all went wrong when we left behind the lovely straight flat roads for twisting and winding roads that corkscrewed their way up mountains to the highlands. God I hate roads like this, especially when the safety barriers disappear and a sheer cliff face takes its place! To make matters worse, the heavens opened and the rain began and did not stop for the rest of the journey. It was very easy to imagine that we were back in England, as the higher we climbed, the more the temperature dropped. To the positively freezing (for us anyway) 10 degrees!!

Having checked into the weirdest of weird guesthouses (our room has a hat stand of all things!), we headed out into the town of Tanah Rata in search of food. After such a long time in the sun, it felt very strange to be wearing layers, a waterproof jacket and we still felt cold! We found some yummy naan and tandori chicken to eat then set off in search of a tour guide to show us around the sights of the highlands. A crazily loud and chatty guy caught our attention and he gave us the low down on a jungle trekking/tea and strawberry tasting combination package - perfect. The only problem being that we would need some sturdier shoes that flip flops and Converse!! Luckily, we both managed to find some pretty decent (and cheap more importantly) walking shoes in one of those typically SE Asian shops that seems to sell absolutely everything that you could ever want in the smallest possible amount of space! So we were set and ready for some jungle trekking action but would we both have the energy?!

After several snoozes of the alarm and hot showers to try and revive our tired bodies, we climbed into our ride for the day, an old school 4x4 jeep. First stop a butterfly centre, where we were both amazed at how HUGE the butterflies were. They posed perfectly for pictures and were so pretty, I think I love them! The centre also included local plants and insects that you could find in the highlands. The low point for me was seeing huge hairy tarantulas, scorpians and snakes - I hoped that we wouldn't find any of these up close and personal during our jungle trek! From there, we headed to the Boh Tea Factory to sample tea and admire the fantastic view of the neverending, perfectly manicured plantations. As it was a public holiday, the place was absolutely rammed with visitors drinking and buying tea by the truckload. It was absolute chaos. We did manage to drink some tea and in a very British way, ate some shortbread with it!

Bundling back into the jeep again, we drove to the summit of Gunnang Brinchang to take in the 'specatacular views of the countryside'. Sadly when reaching the top, the mist had descended and well and truly surrounded us. There was not a chance of us seeing anything. Still we climbed to the top of the lookout tower and took photos of us surounded by mist, clouds but no view - rubbish. Next up was an hour long jungle trek through the 'mossy forest'. It was a bit like a scene from Avatar, the trees completely covered with thick green moss and packed closely together. This alone made it pretty difficult to walk through but throw in what was essentially a muddy bog at the base of the trees and you can get some idea. Thank god for the new boots! We came out covered in mud but fared an awful lot better than some of the others that had come wearing sandals!

A bizarre trip to a honeybee farm followed, where due to the rain, there were no bees to be seen. Only strange looking cartoon esque bumble bees carrying spades, which of course every honey bee does! Our last stop for the day was at a strawberry farm, to sample any kind of strawberry product you could hope for - cakes, muffins, ice cream, milkshakes......... heaven. We made it back to the hotel exhausted but content that we had seen most that the highland had to offer.

The following morning, we awoke to a very nasty surprise - bed bugs crawling on us and over our sheets, aaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh! Our worst fears were realised as we inspected the rest of the bed frame to find both dead and alive bugs, absolutely disgusting. Tom became a man on a mission and collected up some of the bugs to take down to show the guys at reception. They didn't seem overly surprised (which should have triggered warning bells) and promised to fumigate the room before our return later that afternoon. After a walk through the town and a short trek through the jungle, we returned to find a clean-ish, supposdly bug free room. Yet we instantly saw that there were bugs crawling up the walls and along the side of the bed. Honestly, we were so tired and just wanted to get into a bed. Tom saw red and demanded that the reception guy come up and see the evidence. He was insistent that he had fumigated the room but that 'they always have trouble with bed bugs in this room and can't seem to ever get rid of them'. Seriously! They did however have another room that we could move into for the night that was bug free. Thankful for a clean bed to sleep in, we trudged downstairs to yet another delight of a room. Yes, it was bug free but they had been replaced by huge brown stains and long black hairs on the bedsheets. Now this really is the best part of the story, the reasoning by the guesthouse staff. The reason for the brown stains - the locals buy curries and tea, bring them into the room to eat, spill them and the stains don't wash out sorry. Reason for the black hairs - women with long hair sleep in these beds, their hair falls out and it gets interwoven into the sheets so we can't get them out. No word of a lie, this is exactly what this guy said. By this point, we had both had enough, as I think had this poor reception dude so he got his manager on the phone to sort the situation. Sadly (and weirdly), she didn't seem to think that there was any problem whatsoever and appeared quite cross that we were troubling her. What would we like for her to do about it she asked? We demanded a discount which she was horrified by but eventually agreed before slamming the phone down. You can't make this stuff up!

We had a pretty terrible, cold nights sleep but my god were we pleased to leave the next morning! We are headed to Kuala Lumpur next and have booked ourselves into somewhere a bit more pricey for our time there so fingers crossed we won't have to fight off any more bugs.

Much love, Shell & Tommo xxxxxxxxx

PS. Here's a picture of our lovely 'clean' sheets, enjoy!

Hanging in Penang...

For the past few months as we have zig-sagged our way around Asia, Malaysia has been in some respects a bit of an afterthought. Not that it deserves to be so, as the more we read, the more we learn that there us so much to see. Its just that it's never been a country that stands out like the big hitters of Thailand or Vietnam. Now we're here though, we realise we are probably in one of the most culturally diverse places we have ever been to.

As we said before, we were truly sad to leave Bangkok behind after a fun filled six days and an incredibly two months in Thailand. Our flight down to Penang went by without much fuss, despite mild turbulence, and we managed to hire a taxi with ease to take us up to georgetown, Penang's UNESCO listed city. As we drove, two things became apparent. Firstly, there were many more cars on the road, very expensive cars at that, replacing the hum of battered old motor bikes. Secondly, the traffic moved in an orderly fashion, they had rules!

Driving through the old town towards our hotel we instantly got the impression that this was a curious mix, we'd never really seen anything like this before. You'd have to say if your being totally honest, that it wasn't the prettiest place. Only first impressions though!

After dumping our bags we quickly went in search of some of Penang's famous hawker food, essentially street food of various varieties spanning a number of cuisines. Our first stop was a place called Kapitan, a Muslim-south Indian restaurant famous for it's roti chanai's and tandoori chicken. the roti channai's were amazing, really light, almost pastry based breads cooked in the tandoori oven. We also had some amazing turka daal to go with it, a tasty lentil dish that everyone seemed to be eating.

The next day we woke absolutely shattered, the past few days had been really busy-almost non-stop but we both wanted to get out and explore the city of Georgetown. The town itself had some very attractive parts, the British colonial buildings were very impressive, they had been meticulously maintained to make sure they retained their former glories and looked as good as new.

After a good old tour around the unesco heritage buildings we walked on into little India, were we stood and sniffed up all of those delicious smells! The place was very loud, almost every shop pumping out vicious Indian pop music to try and shift a few of their Now; Bollywood compilations. It was a great sight though and so very different to the sight of Asia we have had elsewhere on the continent.

By this point, and we're not expecting sympathy here, we were so tired. The last couple of weeks had definitely caught up with us so we headed back to try and chill out, you know, listen to some decent music and set curry puffs, but found it increasingly difficult due to being in one of the noisiest hostels we have been in. Basically, most of the accommodation in Georgetown is within extremely old buildings that have absolutely no soundproofing whatsoever. That meant the Chinese people above us actually sounded like Robocop wearing corrective walking shoes. We also had a locked door in our room that after closer inspection opened to the adjacent room! It was locked ofcourse but meant that we heard all sorts of noises from that room and whenever they put their light on it lit our room up. Oh well, at least we didn't hear the guys upstairs taking a dump, oh yeah, scrap that, we did.

The next day we waited patiently for a bus that would take us to the centre of the island to a lookout. We did indeed wait patiently, for an hour! In the end we gave up and caught another bus to a small national park, the smallest in Malaysia in fact. We went because it sounded cool but in the end spent four hours on a long jungle trek. You see the guy at the park headquarters told us it would take 2 hours there and back. He lied. After two hours we didn't even make our destination, a beach at the other end of the jungle. Instead we walked through steamy jungle, all in flip-flops, for 10kms! We had a great time though and even though the flip flop combination wasn't a great idea, it made us hungry for more treks! Need to buy footwear first I suppose.

Being tired anyway probably wasn't helped by a 10km jungle trek but that night we were so shattered that we hopped out for more food, this time an indian-Malaysian combination called nasi kandar before heading back to the hotel to rest up before tomorrows four hour drive up into the Cameron highlands.

Penang was an interesting place, it has some very attractive buildings and the food, even though we didn't do it justice, was fantastic. It does feel strange to be in Malaysia though, it is so very different to Thailand. The mixture of Indian, Chinese, British and Malay cultures is fascinating, if not a little strange but the biggest thing is the fact that order, or something resembling it, had now been resumed. Give me chaos!

Anyway, onwards! To tea, hill walks and scones!

Much love, Tommo and shellface xx