The Cameron High­lands, well named that they are, are the tea grow­ing centre of Malay­sia.  The tem­per­at­ure up the top is a good 4 degrees less than in the cit­ies and a nice breeze helps take off a few more.  It is a place of gen­tile rolling tea fields under moun­tain­ous peaks.  I found this much more to my liking!

The jour­ney up there by bus is up the ever wind­ing high­way 1, which has great views of the sur­round­ing lands and peaks of the mountains. 

Moun­tains, Gandalf!

This lends itself spec­tac­u­larly to pho­to­graphy on the way, and to loos­ing your lunch as the corners are all nego­ti­ated at light speed by a bus driver who must have real­ised that he had left the gas on at home.

Our final des­tin­a­tion was the town of Tanah Rata, which is along the road on which all the sights are situated.

The night market

Trans­port around the sights is best per­formed by either taxi or tour, both options being expens­ive.  The town itself is quite nicely laid out along the road and has all the needed shops and even a Star­bucks!  Yes the people of Malay­sia have dis­covered the value of this area and are very busy put­ting in new shops, hotels and guesthouses.

We had booked ahead and secured ourselves a room in the Father’s Guest House which is atop a small hill and over­looks the town splen­didly.  This guest house is com­prised of a large clas­sic house and garden which has been exten­ded towards a smal­ler office build­ing mak­ing a roofed off area.  This office area con­tains the kit­chens, offices and com­munal areas. Slightly down the hill from this is the cheaper end of the accom­mod­a­tion which is essen­tially bunkers con­ver­ted to be simple rooms.  We had a double in one of these and found the room to be ok, if a little run down.

We arrived around 3pm and the heav­ens had opened.  Appar­ently this hap­pens every after­noon reg­u­larly and there is noth­ing for it but to go out dur­ing the morn­ing hours.  We nestled down and watched the com­munal DVD present­a­tions and enjoyed the onsite res­taur­ant.  We also booked a tour for the next day.

On awak­ing we met our tour guide and the other tour­ists, some nice people all west­ern, and made our way up to the first stop which was an over­look of the tea plantations. 

Then we vis­ited the highest point in the area and climbed a tower to view the jungle.  I defi­antly have improved my fear of heights since the Nevis jump in NZ!  Next we went for a walk in the very over­grown Mossy Forest.  This short walk was a little light for those of us fresh from New Zea­l­and, but since more than one of the tour got stuck in the mud – to the gen­eral hoots of hil­ar­ity from the oth­ers – we didn’t mind. 

Dur­ing this walk we saw some amaz­ingly exotic flowers.  After this we made our way to the Boh Tea plant­a­tion, which was a fas­cin­at­ing trip around the fact­ory and induced a very inter­est­ing video about how the tea is made, picked and shipped. 

We then went into the shop and sampled some of this magical brew.

All in all I feel the tour was well worth the bother and expense.

That night we met a nice couple who were lit­er­ally bik­ing their way from Canada to SEA and who had rode up the moun­tain to get to the guest house.  We all went out to din­ner and had a very nice “Steam Boat” Chinese meal which is basic­ally a boil­ing tub of water  & spices and a lot of uncooked meat.  They very help­fully gave us a ton of tips about the places we were due to visit and we have been fol­low­ing this sage advice ever since!  Their web­site is www.bikingtwo.com and is well worth a visit.

Soon, all too soon, we decided to des­cend the moun­tain – back into the heat, and move on.  We head heard all sorts of stor­ies about the jungle exper­i­ences you can have in Malay­sia and even­tu­ally voted to pass on it entirely as I per­son­ally don’t like leaches and the rains were over the jungle.

We decided to head to heaven.  Heaven being the Island of Langkawi.  How­ever in order to get there we had to go through Pur­gat­ory; Geor­getown.  All in all I think I am prob­ably malign­ing Geor­getown, but frankly I don’t care.  I didn’t like the place at all.  Geor­getown is the cap­ital of Pen­ang and I what I can most say about it is that the food is very good.  We found a real bakery, twinned with one in Lon­don no less, and a fant­astic Chinese res­taur­ant hid­den down an alley­way (off Chulia road near the Love Lane).  It also has a pleas­ant sea front prom­en­ade that leads around some old build­ings and sights.  Out of town it has many sights to see on tours, and a large India town and, of course, a China Town. 

 

The sights of Georgetown

How­ever, the main drag is full to the rafters with west­ern tour­ists and unless this is what you want from travel, I would pass though.

We did and didn’t look back.

To get out to Langkawi you catch the morn­ing ferry.  This deathtrap on the waves has to be exper­i­enced to be believed and in a storm would scare the beje­sus out of Noah.  Luck­ily for us the weather was fine and we cruised into the island about 3 hours later.

Langkawi is about 30km off the main­land and halfway to Thai­l­and, as such it is the hol­i­day des­tin­a­tion for much of Malay­sia and the gov­ern­ment have seen fit to make it a tax free island.  That means beer is only 2 ring­gits. This should give you some idea of what is to follow…

Apart from the won­der­ful high jagged cliffs the island has much in the way of beaches and is littered with high class hotels and resorts.  Thank­fully the island is large enough to swal­low all these.  Hid­den amongst them are a mass of smal­ler oper­at­ors and it is to one of these places we booked.  Zackry Gues­t­house is off the main road out of Kuah and near a large beach. 

 

Our room and the drink­ing area of Zakry’s

It is sur­roun­ded by about 15 or so res­taur­ants of all types, shops and facil­it­ies (such as a money changer – who wont accept UK Pounds).  It is a enclosed social type place and we quickly dis­covered how social.  That night we met some great people and got smashed to Christ­mas and back.  A twenty man drink­ing game of epic pro­por­tions, drunken movie watch­ing, talking-toot and hav­ing a whale of a time.

Hail Eris!

Which we repeated the next day.

And the next.

Meet­ing people is always fun and we have met some real char­ac­ters on our jour­neys so far, but the Zackey’s crowd were con­cen­trated.  There was Taz, the fun lov­ing Man­curian lass with real­ity based out­look on life.  Ben, a massive bear of a man who sports the only Conan the Bar­bar­ian tat­too I have ever seen (“two snakes!”).  Nick the quieter Amer­ican thinker with a very inter­na­tional out­look and sense of humour.  Grey, Taz’s other half, who is an Art dir­ector in Manchester.  All loved fun and drink­ing as much as we did.  Keep­ing up with the antics of this lot on Face­book is fun in itself!

Dur­ing the days we lay on the beach and enjoyed the won­der­ful weather.  The view from the beach of the islands was fant­astic.  We truly didn’t want to leave, but we knew that we had to even­tu­ally.  Util­iz­ing the Zackry’s WIFI we decided on an adven­tur­ous plan.  One that would prove to be almost prescient.

We would cross the bor­der into Thai­l­and and imme­di­ately head to Hati Yai air­port, where we would fly to the very north of Thai­l­and and visit Chi­ang Mai.  This was for many reas­ons.  Firstly, the south of Thai­l­and was in bad weather.  Secondly, the jour­ney would bal­ance out bet­ter if we did Laos in Decem­ber we would be able to be in Viet­nam dur­ing Xmas and back in Thailand’s beaches for New Years eve.  Little did we know, but by hop­ping over Bangkok we would be avoid­ing some of the most tur­bu­lent times in Thailand’s recent history.

The next day we got onto the ferry and wished good­bye to Langkawi.  Def­in­itely some­where worth the visit and the high­light of my Malay­sian adventure.

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