Next Stop: Unknown

We decided it was time to explore mainland Malaysia.  So, we consulted our lonely planet guidebook and came up with a rough sketch of how we’d navigate this beautiful country.  After meditating on it for a few hours, we decided there was no easy way to do it!  There didn’t seem to be any good bus routes to all of the places we wanted to go.  Our list included: Cameron Highlands, Taman Negara jungle, Kuala Lumpur and some diving/beach bumming on some islands in the northeast.  We’d heard some recommendations for the highlands, so we decided to make that our first stop… convenient since it was also the closest. 

It was only 200 km away, but the bus ride was a six hour trek along murderously windy roads, sprinkled with waterfalls and seaward vistas. Cameron Highlands must be the breadbasket of Malaysia – I’d never seen such huge industrialesque gardens. The strawberry fields went for kms, then the spice plantations, then the sugar cane, then strange fruit that looked like eggplant but grew from trees. And the temperature – wonderful! It was somewhere in the low 60s with a gentle breeze and little variation in between the heat of the day and the cool of the night.

We checked into a place called Father’s guesthouse, which was up on a hilltop, just a 2 minute walk from the city.  It was already dark by the time we got settled, but we were both starving, so we ventured down into the city.  Actually, it’s more a small town than a city, but the buildings were rather large, multi-hundred room buildings/condos.  The style was somewhat Bavarian as well, which gave the place an odd feel.  To Jenn’s delight, there was even a Starbucks!  We had heard about something called a “steamboat dinner” reading some of the tourist flyers on the way up… but we hadn’t seen a river big enough to float a bathtub anywhere along the way.  Turns out the steamboat dinner is actually a cross between fondue and Chinese hot pot.  For 30RM (about $9 USD) you get a big pot filled with two types of soup, and a large plate of seafood and vegetables to fill it.  We ordered it, and then needed to waiter to explain to us the proper method of eating it!  (I don’t think we got it right, but it was yummy). 

We spent one day in the Highlands trekking along paths in various states of upkeep. At one point I was slightly worried our path would just disappear in the middle of the jungle. We can out ok in the end though (despite running out of steam and taking a taxi home from the trailhead) and were able to see a ton of the countryside.

Robinson’s waterfall – supposedly just a 15 minute hike from the town, but it turned into a 2 hour adventure, almost brush cutting through the jungle and ending up 6km out of town!

This was a very small plantation, at least compared to some of the massive ones we saw, that went for acres and acres. 

Taking a breather on a quaint footbridge