Choose another map, showing:

• Singapore
• Malaysia
• South East Asia
• Asia
• Eurasia
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Cameron Highlands

Strawberries,Scones,Landrovers&Inclement weather!!

The bus ride up from Palua Penang was easy. A motorway whisked us on our way for the first part of the journey to Ipooh, (pronounced ee-pooh) the city of millionaires. So called from the tin mines in the near by hills. From then on it was full of switch backs carving through the jungle forests. The Cameron Highlands is situated at 1500-1800m. It was an old hill station of the British. Its a lot cooler here, in fact compared to the last 10 months, its cold, over cast and raining, a lot.  You can see why the British choose it.

The Cameron Highlands has that European Alps Ski Village feel to it, crossed with the Malverns (England), lights in the trees and hotels. Scones or scones depending on how you pronounce it, with jam and cream in every tea shop, pick your own strawberries and black and white cottages. There was even an old English red telephone box, that accepted 1/2 pennies and pennies, outside 'Ye Olde Smokehouse'. It was almost like being back home. Ahhh, I miss home!!

I have never seen so many Land Rovers in one area, Defenders, Series 1, 2 and 3. In fact they have the highest Land Rover per Capita in the world. In the towns on the way up to the plateau the sides of the road are covered in them. The roads around here used to be very bumpy and rough, and the only viechels at the time that could cope with the rough road conditions to get the products in and out of the tea plantations, were Land Rovers. Some of them could have been here from brand new. Now a days the roads have been tarmacked and lorries can make it up to the top, but the farm workers still use them to drive about in, its more of a tradition. They have the letters CH painted on the side of them, and they pay a lower road tax than other viechels so long as they stay up here in the clouds.

I went for a walk to day through the Jungle, its a very temperate jungle more like the forests of New Zealand with Pungas (Tree Ferns) everywhere and other species of trees and bushes to be found in New Zealand. I stopped off at a golf club for a cream tea, scones and jam. Very nice. Next I walked further up the road and found a stall selling fresh Strawberries, they smelt good, and tasted even better. All of the fields are selling foods that you would expect to find in a more temperate areas, like Europe, not in the tropics. It has been raining here for the last three weeks, so some of the trails were boggy and made walking interesting.

I joined a tour group from the guest house with an excitable young chap, only 20, but had lived with the Orang Asli, the Abrorigionals of the area for a few months, learning the ways of the forests, worked on research projects in Tamen Negara, and travelled all over Malaysia looking at Flora and Fauna. He had a wealth of knowledge, and was very happy to share it with every one, including really bad guide type jokes, the same ones that hes told for the last few years. We went off the beaten track into some parts of the jungle that few other people go to, there wasn't much wild life but lots of carnivours plants and moss covering the trees. We ended up at a 3rd gerneration, Scotish owned tea plantation. It was surrounded by huge swathes of tea bushes. The images you see on TV of people hand picking tea, is a con. Now adays they use machines like hedge cutters, with huge vacums on the back to cut the top layer of leaves from the bushes. Its not a very delegate or selective way of collecting the tea, and a lot of refining has to be done afterwards, to remove the pines neeldes, weeds and lost tourists.

Next we headed back to the guest house and I was dropped off on the way back, and had a look at the butterfly farm. It contained loads of butterflies the size of your hand, vipers (snakes) and huge beetles, 10 times the size of anything back home.

Add to del.icio.us Add to reddit

Photos / videos of "Strawberries,Scones,Landrovers&Inclement weather!!":