Strawberry Fields Forever
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2006
1
218
374
Trip End
Mar 15, 2007
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Having to wait over an hour for the bus I ordered an egg binjo expecting some exotic delicacy to be given a greasy fried egg roll, still good though.
Wasting time before the bus I began to notice that although not having a chance in hell of managing to string a sentence together in Malay with a bit of thinking like a 6 year old (no problem there then) it can become very readable with signs for Bas Ekpres (Express Bus), tiket (ticket), feri (ferry), motokar (car), teksi (taxi) and my favorite of farmasi (pharmacy) - think the Malay spelling of that is better.
After a windy road up into the highlands the scenery had changed to hills of tea plantations, vegetable patches, flowers and more than a couple of strawberry fields with the temperature having dropped a refreshing couple of notches. The hill station at around 1500m altitude consists of a few small towns and villages with Tanah Rata being the main traveler hangout.
I checked into the friendly Daniel's lodge with it's dorm rooms feeling like they were straight from a summer school camp but minus the befuddle looking old Japanese guy wandering around in his boxers.
Not much to note about Tanah Rata made up mainly of souvenir shops and whole line of Indian restaurants each identical to the one next door with one giving up entirely trying to be different and just calling itself restaurant 14.
Met a guy from the Philippines working here called Ryan (may not be his real name) who was keen to show me around but seeing as I could almost see the two edges of the town from where I stood I declined his generous offer for now.
Settling on one of the Indian restaurants for dinner (no clue as to which one once I;d left and turned around again) I heated up on some chicken tikka with nann bread and assorted curries there warming effect was soon needed giving the temperature dropped as low as 16 degrees which after months averaging around 30 degrees felt like it was about to start snowing.
