Equatorial Cameron Highlands

... strawberry jam (?!) was a must, and then a wander round the tea factory. Some turn-of-the-century machines still process it all (a process which goes squish, ferment, dry, separate, as far as I can remember), and out pops the Boh tea packages.

The walk back to the main road was met with rain about half way along... a few tourist cars flew past, paying no attention, but then a couple of Malaysian guys stopped to pick us up. After squeezing in the back ...

... A/C. Now at this point we are an hour and a half away from our destination, it is 8 o'clock at night and we just about to go up into the mountains.......Air-con didn't seem so important that we needed to waste an hour of our journey time. Any how they got the A/C working and we all piled back on to the bus. Oh No! Reach for your jumpers ...to make up for the three and a half hours cooking us the driver turned the dial to freeze and had us dithering by ...

... to try the other path which turned out luckily to be the right way...that was at least until we got the lighthouse. Finding ourselves on a narrowing and very steep trail we found ourselves lost once again and ended up having to back peddle it up to the lighthouse once again. There it was that we finally found the correct trail once again. End of story was that it took us over 2 hours for this trail that should have taken half ...

... the bloke from Father's Guesthouse was waiting nearby in his minibus to collect me; Nolan and Amy came along too as they hadn't booked anywhere, and he said there were rooms free. At the hostel, checked into the very cheap dorm, while the Canadians went for a double room. In the dorm I immediately got chatting to two girls and a guy - Koo, Julia and Scott - all from around London, who were also staying there. Once I'd sorted my stuff out the six of us all went for ...

... 6pm on a stretch of motorway in the middle of nowhere and the driver optimistically started the engine, only for it to cut out 100m later! So we waited and waited, and waited and waited.... Then word got around that help was on its way, a rusty car turned up and 2 men got out with an equally rusty toolkit consisting of a few spanners and hammers! Various bits of bus engine came out and lay on the roadside for a while before the guys gave up and drove off! It ...

... foreign sounding name, I had switched off by this point and in my mind, my happy place, I was being served jugs of beer by naked blondes!…. His principles just enthrall me!”

I was going to have to smile and nod a lot today when I didn’t understand a long word, and hope it was at the right time.

Stuart and Natasha a brother and sister combo but not like a freaky same difference off X factor. Stuart had a great dry sense of humour and was up ...

... flight to Phuket, where it's the Thai New Year and they hold massive water fights on the streets everywhere. Sounds really good and hopefully I won't have my bags soaked like I did today. Tomorrow I'm going to hopefully get myself on a little tour around the hills seeing the little farms and sights. Saw a golf course which looked OK but I could do that at home so I'll give it a miss, otherwise it really would be like being back in England.

... Notre acession a durer environ 2 heures. J'ai cale jusqu'au cheville dans la bouette. Obstacles en permanences sur le sentier, arbres, roches, ont glissaient dans la bouette. La pluie c'est mis de la partie a certain moment. Un guide que nous avons tres peu vue puisqu'il allait trop vite pour notre groupe. 4 filles qui tombaient sur les nerfs de Rejean et aussi dans la boue. On a tous pris une debarque sauf Rejean. Nous avons traverser une ...

... and my shoes are in a very very bad state with the mould. Don't know if the conditions will be good enough to do a last trek tomorrow. I'm not too optimistic. Rained all afternoon and evening so I won't go trekking. I decided to watch the final of the Euro at 2:45am instead. Spent this third day doing nothing but chating with the other travelers at the guest house. I'll get a bus to KL tomorrow morning, trying to reach Melaka the same day.