Cream tea anyone!

Trip Start Nov 25, 2004

169

Trip End Jan 26, 2005

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Flag of Malaysia Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
Wednesday, March 9, 2005

I - in particular - was looking forward to the Cameron Highlands just for the temperature to go down abit! The scenery up there was stunning and arriving there it reminded us of a mix between Sapa, Dalat and Khao Sok - like an alpine village in summer in the middle of Malaysia!??! We'd read about a cool sounding guesthouse in the LP called 'Fathers Guesthouse' and sure enough as we got off the bus there was a tout there from the very place! Spooky eh??? Anyway this place was genius and the reason it had appealed to my lovely husband so much was the fact that the rooms were in old Nissen huts! I didn't know what a Nissen hut was but it got Paul enthusiastic about a guesthouse which he never has been before - and for those of you who are as ignorant as I was its basically an air raid shelter with a corrugated iron roof from WW2 and smells of damp! But we'll remember it!! It had a great location though as well on a hill surrounded by vegetable plots and flower gardens and played movies in its lounge!

Our first afternoon was great and once again proved how lovely the Malaysians are - we chose a street cafe to have a late lunch and a pidgeon promptly decided to relieve itself! Paul did a rather impressive dodge just in the nick of time...gutted! This cafe was great though and we sat chatting with the locals and then the mad woman who owned the place gave us some free ice cream! Now it doesn't get better than that!

We spent our time here in training (well sort of!) for our climb to Mount Kinabalu - we managed 1840m which is about where the trek starts for Kinabalu! Hmmmm! But it was very steep and all uphill - it certainly gave my legs a shock anyway! My husband selfishly stormed on ahead leaving me waterless! (For similar stories, please refer to Dave's speech at the wedding!!!!) To celebrate our successful training we treated ourselves to a cream tea with fresh cream scones and Paul had a slice of Apple Pie - well we need sugary foods as energy reserves!!!! It's mad though - there's a huge English influence everywhere with a lot of the buildings trying to copy Tudor style designs!

We also did another walk out to a lake (with no water in it!) in the afternoon with a real English style hotel complete with a log fire! Oh yes! This was our 6 month wedding anniversary and we had a very romantic 'Lovers Steamboat' - don't get carried away, it's a stew!!! It also rained...lots and we loved it just like on our wedding day! AWWWW!

What makes this place especially beautiful though are all the tea plantations covering the hillsides making the whole place the brightest of greens! We went on a half day tour on our second day and had a guide who was fantastic (Kumar)! He even made tea sound interesting! He took us into a mossy forest and told us all about how the locals use the different plants, etc as medecines - nature's very own medicine cupboard! He also told us about the plants that can be used as poison....so you better watch out for my cooking when we get back! Actually you better watch out anyway.....