Jungle trek and tea plantations in torrential rain

Trip Start Jan 02, 2008
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Trip End Jun 17, 2008


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Where I stayed
Daniel's Lodge

Flag of Malaysia  , Pahang,
Sunday, May 4, 2008

It's funny how a fiver suddenly feels like a fortune!  I couldn't justify paying that much for a taxi to the bus terminal, when my bus ticket for the 5 hour journey from Penang to the Cameron Highlands was less than that.  So I walked to the bus station and caught a local bus to the bus terminal which was out of town, adding another couple of hours to my journey.  I arrived in the Cameron Highlands and was glad to be in the mountains, because the weather isn't as hot and humid.  I stayed in a very touristy town, Tanah Rata, in a dorm room and slept next to a 78 year old Japanese man, who kept giving me presents and slept with socks on his hands and a T.shirt over his head.

I only spent 2 nights in the Cameron Highlands, but managed to see alot.   Instead of going on a whistle-stop tour around all the sights (like most people do), I opted for a jungle trek.  There were 5 of us in the group and Kali, a 65 year old man, was our guide.  He was great.  Despite his age he was fitter than all of us and very knowledgeable.  The route we took into the jungle wasn't walked by many, so we really had to fight our way through.  Kali was at the front with his knife, cutting and clearing the path.  We scrambled behind him, falling up and down hill, slipping and sliding everywhere.  After 2 hours we reached the tea plantations.  The view was amazing.  We got to meet the workers and watched them cutting the tea leaves.  Where it was steep they had to do it by hand, otherwise they used a machine, but it still looked hard work dragging it up hill.  The workers were all from India or Bangladesh, because the Malay people don't like the hard labour. 

As we were trekking through the tea plantations it started to rain.  It wasn't drizzle, it was torrential rain.  Some of the others had waterproofs, but I didn't.  I was drenched within seconds.  But it actually made the trekking all the more fun.  Now we were really slipping everywhere!  Our path turned into a mud bath and then we waded through a stream for about half an hour, at this point I was so soaked that I looked like I'd fallen into a river.  We squelched through mud and I got attacked by leeches, which Kali then burnt off me.  Last stop was a waterfall and then on our way back I found a giant millipede that was longer than my hand, so I held it...all those legs kind of tickle!  After 7 hours of solid trekking we jumped into a jeep to a bus stop, because we were too knackered to walk any further.  Back at the hostel I kept finding leeches in my clothes, they are disgusting things.

A couple of the guys on the trek, CK and Gabriel had a car, so the following day we drove to the highest peak in the Cameron Highlands for a view across the mountains.  Then I hitched a lift with them and another guy, Berend, to Kuala Lumpur.
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