Strawberries and Tea

Our next stop on the Malaysian peninsula was the Cameron Highlands. We stayed one more day in Tioman than we had planned, and decided we better head up to the mountains to cool off for a few days. We opted for the highlands rather than Taman Negara, the country's rain forest, after we heard that it is rare to see any big wildlife and the cost of a guide and overnight stays was too high for our diminishing budget.

By far the chilliest place in the country, where the temperature never exceeds 80 degrees, the Cameron Highlands is a vast jungle covered mountain range (not too tall though, only about 1800 meters), and a popular escape from the steamy lowlands. Luckily we were there during the week and escaped the hordes of Malaysian tourists on holiday.

We arrived by bus at 3AM in Ipoh, took a two hour taxi to Tanah Rata and slept on a few couches in the outdoor lounging area of our soon-to-be hostel (until we were woken up by the morning buzz of travelers). Since our room was not going to be ready until noon, we picked Public Enemies to watch out of their selection of 1,000 movies and waited. After finally getting a room, all we wanted to do was sleep, but with enthusiasm to take advantage of what the highlands had to offer, we drank some caffeine and got on with the day.

This climate is ideal for tea bushes, therefore the hillsides are dotted with tea plantations, Boh being the most famous. We took a four kilometer walk through the hilly plantations where thousands of rows of tea plants blanket the rolling hills - it looked as if the mountains were covered in thick green corduroy from the 60s. The tea plantations had a similar grace and graphic quality as the rice terraces in Vietnam. We took a short tour of the processing factory, where we saw how tea is pressed, fermented, oxidized, and dried. Because this plantation is nestled between the mountains, plucking leaves isn't yet mechanized, so the leaves are being trimmed by locals with knives and big baskets on their backs filled with tea leaves. After drinking a few cups of tea on a terrace overlooking the farms, we hitched a ride back up the steep road to town.

And not only is the climate ideal for tea, but also for strawberries, which we haven't seen since we left the United States. And there were strawberry farms everywhere - in our town you could get strawberry ice cream, strawberry scones, strawberry naan, strawberry shoes, strawberry umbrellas, etc. We visited a farm and tasted some homemade strawberry ice cream, and it was heavenly!