The Slitherants: Cameron Highlands - Wed 3/03 to Fri 5/03

Cameron Highlands…After the sun and sand of the Perhentians, we thought it might be nice to go somewhere a little cooler and without a beach. The Cameron highlands is in central Malaysia, a couple hours drive from the West coast. It is unusual compared to the rest of Malaysia as it is (obviously) a mountainous region and it has a much cooler climate. The average daytime temperature is between 16 and 28 degrees, unlike the almost permanent 35 degrees throughout the rest of the country. The landscape is dominated by misty peaks ranging in height from about 5000 to 6500 feet above sea level. This makes the highlands the highest place in peninsular Malaysia and a bit of a contrast to the rest of the country. As we stepped out of the bus we were greeted with a nice cool breeze and a much more comfortable temperature than anywhere we had been before.

The Cameron highlands is a very popular place for tourists, both local and overseas and there are hotels galore. Most are very tall apartment like buildings but as usual there was no chance of us staying anywhere like this. We did however find a great guesthouse called ‘Father’s’ that had awesome facilities, such as a movie room, internet access (albeit quite slow) a back bar and a full range of tours and services on offer. On our first afternoon we decided to walk into the town and have a look around. I was surprised by how many ‘palangi’s’ or foreign tourists there were. It was also nice to be back in a place with an abundance of cheap restaurants and good Indian food as we had been quite limited for choice on the Perhentian Islands.

The afternoon had another unexpected surprise in store for me as we were wandering along near a park just off the main street. I heard a noise, it was a very familiar noise and like a whippet my head shot around in the direction from whence it came. What I saw was something so wonderful I nearly broke into a sprint straight towards the source of this heavenly sound. I had heard, of course, the sound of people skateboarding! A small concreted area surrounding a fountain in this small park was home to the Cameron highlands skate crew. Not much of a spot I must say but it is was all these kids had and I certainly wasn’t complaining. Within seconds I had commandeered a board and was off skating around like a little kid again. The locals had a couple obstacles and two grind rails and some pretty rough ground. I didn’t care though as I was just so happy to be rolling again. The kids seemed genuinely surprised to see some random foreign bloke skating around in their little spot but they were happy to let me use their boards and asked me heaps of questions. I don’t know if I did much to impress them skating wise as the board I was riding wasn’t the best, the spot was pretty average and I hadn’t skated for a month but I certainly didn’t care and they didn’t seem to either. After a bit of a skate, and an obligatory photo with them all we said our good-byes and I skipped away a lot happier than when I arrived.

The Cameron highlands are known for their bush walks and mountain treks and so on the second morning we thought we’d give one a go. We chose an easy one (relatively) called Mount Jasar and the peak was a mere 5500 feet above sea level. It would take us an hour or so to reach the top and sounded pretty straight forward. So after some fluffing around trying to find a shop to sell us some water and snacks we headed off up the mountain. The first part of the trek was pretty simple and not too steep. The last half an hour or so involved clambering up a near vertical track climbing over tree roots and ducking under branches. The view at the top however was pretty awesome and we could see all the peaks around us and the town and giant hotels in the valleys below. After a hip jarring climb down the same track we decided that this would be enough of a walking experience for us and the rest of our stay would be devoted to doing something that didn’t involve walking up incredibly steep hills. We succeeded in this by booking a ‘countryside’ mini-van tour for the next day.

The tour cost 25 RM (about 8 bucks AUD) and consisted of visiting a Buddhist temple, rose farm, tea plantation, a butterfly enclosure, a strawberry farm and a bee farm. I must admit at first I thought this tour sounded pretty lame but once we got going and we met our guide ’Mr Singh’ it was actually pretty cool. Our guide had a funny habit of saying some English words very slowly so they sounded like ’rooose gar…din’ but he was a nice guy and had good knowledge of the places we visited and the Cameron Highlands in general. He did get very stressed though when one of our group went missing and our schedule got delayed while he went to look for the missing person. This was pretty funny as he started stressing hard out (the guy was 5 minutes late) but in the end the missing party was found and we were on our way again.

Highlights were the enormous tea plantation that covered about three hillsides in this certain valley. We could see people picking the tea (they earn about 40 RM a day (about $13 AUD) and it looked like back breaking work. You feel a bit bad sometimes as you know the people that live and work here get paid stuff all and compared to these people we are all so fantastically rich it makes you feel a bit guilty. Anyway the tea place was cool and the cup of tea we had very tasty and with that we were off to the butterfly farm. Now I thought of all the places we visited this would be the least interesting. How wrong I was! You see only the first little bit is a butterfly enclosure, the back two thirds is full of giant bugs, spiders, snakes, lizards and (my favourite!) scorpions. Now we all know that at home if you go to a zoo or a animal enclosure of any kind they will not in a million years let you touch any of the animals. Not so in Malaysia. Within seconds Kate had a giant Rhino beetle on her arm and I was eyeing up the tank with about 100 scorpions in it. The bloke that worked there was a bit of a character and he was grabbing bugs, snakes and scorpions out of their tanks for us to play with. I wore a couple of scorpions as lapels for a little while and it was definitely one of the cooler things I have done so far on this trip. They are pretty placid and just kind of sit on you. One started crawling towards my neck but the handler guy grabbed it by it’s tail and flipped it around so it went the other way. He assured me that they’re not dangerous if you know how to handle them but they were real live poisonous scorpions so I never thought you could ever handle them safely. The handler told us that he was so hard that if the scorpions bit him the scorpion would die and we all had a big laugh while surrounded by deadly snakes and other dangerous critters.

Once back at the guest house I was yarning to the owner and she said that all the deadly animals that they have at the butterfly farm are poached by people around the Cameron highlands. This means that if someone catches a snake or a scorpion they can take it to the butterfly farm (or another one like it) and sell it to them. So all the cool snakes and scorpions I had seen had actually been stolen from the wild and put into captivity for the viewing pleasure of foreign tourists like….me. This bummed me out a bit but the lady said not to worry, it’s just how it is here. She also told me that they get a lot of snakes in the storerooms of my beloved Indian restaurants in the town. Naively I asked why? The answer I didn’t want to hear. It’s because they’re filthy of course! The snakes go in to catch the rats that are foraging in there and the poor bloke who goes in to get some more supplies gets a heart attack. They have spitting cobras, vipers and all manner of dangerous and deadly snakes in the highlands and we had seen but a small selection.

The owner also told me a funny story about when a snake made it’s way into the back bar of the guesthouse. While all the guests ran to get their cameras a snake handler was called. This bloke thought he had the snake under control until it made a lunge for his hand and latched on by it’s considerable fangs to that webbing of skin between your thumb and index finger. As the guests all shrieked in horror and the snake handler turned white the snake began to coil itself around the poor blokes arm. With the cameras of the guests furiously clicking the man was escorted to the car and transported to the hospital with the snake still firmly in place on his arm. Once arriving in the E.R ward of the local hospital the man did not receive any medical help unfortunately, quite the reverse. The power the snake had over the people at the hospital was so considerable that everyone who saw it immediately ran screaming from the building leaving only the man and the snake to remain together alone! Thankfully the only creatures like this we saw were at the butterfly farm and we made it away from the Cameron highlands without any encounters of this sort ’in the wild’.

The next day it was time to move on again and we caught a bus to the West coast island of Penang. This is the centre of Chinese culture in Malaysia and is the only place in the country where the Malay people are the minority and the Chinese the majority. It is a historically significant port on the Straights of Malacca and is very prosperous with tall apartment towers reminiscent of the Gold Coast overlooking the ocean. Anyway more about this place next time. ‘Til then.

The Cameron Highlands skate crew.

Tandoori chicken cooking it a claypot. We've had the best indian while we have been in Malaysia. The best was in Tuala Terenggganu and Malaka.

A cricket on a beautiful flower. I found this on one of our walks around the city.

At the butterfly farm there were heaps of insects and reptiles which the owner would take out of their small enclosure so you could pet and/or take a photos of them. Tim was keen on the scorpions while I preferred the insects!

The scorpion pit!

This is the animal handler. In this picture he was tormenting a tourist with a poisonous snakes.

Me with the stick insect that looks like a leaf.

A close-up of this beautiful stick insect.

Me and the rhino beetle.

One of the many colourful and beautiful butterflies from the Butterfly farm.

Tim being an Orang Utan.

Us at the BOH tea planation.

The tea planation. Every 3 weeks the new tea shoots are cut by a machine and after 3 years the trees are given a good prune to stop it turning into a tree. The tea plant produces tea shots for about 120 years - these plants on the BOH plantation are 80 to 90 years old. The plantation is self efficient - the workers and their family live on the farm where they have a shop, doctors clinic and even a hindi, buddist and muslim temple.

The strawberry farm. We ate some dried strawberrys, strawberry cake and strawberry shake - all very yummmmmmy. The farm produces 30kgs of strawberries every day which are sold to the local hotels. We were really surprised to hear that the plants continously produce fruit all year round. As you can see the plants are risen to minimise pests and are planted in this plastic tube which contains ground coconut husks (the husks have heaps of minerals).

The view from the Rose Gardens. You can see the terraces in the background - the hills are sooo steep that they have to cut terraces into the hills in order farm the farm as well as the hot houses filled with either flowers, cucumbers, strawberries or tomatoes (white buildings).