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Cameron Highlands! |
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Where do you take two English-born family members when they fly 10,000 miles around the world to Asia? Back to England! Cameron Highlands (in Malaysia) was the vacation spot for the English starting around the late 1800's. Some bugger decided it would be a great place for a spot of tea and scones (pronounced sk-ans).
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Sitting atop a large plateau in Malaysia at about 3000-4000 ft. it is much cooler than most parts of South Asia. In fact, it was even cold at times.
Hidden among the jungle and the mountains are numerous tea and vegetable farms. These tea plantations are world famous and if you ever see BOH tea, it comes from here, Cameron Highlands.
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Did you know that all of the tea made in the world comes from the same leaf? It's just a matter of how it is prepared. Being American, I wasn't too interested in the tea, but Sherrell and her family were fascinated. They slurped down tea like they were castaways handed a jug of water. Me, I kept looking for the scones, buckets of scones. The landscape was enchanting. The clouds would roll through the hills like high speed mist, leaving an eerie feeling that you were 10,000 feet in the sky.
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The hills were covered with very dark green thick jungle. So of course we all did some hiking. Here's a shot of Sherrell as we cross a ridge between two peaks. | |
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While deep in the jungle we ran into some native people, who didn't look Malaysian at all. They were short and had curly hair. Strapped to their sides were large machetes ready to clear a path or cut down a "whitey." And that was just the women. Actually they were quite friendly, but spoke no English and our Malay is pretty weak. Thank you and hello don't get you far in a conversation. The simple, yet attractive little villages of these aborigine people could be seen at the edge of the jungles throughout the highlands, and along the roadways.
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Some of the sites around Cameron Highlands included a stop to see some of the local critters. Yes, this is really a live bug. Talk about sneaky. I'd have this beastie raked up and in a bag before ever seeing it.
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No trip would be complete without checking out the local Buddhist temple. And of course you have to take the family group shots once in a while.
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Did I mention the scenary was spectacular?
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I have a personal affection for waterfalls. So we found a nice one on the drive back down and I couldn't resist taking the old standard tropical-jungle-misty-waterfall-1,000 miles from civilization-or the nearest veggie-burger-not-to-mention-Dr. Pepper-waterfall photo. Pretty standard, actually. |
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Best of all everyone had a great time and no one got hurt. Well, Pauline had an advantage with her pain pills, but the rest of us made it unaided. I really should mention here that I really did eat buckets full of scones, but it was only because the fresh strawberry jam was so good (did I mention they also grow strawberries in these hills?).
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