We hopped on a bus to escape the heat of Kuala Lumpur and ended up in Cameron Highlands. The area is known for its cool climate and tea plantations. It’s only about 200km north from Kuala Lumpur, but it took 4,5 hours to get there on the bus. The reason is that the last bit of the road is very narrow and winding, so the bus driver had to drive relatively slowly to get there in one piece.
There are three bigger towns in this area right next to each other: Ringlet, Tanah Rata and Brinchang. Tanah Rata is the place for the backpackers, so there are plenty of them around. Many of the apartments here are empty right now, because they belong to the Malaysian people, who come here only during the weekends and holidays. Because now it’s the long weekend for the Chinese New Year, we’re expecting this place to be more crowded starting from tomorrow. So far it has been very quiet here.
Already the first day we noticed that the weather is much more pleasant for us Finns here up on the hills. When the kids were playing at the local playground after the sunset, the temperature had dropped to +16C. It was a welcoming change to the +30 heat in Kuala Lumpur.
For the first day we rented a cab for three hours. It cost only 90MYR (20€), so it made sense to do so. Especially because we would have needed to take a taxi to the neighbouring town Brinchang anyway, because the closest proper grocery store was there. So we decided to get three birds with one stone and make a visit to the local bee farm and rose garden as well while we were on the move.
The bee farm was very small, but nevertheless they had managed to put quite a few beehives there on the premises. We walked around the garden for a while and bought some honey from the gift shop, but other than that there wasn’t much to see. Risto was more than happy that the visit was relatively short, because he is afraid of all kinds of flying objects that are smaller than a bird. He kept telling us that we were torturing him by making him walk among the bees.
The rose garden was bigger, but technically it wasn’t just roses. There were plenty of them too, but also all kinds of (apparently) local plants that we didn’t recognise at all. It was a pretty place to walk around for a while.
The grocery store was much bigger than we expected. We managed to find everything we needed except for cheese and ham (or any kind of meat slices really) to put on our toast. Apparently sandwiches or milk products in general aren’t a big thing in Malaysia. It’s often very had to find ham/turkey slices, cheese or a family sized yoghurt pack from the shop.
For the second day here we booked a trip to the local mossy forest, tea plantation and a butterfly farm. The mossy forest we went into was on a top of the highest peak in Cameron Highlands, Gunum Brinchang. It’s at the altitude of 2000m, so it was rather cold there, because the morning was cloudy. On a clear day you can see far from there, but today it was just clouds.
The walk in the forest was cold, slippery and wet. Fortunately we had prepared us for a cooler weather, so we weren’t that cold really. The guide told us about all the different kinds of plants in the forest you can use for medical purposes. He also explained how in the higher altitudes there aren’t that many fruit trees in the rainforest, so there are not that many wild animals there. You can find a lot of different kinds of insects though, but no leeches or mosquitos.
The tea plantation was located a few hundred meters lower than the peak, so there were no clouds when we got there. We visited the most popular Malaysian tea company called BOH (Best of Highlands). It’s a Scottish company and has been owned by the same family for three generations now. 95% of the tea they produce is for the Malaysian market, and the remaining 5% is exported to Singapore. Tea hasn’t originally grown in Malaysia. It was the time when Malaysia was a colony of UK, when the brits brought tea here. The moist, but cool weather is well suited for farming tea, so the biggest tea plantations are concentrated in this area. Around here you can harvest tea all year round, whereas in other warmer areas you can’t. Nowadays they use machines to harvest tea, but in the earlier days the tea leaves were picked by hand. When I say machines, I don’t mean big, automatic things. The machine looks more like a flat lawn mower that is pulled by who men between them on top of the tea bushes. If the hill is very steep, they use a berry picker type of a thing to pick the leaves. We also tasted some of the BOH teas at the café on the premises and ended up buying some too.
The butterfly farm wasn’t really a farm at all. It was just a greenhouse full of different types and sizes of butterflies. The biggest of them were the national butterflies of Malaysia, Rajah Brooke’s Birdwings. Their wing span can be up to 15-17cm. When we entered the building we happened to see a couple of them sitting on the bushes. We carefully picked them up and held them on our hands and clothes. Only later we noticed an information board saying “Please don’t try to pick the butterflies”. Oh well, too late for that.
For the last day here we hadn’t planned anything special to do, which turned out to be a good thing, because it was pretty much raining the whole day until late afternoon. Then we went to the local playground, where the kids rented two bikes for 20MYR (4,5€) and cycled around for a good while. Another sports lesson completed, great success!
