Malaysia - Cameron Highlands - Tea, Strawberries and Revenge of the Tiger

Clever girls that we are, we booked ourselves onto the 8am bus to the famously beautiful Cameron Highlands the morning after Canada Day. While we realized that hauling our packs for the fifteen minute walk to the bus station at that early hour was less than ideal, we had failed to consider the further impacts of our Canada Day celebrations the next morning. Since we went to bed at about 3am and had to wake up at 7am to check out and get to Puduraya Bus Station, we were in somewhat rough shape and as I watched Mehron pack her bags in what looked like slow motion, I started tallying just how many Tiger beers we had consumed the night before. We had had at least five of the giant pints each, which is WAY more beer than either of us would usually imbibe. Hence the slow motion. And the feeling that we had been mauled by an actual tiger.

Know what really cheered us up? When it started pouring rain on us half way on our walk to the bus station. That was really special. Nothing like being soaked on a four hour Arctic A/C bus ride.

I made a Herculean effort to stay awake on the ride to check out the landscapes outside KL, but my body was protesting too hard so I konked right out. So did Mehr. When I woke up we were a mere 40km from Tanah Rata, the Cameron Highlands town we'd be staying in. I was bummed I'd only get to see a little bit of the scenery, until I realized that with the curves in the steep hillside roads, we in fact still had at least an hour of the drive to go. Good thing Cameron Highlands is stunning old growth forest on undulating hills with sweeping vistas, or we'd have been pretty bored.



Cameron Highlands is known for two main exports: tea and strawberries. There are several massive tea estates in the area, including Sengai Palas estates which produces BOH tea. After an hour of wandering the grounds and taking the factory tour, we still had to actually ask someone what BOH stood for, since this information was nowhere to be found in the displays. "Best of Highlands" was the answer. Go figure. BOH produces 600,000 kg of tea per year from its estates. Our favourite at the tea shop was the Earl Grey with Tangerine. Yum.





Although we didn't make it to the strawberry farm tours, we did see all the strawberry shop outlets, which sold strawberry everything (hats, clothes, pillows, calculators, etc.) But no actual strawberries, strangely enough.



It was also at Cameron Highlands that our run-in friend Brendan had a brilliant idea for a prank. We have a mutual friend (who shall remain nameless) who is quite good friends with both of us who we knew would be stoked that we'd met up in Malaysia. Brendan thought it would be hilarious to pretend that we hadn't gotten along at all. I wrote an email to said person pointing out that Brendan was annoying, a major complainer and a semi-stalker. Brendan wrote a separate email to the same person describing me as rude and mean and noting I tried to ditch him at every given opportunity. Said person was very confused upon receiving these emails. Operation Fake Out was a complete success. So, dear nameless friend, just to clarify, we got along just fine... so well in fact, that he joined Mehr and I on the trip to the Cameron Highlands for the day before he had to get back to Thailand for his summer job. Tres fun, I promise.