Cameron Highlands & Taiping

First of all, Happy New Year to all of you! :) We haven't heard from you for a long time and we're a bit behind on blogging, but that's how it is sometimes when you don't have internet or just don't feel like it ;)... Now we're fully motivated again to share our latest travel experiences with you :).

We're still sailing up the west coast of Malaysia and enjoying our time on our trip across the beautiful sea. Although we've already traveled the nearly same route from north to south by land, it's completely different by sea... You travel much more freely and independently, deciding spontaneously where to drop anchor, but you're very dependent on the weather conditions. The time you spend waiting for the bus or looking for the perfect hostel on land, you spend on the boat trying to catch the best wind conditions and favorable currents... You'll find out more about our sailing trip in the next post.

But from time to time, we get the urge to explore the land further and take small trips in the vicinity. During our last longer stop in Pangkor, we spent 3 days in the Cameron Highlands and Taiping. The Cameron Highlands were initially at the top of our "To Do List" for Malaysia, but they kept moving further back because we heard from many people that it's not really worth it and we had other destinations in mind... well, we had time and the desire to hike a bit, the harbor where we docked wasn't really worth seeing, and we had already extensively explored Pangkor a month ago, so we decided to head to the mountains.

In essence, the Cameron Highlands are a beautiful jungle area in the mountains of central Malaysia. The forests are green, the temperatures are around 23 degrees and very pleasant, and the weather conditions are a nice mix of sun and rain... That's what the surveyor William Cameron thought when he discovered the highlands in 1885 while working for the colonial government, and thanks to him, the area has its very non-Malay name - today it's the perfect place to grow tea, vegetables, and various fruits. Unfortunately, this required once again clearing too much beautiful forest, and hundreds of plantations, greenhouses, and concrete buildings took its place... We've noticed this way too often in Malaysia - construction everywhere, but apparently the demand is not there, as most houses are 70% empty... Sometimes it feels like being in a ghost town waiting in vain for the expected masses of visitors and tourists.

The capital of the Cameron Highlands is Tanah Rata, from where all hiking trails into the mountains start, so it was the perfect starting point for us. We declined all the offers of guided tours to eat strawberries, see dead butterflies, and try honey that is not even grown in the area, and set off on our own. The approximately 10 hiking trails in various levels of difficulty are really great and surprisingly diverse... From paths through tea and vegetable plantations, to nature trails in the jungle or through small villages, you can discover pretty much everything off the beaten tourist track. The tea plantations stretch across the undulating mountain ranges like soft little pillows that you want to jump into... Here and there you meet farmers or the indigenous people of Malaysia, the Orang Asli, who still live in the mountains away from today's hustle and bustle. We really enjoyed the hikes through nature and would recommend them to everyone, everything else was not really worth seeing and too artificial for us. So after 2 nights, we moved on... The accommodations are not that cheap, which is why we had our first experience in a Sleeping Box Hostel. It was really interesting and perfectly doable for 2 nights... You actually sleep in a small box that has the floor area of a double bed mattress and a height of about 1.5 meters, with other adventurous backpackers sleeping next to, below, and above you... Not quite as practical for a longer period of time, as you really have little space to store your things, but since we were traveling with our small daypacks, it was no problem. It seemed like all the budget travelers were meeting in this hostel, everyone from our bus ran into us again here... The same goes for Hatice, whom Sergi knows from his theater days in Frankfurt... The world is just a small village. J

Since we still had time, we made a stop in the small town of Taiping in northwestern Malaysia. Taiping is one of the oldest cities and the former capital of the region. Since the Chinese influence here is quite strong, there was again a lot of delicious food and colorful hustle and bustle. We tried the traditional and popular dessert Cendol, which is a frozen sweet dessert made from worm-like green rice flour jelly, coconut milk, and palm sugar syrup - quite interesting, but once is enough for now ;). After wandering through the city all day to explore everything, we stumbled upon a kind of parade in the evening... The Chinese once again showed off everything they had... Loud music, traditional costumes, and lots of colorful flashing lights... The floats, for example, consisted of large moving papier-mâché dragons or a kind of small decorated temples, and people (rather gross) distributed candies and blessed the audience with a kind of holy water - a little bit of blessing can't hurt, right? One man told us that the parade was organized because of the temple's birthday in the city, another that it's a kind of New Year's tradition... So we didn't really figure out the exact reason, but it was exciting to just sit on the sidewalk and watch the hustle and bustle.

The few days away from the boat were good, but we were already looking forward to Gilles, Samara ll, and the next sailing trip...

That's it from us for now! We hope you're doing well at home and enjoying the wintertime!

Lots of love to you! Sergi & Mine