Malaysian Travelog - Part III

Continuing on with her travels....

" after those first few miserable days in malaysia, a wheezing, heaving bus with me in it found its way to the cameron highlands (how's that for a name that smacks of colonialism?) : think switchback turns thick with bamboo, tree ferns and towering tropical hardwoods; clouds clinging to the tops of the hills and tendrils of mist snaking down the road.  it's cool and moist, remote and lush, as surely the attraction today as it was during colonial times.  and they grow tea there:  miles and miles of low bushes blanketing the hills like thick carpet, defining the countours in intense shades of green. 

the cultural mix was the first thing i found interesting.  ethnic malays are a minority to populations of chinese and south indian decent, and watching these two cultures interface was great entertainment, almost like watching two different species interact.  probably none of them have been to their countries of ethnic origin, but they retain their national characters quite profoundly:  the taciturn and inscrutable indians, and the abrasive and abrupt chinese.  they've lived side by side here amicably for who knows how long, but there is no dilution happening.  it makes for fantastic cuisine though, sometimes right in the same restaurants:  the tandoor oven and curries on display on the indian side, versus the roasted chickens and ducks hanging by their necks on the chinese side.  needless to say i ate a lot, and therefore found it necessary to get a great deal of excercise.

which is the real reason people come here, aside of course from sitting in the guesthouse and catching up on twenty years' bootlegged action films.  the hiking trails are splendid.  really, it's some of the best short hiking i've found in asia, owing to the fact that the trails are well marked, maintained and user friendly, in stark contrast to the purposefully obtuse hiking elsewhere that necessitates the unwanted company of often useless guides, who may just lag well behind you and call out to be careful when it's muddy.  but this was fantastic:  i spent five days doing long hikes on my own, into the surrounding hills and often returning on rural roads that wound through intensive farmland: asparagus, strawberries, eggplants, greens and all kinds of flowers.  the rainforest is lovely, the views excellent on the rare occasions when it's clear, and imbued with a sense of intimacy when hiking through thick clouds and light, misty rain.

i'm astonished at how many of the plants growing there were familiar to me--wild begonias and impatiens, orchids and rhododendrons.  it makes me marvel at the explorer-theives who first journeyed here, and the hardships they must have endured to pillage highly prized specimens of exotic flora so sought after by their wealthy patrons.  now many of these plants  comprise the most mundane and commonplace of garden flowers, endlessly hybridized to relieve the tedium of their ubiquity; they have insinuated themselves upon us, domesticated themselves to their own genetic advantage.  and orchids, how did something as fickle as an orchid trick us into creating elaborate artificial environments for it, just to fulfill our own desire for rarity!  seeing the originals in the place where they evolved is just as startling as the fact that there's now a paved road to the top of the highest mountain:  three hours' hike up alone, clinging to tree roots and looking out over the foggy treetops, to be greeted by three jeeploads of tourists at the top (the sort who don't travel with rain gear), who stumbled out to find muddy me, and asked in astonishment (this is the gratifying part) 'did you WALK here?' "

....to be continued....

A picture I found on Google Earth of a tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands area:

Comments

[Tulips4me]

I probably would have been one of those people in the jeep!

[Stephanie]

I definitely would have been one of those people in the Jeep! TulipGirl cracks me up. Hey, maybe we can take a girls only trip to the Cameron Highlands and we can all be those people in the Jeep! I like it...