Cameron Highlands

The Cameron Highlands are in the center of peninsular Malaysia and due to their altitude enjoy a temperate climate. We took advantage of this to go for a three hour hike and ended up near the village below.

After the hike we decided to take the local bus a few kilometers to get to the "Mossy Forest". When the bus drop us off we asked, "when does the bus come back?" the answer was, "never". This kid in the picture below was in full muslim garb (head scarf, etc) and got off at the same stop we did. We don't know where she went but we were able to watch her for a while and there was nothing in sight. I imagine that each day she walks a few miles to get a bus for school and then has to walk the same distance later to get home. Her backpack must have weighed as much as she did.

Due to the climate here tea is a big crop. These are tea plantations many hill sides.

For some perspective here we passed the cluster of buildings in the lower right after an hour of walking once the bus let us off. All up hill, I'm pretty sure we covered 10 km just to get to the forest. Later we counted out what we actually hiked and the total was close to 30 km in about 10 hours.

Harvesting of the tea. They fill bags and then throw them down the hill. They bounce off the tops of the tea trees as they fall and hopefully no one is below.

This sign post gave us both a sense of accomplishment and despair. "T. Rata" was where we were staying, the bus took us 5 km so we had by this point, not including the morning hike, walked 10 km uphill and we still hadn't reached our goal.

Basically the mossy forrest.

Once we actually went in it was a little less than expected. But we did see monkey cups. These flowers collect water and monkeys are known to drink from them. Everything was covered with moss but the path was well tread from all the tours. Yes, you can take a tour there but what's the fun in that. As for the moss... well it was like at home but thicker.