Malaysia Highlights

Highlights of Malaysia

From southern Thailand and the town of Trang I took a bus to Satun and a truck taxi out to the ferry dock on my way to Langkawi, Malaysia. There are a lot of ways to get into Malaysia but Hat Yai was having some terrorists with homemade bomb issues so it was better to go by water and avoid unwanted drama that has nothing to do with me. Remember, Thailand was under Marshall Law and still is until they hold fair elections.

My visa was one day over the limit so I had to pay for the extra day and the immigration officer said it was okay for me to come back in when I’m ready. It’s a nice thing to know as the officer put the 500 baht in his pocket with a smile.

Langkawi is a big island and the ferry dock is on the southeast side so a taxi or rent a motorbike to get around to the east side where most of the beaches are lined up. The weather had changed to mostly rain so I didn’t stay too long. My next stop was Cameron Highlands where I’ve been many times and still enjoy it every time.

Cameron Highlands is a hop from Langkawi and a bus ride to Ipoh and another bus ride up the 60 kilometers of winding hills and deep river gorges. Cameron Highlands is one of five hill stations in Malaysia. Cameron Highlands is now mainly made up of a massive Boh Tea Plantation, Strawberry growers, and most recently a power station with the building of a dam for a turbine reservoir.  The hiking in the area is incredible and the ancient forests in the mountains are worth the time it takes to find them.

All this is just warming up for my time in Borneo. I needed to get to Kuala Lumpur and fly from there to Borneo but I caught a bug on the bus that knocked me out for two days.

There are a few airports in the Borneo area and I chose the east coast to Sandakan where I was closest to the national parks and diving locations that others had recommended. From here south everywhere I went nature and rare flora and fauna surrounded me. The rivers and forests teamed with wildlife in the sky, in the water, the trees. I saw animals that you can’t see anywhere else in the world.

Danum Valley was a great place to hike and listen to the scientists and volunteers working the naturalists. A wild Rhino was caught prior to me getting there and a 4 kilometer fence has been erected to pen in the Rhino and a female hopefully to teach her the ways of the wild and if luck has it make a baby Rhino to begin a new age for the Borneo Rhinos. Cross your fingers.

A few years ago I was in Sumatra following the Orangutans in the jungle but there is a difference between the Orangutans in Sumatra and here in Borneo, the Orangutans are for the most part still wild where as in Sumatra they have been orphaned by depletion of forest for palm trees that produce palm oil. Deforestation and palm oil are unfortunately big business in both Sumatra and Borneo. Rubber plantations seem to be on the decline.

I took a van to Samporna where tourists are being kidnapped and held for ransom from Philippine pirates from the southern islands. It’s not a far distance from the Philippines to Borneo. Of course the pirates have on land help that facilitate the abduction coordinates. From Samporna I took a boat out to Mabul Island where I dove for a few days at different spots. The water was clear even though a storm had just passed the day before.

We dove twice a day, one in the morning and one dive after lunch and we could adjust our spots due to the weather. Mabul is a small island with approximately seven good dive sights and a few moderate ones.

There are a lot of photo ops and it’s worth the value of an underwater camera. I’m not sold on the GoPro except for size but for more clarity you have to bite the bullet and get a bigger camera with a pressure shell that you clean with fresh water after every day and dry it out completely.

  The best diving I had was in Northern Sulawesi coming up next.

www.davidcdagley.com

Cameron Highlands Revisited

Cameron Highlands Revisited

On Langkawi I took a taxi to the ferry dock and I had two choices, go to Georgetown on Penang Island that takes 3 hours by boat or go straight across to mainland Malaysia to Perlis and that only takes an hour. I figured Georgetown would be packed with people and so I chose to go to Perlis. When I got there I walked the short distance to the bus station and hoped a bus for Ipoh, about 6 hours to the south on Malaysia’s great highways and roads. The roads are as good as any in the world and their buses are spacious. I’m not a big fan of air-con but every time I get on a bus I chill to the bone like I’m back in Alaska except I’m wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops.

On the drive down we passed the Penang Bridge and the sun was setting behind Georgetown and the harbor. The skyline silhouetted large hotels and business buildings. I arrived in Ipoh around 9 pm and secured a bus ticket to Cameron Highlands for the next day. I left the bus station and went out in search of something to eat and a place to stay the night.

I boarded a bus at 10:30am and figured it would take two hours to get to Cameron Highlands. Well, little to my knowledge, there was a holiday coming and traffic was bumper to bumper for the last 30 kilometers. As we rose in elevation I noticed much of the rainforest along the roadside had been cleared extensively and was replaced by open eroding ground and strawberry greenhouses, not just a few but an over abundance. I saw shredded tarps trying to hold back the inevitable landslide issues. For me it was sad but there seems to be a big market for these strawberries that produce at an alarming rate. Genetics? I didn’t see any bug holes either which is suspicious.

Tanah Rata, the Cameron Highlands quaint town center, was unrecognizable and buried under new construction of high-end hotels and resorts. The road is two-lanes, one each way and on this day there was a massive influx of visitors. The next day was a workers holiday.

I went to the only familiar place I knew, Kang Hotel and Guesthouse. Kang Hotel is on the main drag and the Guesthouse is around the corner with cheap rooms and a bon-fire pit where westerners gather after nightfall. No. 38, Jalan Besar, 39000 Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands. (Ph. # 05-491-5828, H/phone: 016-542-2249/ 019-542-0280).

I had a look around down town where merchants were setting up and preparing for the onslaught of the weekend. I saw Ye Olde Smokehouse, a high-end restaurant with a five star restaurant and wine list that I planned to experience the night before I leave. There are two 18-hole golf courses in the neighborhood when there used to only be one. I decided to hook up with an early morning tour to get out of the way, hoping to find the same peace and quiet I recall from my previous visits. There are two bars in town, the Traveller’s Bar down town and the Jungle Bar at Kang’s Guesthouse. There was plenty of live music about although they seemed a bit stuck in a retro time warp.

The minivan picked me up at 9 am and we drove out of town towards the Boh Tea Plantation. The Boh Tea Plantation began in 1929 and is still a Scottish family owned business. The father is 92 and has recently moved back to Scotland and passed the reigns to his son. We took a short walk through the tea rows and took some epically clear pictures of a beautiful day. It has been raining with lightning and thunder at night but I got lucky with the weather.

We drove to the highest point and climbed into a lookout tower at approximately 6,000 feet. There weren’t very many people around at this point in the day but I knew they were coming.

We walked through a mossy forest with 500-800 year-old trees and a spongy forest floor. Carnivorous insect eating Pitcher Plants hung everywhere and the air was different. Apparently there is a higher concentration of oxygen among the trees than out of the forest. We scrambled over roots and rocks and dodged the odd razor sharp vine. I blew a flip-flop and walked barefoot for half an hour. The moss felt cool to the touch and I watched for leeches.

A quick stop at the Boh Tea Plantation Center where visitors can taste different varieties of tea that they make and sent. There is also a chronological history of the plantation from its early days to present including many photos of the pickers out doing their thing but that doesn’t happen so much anymore. There’s not a lot of money in picking so they’ve moved on to clippers. The odd older leaf might get mixed in and they are usually additionally bitter.

The pickers of the past had issues with cobras hiding in the tea hedge as they picked concentrating on the task at hand. Boots and a thick apron have been added for protection.

As we left we noticed streams of cars coming towards us, most of them stopping and starting due to the narrow road. It’s basically one lane but used in both directions and with the amount of cars it became obvious that this was going to take some doing to get out. This gave me ample opportunity to take pictures of my surroundings and the family estate on the hill.

The last stop on the tour was at a strawberry patch where I joined a beautiful young German woman named Marie for a pure strawberry juice and a strawberry shake. She had been living in Melbourne, Australia working on a plantation there for six months before traveling to Malaysia. She was heading home to Germany shortly. We ended up having an Indian curry and roti lunch back in Tanah Rata before parting ways. I was to meet her at the Jungle Bar but I didn’t make it. I got caught up with some hydroelectric engineers and surveyors at the Travellers Bar listening to what they’re up to about 45 kilometers away.

On Sunday the Cameron Highlands emptied out of people. There was a stream of cars heading for home down the 60-kilometer curvy road. I got Cameron Highlands back a little for the evening and the day. I first came to Cameron Highlands in 1996 and returned a few times since then but this is the biggest building spurt I’ve witnessed. As the other times, I finished my time off here with an elegant dinner at Ye Olde Smokehouse. A little out of character for me but yeah I had a margarita, Prawn Cocktail with two types of caviar, a Caesar salad, roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, black currant jelly, and gravy for the roasted potatoes and a nice glass of Cabernet. I finished it off with chocolate mouse with strawberry sauce and whipped cream on the side. It’s a nice change of pace after a year of eating rice and noodles. Tomorrow I’m back to rice and noodles. Ye Olde Smokehouse deserves a blog all to itself and I’ll write it up soon. It’s got a good story behind it. It began in 1937 and still going strong.

www.davidcdagley.com