Cameron Highlands-entering the real Malaysia

Malaysia is a developing country and comparing with the whole of south-Asia, Malaysia is one of the countries with the highest economic growth. But beside the modern, western orientated development and the urgency to reach the status of an industrialized country, Malaysia has a wonderful and manifold nature. Nearly 60 percentage of Malaysia is covered by the rainforest and therefore can offer a lot of holiday places to escape from the hectic city life.

 

Another outstanding characteristic of the Asian tradition is the passion to celebrate drinking tea. The Cameron Highlands is one of the most important tea plantations in Malaysia and is a well-known holiday destination.

 

Cameron Highlands was on top of our list of places to visit as a way to explore Malaysia bit by bit.  We decided to spend an extended Weekend there and leaving the metropolitan home, the humidity and high temperatures behind us to enter a totally different side of Malaysia.

The first step was to find a way to get to the Cameron Highlands. For us as Students with a certain amount of money we tried out the possibility to go by bus. Its really cheap (around RM35) and depending on the bus organisation the busses are absolutely comfortable and the few hours to reach the point of your destination wasn’t a big deal.

After a few hours and a quite interesting driving style by the bus driver, we have to say that we feared for our life. Finally, we reached the city were our hostel is placed, called Tanah Rata.

 

It was a big pleasant surprise when we stepped out of the bus, because the climate is cooler as compared to Germany on a warm spring day. Tanah Rata is a small touristic “settlement” with a lot of restaurants and souvenir shops and one of many little towns in the valley.

During our visit at the Cameron Highlands we had so much experiences due to the variety of the sightseeing trips.

For us we decided to organize a jungle trip by ourselves and additionally to make sure that we don't miss any important places, we booked a standard route with a tour guide. The environment and the jungle itself was quite organized for tourists, so that anyone can easily find their through the impressive rainforest.

 

This was our choice and we went, without a specific way, just following a so called “jungle walk” with some coloured dots on the trees showing us our “route”. Sadly this decision and the fact, that we started quite late and it started to get dark during our search for those important way-dots, we almost got lost. So, do make sure that you prepare your route precisely.

In the evening, you can choose from a big cultural variety of restaurants like Indian food, Chinese food, Malay food and a lot more. As well some drinks are available to round off the day.

We thought that the jungle was quite impressive already, but the tour we booked really changed our mind further! Early in the morning the Tour guide picked us up with an old but exciting and durable Land Rover Defender and drove us to places of unthinkable beauty. We walked through the impressive tea plantations, ate fresh strawberries from a huge strawberry farm, and tasted honey out of raw honeycombs, getting in touch with butterflies bigger than our hands and stood on the highest point in this area overlooking the whole jungle.

The trip was an unforgettable experience as we saw the rainforest, learnt how tea was made and saw the beautiful sites Malaysia has to offer. We were completely impressed and lucky to have gone on this trip. We would definitely recommend you to visit Cameron Highlands if you are around Malaysia.