Cameron Highlands & Penang 5/3/12 - 9/3/12

The Cameron Highlands is known as a 'hill station' which I think roughly translates as a beautiful area of green hills which Malaysians use as a weekend retreat, away from the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur. The Highlands are at a pretty high altitude, so the journey there involved plenty of steep climbing up some very tight bends through some spectacular rain forest roads.

It was a lot cooler compared to Kuala Lumpur which was a relief. We had some dinner in a Dutch themed cafe where everything was orange and then set off in search of a hotel. The Cameron Highlands are known for its tea plantations, so the next morning we caught a taxi to a plantation which we had passed on the coach the previous day. The plantation was located on a series of hills and could be viewed from a cafe positioned at the top. The view from here was impressive and we could see the huge scale of the plantation, even though this was just one plantation of many in the region. We were hoping to see how the process of turning tea leaves into tea bags worked, but unfortunately this was all hidden away. So instead we were happy to make do with eating scones with jam and drinking tea for our breakfast in the cafe!

We caught the same taxi back into town and went for what was described by the tourist information as 'a short rain forest walk to a waterfall'. In reality we walked for 20 minutes through what we would class as shrubbery, as opposed to jungle, and then we were unable to make it as far as the waterfall as the bridge was closed! We should have taken the advice of the guide book by checking that the path was fully open before setting off!

In the afternoon we decided to visit one of the many strawberry farms where you could pick your own. Unfortunately I think we might have visited out of season as there weren't really that many strawberries to pick! Instead we spent more time looking around the cactus farm and the strawberry - themed gift shop! By the time we'd decided to call it a day the heavens had opened. And as anyone who has visited Asia will testify, when it rains, it really does rain! We sat under shelter for over an hour but soon got bored and so we decided to make a break for it. We went to the gift shop and bought two strawberry printed umbrellas and walked the ten minutes back into town. We got absolutely drenched despite the help of our strawberry umbrellas!

Like much of Malaysia, the Highlands are home to lots of Indians, so we decided to try one of the numerous Indian restaurants. Jenna discovered that she quite likes vegetable dahl, which should now make it easier to persuade her to go out for a curry when we get back home.

Once we were happy that we'd seen the best bits of the Highlands, we caught a coach up to the North West of Malaysia to the island of Penang. Penang is a huge island with a city called Georgetown. It's linked to the mainland by an eight mile long bridge. We found a decent little hostel in the backstreets of Georgetown and then went for a walk around the city where we once again got caught up in some very heavy rain!

The following morning we were back off to the mainland as we wanted to visit an Orang utan sanctuary. Although it was a bit out of our way, travelling from Penang was the easiest route for us. It took us a good 3 hours to get there, including two ferries, a taxi and a bus, but it was worth it! The sanctuary was located on a small island in the centre of a lake. A small boat took us across to the island where we met by a guide who took us around the island for about an hour. 

The idea of the centre was to house orang utans from birth and then to release them into the wild when they had reached a certain age. This was to help protect them from poachers etc until they were old enough to fend for themselves. It was the visitors who were caged in, rather than the orang utans, which worked quite well and allowed the orang utans more freedom to do whatever they would in the wild. There were a couple of very young orang utans who were in an isolated room due to their age and they were hilarious to watch. They wore nappies and kept trying to climb up onto the window sill to peer out!