Into the heart of darkness...

Arrived in Cameron Highlands a couple days ago in Tanah Rata. It took a four hour bus ride up terrifying mountain roads barely wide enough to let the two trucks pass (and slowing down is a sign of weakness to truck drivers here). Survived that though, and arrived at the new hostel, picked by intuition, that turned out to be probably the best place in town: Father's guest house, just in time for the daily 2:00pm torrential rain storm.

The highlands looks like a japanese watercolour painting of terraced hills (rising to 2000m), tea plantations, and mist rolling through the mountains. The biggest local activity is trekking through the jungle, and I took my first foray yesterday - in true backpacker style, at first we intended to do a short walk, so i left all the paranoid gear, drinking water, sensible clothing, etc. at the hostel and went into the jungle with my shorts, t-shirt, and 30 Ringits on me :)

By the time we got out of the jungle, it was actually a relief to fall on my ass and roll down a muddy slope into a vegetable garden... at least we made it back to civilization. We made it to the main road and hitchhiked back into town with a dutch family, who must have though we were idiots when there questions like "do you have a map?" "did you bring drinking water?" "did you know where you were going?" were answered with blank stares or laughter. Anyways, it wasn't as bad as it sounds, more like a walk through an overgrown endowment lands in Vancouver that just happens to have pit vipers and 5 cm long hornets in it.

We actually managed to make it back to the hostel just before the skies opened at 2:00pm right on schedule and sat drinking hot chocolate and watching the rain come down... all in all a good day out, with some interesting sights, that makes me feel less guilty about sitting around eating cheap food and drinking beer chang the rest of the time.

Hopefully some photos and more to come, although things are pretty relaxed here, so it might come "mon yana" instead...

Until then,

Chris