Walking the Peninsula Interior

A Home Away From Home

The Cameron Highlands is a fantastic and beautiful hill resort surrounded by jungle shrouded mountains high enough to justify wearing jeans and jumpers. In fact on a normal day the temperature was around 21 degrees Celsius. It certainly did not feel like a tourist spot in SE Asia and around every corner were further reminders of England. Firstly the highlands are full of tea plantations making tea of all different varieties and selling them with scones, jam and cream. There were some brilliant spots to look out over tea plantations and jungle whilst sipping on a fresh cup of tea. We did a lot walking around the Cameron Highlands and it was really easy using the Tanah Rata town as a base to do so (even though the maps didn't make any sense at all). Most of the places of interest where within walking distance and it didn't take us long to suss the place out and meet lots of really nice people.

The place we stayed in, Fathers Guest House, was placed (annoyingly) at the top of a steep hill. It was definitely worth the ascent though. The backpackers rooms were replicas of what was known as Nissen Huts used by British troops in an army camp north of Tanah Rata during World War 2. These were essentially corrugated iron roofed bunkers. One day we walked down to the Cameron Valley Tea Plantation to have tea and scones and get some excellent views of the rolling hills filled with tea plants. Another day we opted for a longer walk to Gunung Berembun. This walk took us about 5 hours and as we started the walk we met a lady who was also staying at Fathers. I say lady because she was 67 years old. She was very excited about doing this walk but in hindsight it probably wasn't the one for her. The walk had some very steep ascents and descents, some of which were conquerable only with ropes. The walk started out flat enough and on the map it told us we would see the Robinson Waterfall. We saw some sewage pipes which could have been that but I'm not sure. It was a really good trek through the jungle with moss carpets, twisted trees, and the constant humming, singing and screaming of insects and birds around us.

We spent another day taking a shorter walk across to the Parit Falls. Parit literally means Pit and the waterfall was nothing more than that. It was full of garbage and looked quite nasty. The walk was very tame compared to the day before (it even had a path) but it was definitely worth it as we found a strawberry farm. The farm had a small cafe and when I asked for a milkshake they told me I would have to wait a short while since they needed to go pick some strawberries. As fresh as it gets my friends!

Tamen Negara National Park

We left Tanah Rata and got a bus to Jarantut where we jumped on a ferry to Kuala Tahan. This took about 3 hours and when I say ferry I mean a long wooden boat with about 20 people in it. The boat ride was very relaxing but the water looked quite grimy. When we arrived in Kuala Tahan we were given a short introduction before we left to find some accommodation. Tamen Nagara is famous for jungle trekking and has the longest canopy walk/suspension bridge in the world at 530m. We arrived late afternoon so it wasn't the best time for trekking especially as the mosquitoes and leeches were out in full force, so we took it easy to start with. On that first night there was a concert taking place by the bus station. We walked down to see what was going on and it seemed that some member of Parliament had come to inspect something or other and they were holding this shindig for him. They had an orchestra and some singers from Kuala Lumpur and some traditional music and dancing going on. Between the good music and dancing it was nothing more than an elaborate karaoke night, which was brilliant! They got the old Parliament guy up to sing and he was loving it. Then two others started singing some songs in English which we joined along with. It was all really funny.

Jungle trekking being the priority, we mosquito sprayed up and set off the following morning. The walks through the jungle were great though we had no idea where we were going most of the time. We had to pretty much make up some of the routes. We found our way okay to the canopy walkway, which, although much bigger, was very similar to that in the Poring Hot Springs in Borneo. It was also much scarier in some places reaching up to 40m in height above the ground. When we got to the end we trekked over to Bukit Teresek. The climb took about an hour from the canopy walkway and when we reached the top of the hill we had a fantastic view point over the jungle. After that we made up our own walk for the next couple of hours taking us to a spot in the river that was great for a swim. The water was very brown and the current very strong but that didn't stop us. It was great to wash all that sweat off too!

On our last evening we decided to try out the night time 4WD drive safari. We were looking forward to this but it turned out to be quite a let down. The pick-up we were crammed into the back of wasn't 4WD (either that or the driver had no idea what he was doing) and we managed to get stuck whilst chasing a leopard that wasn't a leopard. We had seen a couple of birds, wild pigs and some tied up cattle at this point and when the guide got really excited by the small cat he ordered the driver off the track to get a better look at it. The driver managed to burn out the clutch trying to get back on the track so we had to push it out and then wait for someone to pick us up to take us back because he'd completely knackered the car. I didn't get a great look at the wild cat but apparently it did have a really nice pattern on it. Not sure it was worth it though other than for the amusement of watching the driver manage to completely destroy this car.

We had planned to stay another night and camp in the jungle to see if we could see any of the nocturnal animals that roam the jungle at night. This included sun bears, tapirs, snakes, spiders, big cats, and more. However, we found out the England - Germany game was on the following evening and there was no where here to watch it so we booked our way out of the national park not just because of football but also because we had been walking for about a week now and we were tired.

Next stop - Perhentian Islands. Perhentian means 'place to stop' in Malay and it certainly is that. More to come...