Day 161 – Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

July 17th, 2019

We were up early and got ready for our tour.  I have seen ‘white coffee’ advertised quite a bit in Malaysia.  Since it has been so hot I haven’t really wanted coffee, but now that we are in a cooler climate I was excited to try it.  We have white coffee at home, and I didn’t know if it would be the same.  In the more developed areas, I have noticed a coffee house chain called “White Coffee” and our hotel happened to be right next to one.  I left the hotel room a little early so I could stop and get a white coffee before the tour.  It was 7am and the coffee shop was closed!  Very weird that you can get a fish head at 7am but not a cup of coffee at a coffee shop!  I actually tried again at 8am the next morning but it was still closed.  I guess they only open in the afternoon.  I could not succumb and go to Starbucks even though they have one here.  Starbucks might get me when I’m at home and have a good job (even though they shouldn’t) but not here. Not here where the tea farm workers make 23-ringgit cents per 2.2 pounds of tea leaves they pick, and Starbucks wants 18 ringgits for a latte. 

I settled for an ‘Indian donut’ and it was pretty good.  It was not sweet but more like a hush puppy with some veggies and spices in it.  We got in a Land Rover with our tour guide Appu, and headed to the first view point. 

This was another day I took about a billion pictures.  The land of tea plants was so amazing!  The tea plants are about 90 years old and still producing.  There are two main plantations in Cameron Highlands.  One is owned by a Scottish family and one by an Indian family.  Driving trough this area it seemed like such a massive amount of tea plants I was surprised their tea is only distributed throughout Malaysia.  I guess China and India are such huge distributors of tea worldwide, these tea factories are only big enough to service Malaysia. We went to the BOH plantation and factory. We had a cup of tea at their café and it was very good.  We learned a little bit of history on the founder of BOH and the process of tea making.  After that we went to the Mossy Forest.

When we were in the Daintree Rainforest in Australia, they claimed to be the oldest rainforest in the world at around 100-180 million years old.  The Mossy Forest in Cameron Highlands is estimated to be 230 million years old (I guess they can somehow tell the approximate age from the rocks).  The Amazon is just a young pup at a mere 55 million years old.  I can’t really wrap my brain around any of those numbers, so I think the bottom line is we have been fortunate enough to be in some REALLY OLD rainforests.  The Amazon and Daintree are lowland tropical forests and the Cameron Highlands are a mountain rainforest (also called a cloud forest and where there is a cloud forest there is a mossy forest) that sits at about 1500 meters (close to 5,000 feet) in elevation.  This means the vegetation and wildlife are much different.  There are some other cloud forest/mossy forests in the world like this one, but what is unique about here is how accessible this forest is.  You can drive right to it.  Other cloud forests require days of trekking to get to. 

Our guide Appu was fantastic and a wealth of information.  He took us on a walk through the Mossy Forest and pointed out all kinds of things.  The moss here is about 5 meters (16 feet) thick! The moss only grows 1 cm every 2-3 years, so it takes generations to become thick.  We were able to walk on one area of it and it felt like walking on a trampoline.  The other fascinating thing is 70% of the vegetation in this forest can be used medicinally.  We saw all kinds of plants from wild ginger, orchids, ferns, pitcher plants (the flesh-eating plant), citronella trees, and of course, lots of moss.  This would be a great forest to trek through because there are no mosquitos at that elevation. There are also no leeches or big animals.  The only things that can kill you here are certain kind of snakes and some poisonous trees.  I feel like the odds of surviving in this forest are much greater than the Amazon with many more predators.

It was a very nice tour, and afterwards the guide dropped us off at the start of a hike we could do that he recommended.  It was called jungle trek #3 and we were going to take that path to jungle trek #5 and do a big loop.  We walked a little way in, and I wasn’t feeling it.  The path was extremely narrow, and I had read that it was easy to lose the trail. 

I was supposed to have this map downloaded but the WIFI was so worthless at the hotel, it never downloaded.  Also, all of a sudden I got really scared of the poisonous snakes since I couldn’t see the ground very well through the thick bushes.  Appu had said the snakes usually are not a problem because they hear the vibration of you coming and scurry away, but I still was nervous.  So regardless, I had us turn back.  I felt really lazy for not doing the hike, but oh well.  We still had about an hour to walk back to our hotel and it was not through the jungle, so much easier.  We took the rest of the day and rested.  I had cheese naan for dinner, and we watched a movie on the iPad.  As much as I wanted to do the jungle hike, I know it’s important to listen to your body and I wasn’t feeling up to it today.  I’m sure we will have other opportunities!