Cameron Highlands - Tea, Forest, Run

I finally got on the road and arrived from KL to the Cameron Highlands region in the center of continental Malaysia (the other half of the country is sharing Borneo with Brunei and Indonesia).

Tanah Rata is my host city for 2 nights before following my route towards Bangkok.

I have been meeting again a lot of new faces but funnily enough I got reminded just how small the world is. The first night I shared a 6 beds dorm with 2 French girls that graduated from the same school as I did (IAE Grenoble) but 9 years after... and a Canadian girl that had cross path during her travels with the American guy I was with at the roof top bar the night before. We had a good laugh telling each other how random this all was.

Anyway, on arrival I had booked a tour for early this morning and went discovering the region with my guide and... 10 tourists from China. It was a lot of fun for most of the tour... An intensely noisy experience but somehow fun. The kids were dabbing all the time (imagine 4 little Chinese Pogba doing the Dab, every 2 minutes).

The tour started with a visit of the tea plantation in the area.
A few facts from what I could hear and understand (these Chinese...):
- A British "discovered" the potential of the region while mapping the area. Not sure when.
- It took a Scot to develop and manage a 1200+ hectares black tea plantation.
- The 3rd generation of that Scottish family still owns the plantation.
- The tea leafs are harvested every 3 to 4 weeks.

The place is absolutely breath taking and no pictures can do justice to the beauty of these hills.
I took a bit more than a 700 pictures today just in that area with both my phone and my GoPro.
I deleted most to keep just 52. And here are a couple for you :)

Tea plantation (black tea)

Green is the new black

I am trying as much as possible to organise the picture on the go, otherwise I am pretty sure it will never be done. I have to admit that I am adapting quickly to my MacBook air. The software developed by Apple are making it so easy for you to arrange organise and edit your pictures (no they are not paying me to write that ...).

After the tea plantation a short visit to the tea factory. Interesting stuffs again. The process seems to be both easy and quick. From the tea tree to the tea bag there is less than a day of work. The leaves are being processed in some big machinery, dry with hot air and that's it really...

A couple of extra visits were scheduled:
- the Mossy Forest. A rain forest as there are a lot in the region.
- the Mt Brinchang (2032m above see level).

Very interesting explanations from the guide but towards the end of the tour I was not as entertained as in the beginning. The Chinese had won their battle against my patience and tolerance... I decided to step back a little rather than screaming at the adults that kept throwing garbage everywhere in the forest and on the roads... and there were unfortunately nothing I could do to make it stop. I tried to tell them twice, they pretended not to understand. To add to my disappointment the guide did not seem to care so much either.

I went back to the Hotel for a small nape. The day had been intense up until now. I had woke up at 6am, run through the hills for an hour and had an intense tour.

Tomorrow will be another day. For the first time I will set foot on an island in Asia as I will take a ferry from Kuala Perlis to Langkawi. The bus going north will leave at 8am and go for 6 or 7 hours depending on the traffic. After 2 nights in the mountain at 1500m above see level, it will be nice to finally get to the sea :)