The Mountains and The Jungle

The next part of our Malaysian adventure required that we rent a car. Yes, yet more driving on the "wrong" side of the road for me. We picked up the car in Malacca, but what was odd was that the car was parked far enough away that the person in the rental car office went to get it on a motorcycle. Nonetheless, as we will discuss in a future post, this was only our second-strangest rental car pickup in Malaysia/ever.

Our first stop was the Cameron Highlands, about four-and-a-half hours away. The drive was mostly on a very good highway with frequent rest stops that were more like small towns with bathrooms,  gas stations and multiple restaurants. At our first stop we even had Baskin Robbins Ice Cream (as usual, it was extremely hot and humid). The last 90 minutes of the trip was up a winding mountain road, but we were impressed with how wide (i.e. two full lanes) and well-maintained the road is. Better than many roads we drove in Tasmania. Another difference we noted from Tasmania, despite seeing many dogs and monkeys on the side of the roads we drove, we saw very little roadkill. Apparently, dogs and monkeys have better adapted to living near roads than marsupials.

Being in the mountains, the Cameron Highlands were significantly cooler than our previous stops (to our delight). In addition, it rained every afternoon often quite heavily. The main thing we learned about the highlands is that this is where much of Malaysia's crops are grown, often in greenhouses (this is similar to what we experienced in Dalat, Vietnam, which is also in the mountains).

We went to a little agriculture park in the town where we stayed, which was not overly impressive, but we did note that there were a lot of Malaysians there picnicking, as well as groups of school children. We were impressed by the butterfly display, which had a large number of different species, many of which we had never seen before. In addition, in the section on local plants, we saw this flower, which was such an odd color that it almost didn't look real.

One of the main crops in the area is tea. We visited the tea plantation of Cameron Valley Tea, a well-known Malaysian brand. Walking among the tea trees was pretty cool, but since tea is not my thing at all, we quickly moved on to a local strawberry farm to try strawberry "milkshakes".

While we enjoyed our very fresh strawberry drinks, they were really smoothies. We learned on this trip that Asia/Australia/NZ do not really abide by the convention that milkshakes are made with ice cream. In fact, a "milkshake" is often just whipped, flavored milk while a "thickshake" has ice cream. In any event, our strawberry smoothies were delicious.

Next, we stopped at a huge cactus store, which seemed a bit strange given that the climate is not really cactus friendly. However, the selection at the store was enormous and varied. Shana was quite thrilled to check out all of the cacti and suculents of varrying sizes and colors.

After leaving the highlands, we headed to a national park called Taman Negara. On the drive we once again found that even the smaller roads in Malaysia are well maintained. However, we did run into a problem when one of the roads was totally flooded forcing us to turn around. As a result we had to drive back an hour to take another route so our four-hour drive turned into a six-hour drive.

Arriving at Mutiara Negara, the only resort within Taman Negara, was an adventure as we had to cross a fast-moving river in a pretty small boat with all of our luggage. Fortunately we managed to do so while keeping everything dry, and were given our chalet, which thankfully had very good air-conditioning.

Shana quickly encountered the local wildlife ,who had found a very recognizable snack in the garbage: Ritz crackers.

We were amused to learn that the purpose of the stuffed tigers spread around the reort was to keep the monkeys away. Apparently while there are tigers in the jungle, they are almost never seem near the resort. Nonetheless, the monkeys know to avoid tigers, and apparently don't understand the difference between a stuffed tiger and a real one. While this doesn't seem particularly intelligent, you don't mess with tigers!

Our first evening, we did a guided walk through the jungle where we saw a number of insects including stick insects, millipedes, giant timber ants, butterflies/moths, hairy poisonous spiders and scorpions. We also saw magpies and other birds along with geckos and a couple of deer from a blind set up on the edge of a large clearing. Although insects are not really my thing, it was interesting to learn a bit about the main creatures we would encounter in the jungle.

The next day, we did a longer hike, which took us to a great viewpoint to see a small part of the protected national park (which at 4,343 square km is larger than the state of Rhode Island).

We also did a canopy walk that had us crossing several narrow suspension bridges at up to 120 feet above the jungle floor -- a bit disconcerting at times.

Our guide, Mohommed, was fantastic. He taught us a lot about the plants and insects of the jungle, along with a bit about the natives that continue to live there without significant contact with non-tribesmen. In particular, we were impressed by this fern, which turns blue after a certain point in the day when it is done doing photosynthesis.

Our second tour of the day took us a bit downriver in a low boat for a hike to a waterfall. Along the way, we got up close with a giant tree that was over four-hundred years old.

Now that is a big tree!

Our time in the jungle was actually pretty relaxing, and as we were there on an all inclusive package, we basically did not have to make decisions about where to eat, what to do, etc. A nice break.

More to come soon.

Jeff and Shana