Cameron Highlands

One of the main problems with guerilla tourism is that you're never really in one place long enough to really get a good feel for a place or get a good read on the people, to figure out what they are all about, how they live and what they know and like about where they live. That being said, another day or two would have been great.
The highlands are as advertised, the highest point in Malaysia. The jungle is thick and lush and verdant, covering every available square inch of land. The road up to the town of Tanah Rata where we stayed is about the most winding stretch of road I have ever been on, almost falling off my seat several times. As we approached the town, we noticed that the jungle had been replaced by long plastic snakes, which after being told that the Highlands were famous for strawberries, we realised were enormous strawberry farms that occupy most of the land surrounding the towns in the highlands.
Tanah Rata was much like any other small town you could find anywhere in the world, but the majority of the food stalls don't open until sunset, as it is Ramadan and the Muslim world, of which much of Malaysia is, fasts until sundown for a month. The town, again like much of the world is gripped by world cup fever, so every cafe and bar and shop with a TV is broadcasting either a game or a highlight show at top volume, with competition from Malay pop music and Koran recitations pumping out of loudspeakers, and drive by advertising for the latest Bollywood film. Then of course the restaurant we chose had not only the football, but a one man band who figured himself the Malay Carlos Santana. No, seriously. We depart before Black Magic Woman hits it's stride.  Quite a cacophony.
The daytime is much quieter, and lends itself to taking a tour of the more low key sights, such as the strawberry farm, where they suggest you might want to go pick your own for a small price, an apiary (bee farm) where you might want to try the two types of honey from the two types of bees, one of which is smaller than a housefly, is stingless, and produces a honey reminiscent of molasses, for a small price, a rose garden who's entrance fee goes to the cultivation of the flowers and is filled with all manner of beautiful and exotic flowers, and roses with a such a divine scent, it makes you think the smell is sprayed on, there is the butterfly farm, housing some of the most gorgeous breeds of butterfly I have ever seen, plus some other bugs which give me the Wiggins, and of course the tea plantation, still owned by the same Scottish family since it's founding in the 1930's. There are treks through what they refer to as the mossy forest, which is just a higher elevation jungle, and a hike up to Malaysia's highest point which is now topped by a telecom tower. All of nature's wonders laid bare and still relatively unspoiled.
The tea plants look like that plant with the flat green leaves which sat in everyone's from room and no one actually knows what it was called, and collectively, the way they wind slowly across the landscape in very tight bushes makes you think you are looking at a thick green carpet. I didn't get to take the tour of the tea factory because my boy needed a wee at the same time as the tour was starting and the toilets were at the other of the facility, and the tour took all of five minutes anyway, but apparently the same machinery as was used in the '30's is still used today. A very simple process which brings a life sustaining fluid to millions of Brits the world over.
The negatives are few and mostly pertaing to the hotel, no breakfast, no laundry, comical internet, no TV, weak tea, a French person runs the place, all minor complaints which add up to enforced self sufficiency. Not a big problem and more cost effective in the end, but in the same way that the rose garden sold no rose related products, they are missing a trick, I think. We leave a day early as we have seen what we think we have come to see, and board a minibus to the Perhentians Islands. Stay tuned. Or not. Whatever.