The journey to the bus station went surprisingly smoothly. We go the tickets to the bus to Tanah Rata, which is the main town in the Cameron Highlands.
We arrived to Tanah Rata some time after midday. We looked for a guesthouse and searched around if there were still any tours to tea plantations and other sights around available for the afternoon. Even though it would have been fun to wander around in our own, we realised that with the short time we had to spend in Cameron Highlands, tour would be the best option.
All went very smoothly again – we found a relatively decent guesthouse, booked a “Rainforest adventure tour” scheduled to start from 13.45 and even had time for lunch before the tour.
It appeared that there was only one German guy besides us joining the tour, so it was quite nice, because small groups are always more dynamic and interesting. The minivan driver / tour guide seemed a little rude and careless at the beginning, but he turned out to be a really nice guy.
We drove along a narrow and curvy, but very beautiful road to the top of the highest peak of the Cameron Highlands – Gunung Brinchang, 2031 m. The peak in itself was nothing very particular, but it offered beautiful views to the highlands.
The tour continued with the walk in mossy forest. This was probably the most interesting part of the tour. Many trees we covered with moss, which made the forest look quite mystical. Our guide explained that because to the moss becomes heavy and eats up the tree resourses, the trees invaded by the moss don’t have very long life in that forest.
The guide also showed us different plants and explained what they are used for in traditional medicine (e.g. the plant of tiger balm). Some plants (e.g.
a blooming cobra lily) had been hidden under bigger leaves – the guide said that they hide these from locals. That seemed awkward for us, because usually locals would hide plants from tourists, if at all. The guide explained that local Chinese like to take rare flowers and plants home with them whenever they see something around. And we soon saw it with our own eyes – there was a group of Chinese looking locals in the forest trail and one guy was proudly holding a pitcher plant (i.e. the plant that eats insects) with roots in his hand. Our guide was not at all happy about that and sure did not seem right was to us either. But it was really nice to see that the guide would be so knowledgeable and passionate about his forest and the wonderful plants he would show us.
Then we headed to see the tea plantation. Actually, we had seen the tea plantation around us already on the way to the hilltop, as the tea trees of that plantation cover about 200 hectares of hillsides and hence, were all over. Our guide explained that the tea trees have long life (around 150 years).The trees of that plantation over there have maximum 82 years of age, as the plantation itself was that old. In order to keep the trees in the height of bushes, they are harvested every 21 days and completely pruned every 3 years. Hence, even though the trees were low of size, the tree trucks had actually quite large diameters. Only young leaves are good for tea – therefore, the most tender leaves are picked every 21 days.
We also went to visit the tea factory and although the machines had already been shut down for the day, we had a quick tour there. The process of preparing black tea consists of five stages – drying, rolling, fermentation, dehydration and sorting. Green tea is made of the same tea leaves, but these are dried at the sun and there is no fermentation. No green tea is made in Cameron Highlands, because there is not enough sun there for drying the leaves. We were also curios, whether we could get a great fresh tea by picking some tea leaves right from the trees and pouring then over with hot water, but apparently that is not a good idea. Fresh leave have no particular smell or taste, and even worse, could cause stomach problems, because of their acidity.
After visit to the factory, we had a cup of tea at cafe with a magnificent view to the plantation.
The main trademark of the tea plantation we visited was “Boh”. Their tea is mainly sold in Malaysia, but also exported to Japan, Singapore and Indonesia. Our guide explained that the tea plantation belonged to Russell family, who had wittily exchanged the land with the government against some coal mine estates many years ago, when the Cameron Highlands had nothing but forest and nobody knew yet that these lands were good for cultivating tea. In addition to the plantation of 200 hectares that we saw, they owned another 800 hectares on the other side of Tanah Rata. So, tea was their new gold. Another interesting fact – mostly foreign workers, i.e. cheap labour from Bangladesh and Nepal, work in the plantation. They are provided decent houses to live together with village infrastructure like schools, medical care, mosques and temples right within the plantation. But even with all that, it appears that their labour is cheaper that Malaysian one.
In addition to tea, strawberry plantations are the trademarks of the Cameron Highlands. We didn’t really see strawberries as something very exotic, so we were fine to skip visiting such farms.
The night in Cameron Highlands was quite cold and as our guesthouse’s windows were not fully closed, it got quite chilly in the room. It was the first time during this trip when we were cold for the weather and not for the AC.
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Blue eyes wide open... 