Cameron Highlands

This week I have had one of my wishes come true: goodbye heat and humidity, hello Cameron Highlands! The Cameron Highlands are so named due to being around 2500 meters above sea level. The entire area is breathtakingly beautiful; think rolling green hills, crisp clear blue skies and lush tropical forests. I think it could definitely give New Zealand a run for it money in the beauty stakes. At times it felt a little alpine…

We arrived to a torrential down pour of rain but luckily our guesthouse for the next week had arranged to pick us up from the bus station and drop us off. We stayed at the fantastically friendly Fathers guesthouse and we were lucky enough to be sharing the house with some great people. We spent our nights talking into the early hours and generally relaxing it up.

Relaxing and writing the blog!

On our first day we decided to join one of the tours that would take us around a tea plantation and on a trek through the Mossy Forest. The plantation was both fascinating and serene.  The trees appeared to go on forever. Our knowledgeable guide told us everything you would want to know about tea and the tea drinking and cake eating afterwards was also enjoyable!

Following this we went on a tour of the mossy forest, which we were told anybody could do even your 80 year old grandmother. I’m not sure what they are feeding the grandmothers around here but although the walk wasn’t long it was surely steep and very, very slippy! Much to Matt’s amusement, I kind of sort of fell into a bog. Bogs aside, the forest was beautiful and it was a great way to pass an afternoon.

Forest: beautiful but not designed for tall people!

On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at a local butterfly farm, where we saw a range of weird and wonderful creatures. 

For me personally, the Cameron Highlands have been my favourite place we have been to in Malaysia. But all good things must come to an end and tomorrow we are back on the road to Penang. 

Ipoh

We decided to finally leave KL and take the train to Ipoh. Ipoh has a beautiful colonial style train station and a few nice buildings and monuments in the surrounding area (including a very English cricket pitch where you could imagine the ladies being fanned whilst watching their gentlemen enjoying a very civilised game with frequent refreshment breaks).

The rest of Ipoh seems to have lots business and commerce going on but still had a slower pace than KL, although the traffic was still crazy. The local people that we met were really nice and we ended up in rather long conversations with a taxi driver (whilst we were stuck in traffic) and a Chinese gent who spoke really good English and thought that we would be able to learn to read Chinese by studying one hour per day for a year.

Two nights was plenty of time to explore Ipoh but it was a really nice detour from the normal tourist route.

Me wondering if I had done the right thing with a strawberry float, it tasted like Calpol

Park and memorial in front of the train station

A case of nice idea, very poor research! The missing figure that was hastily removed was the Prophet Muhammad

Aimee devastated that she has broken her new sunglasses after just one day

Putrajaya

Putrajaya might not sound like an interesting place, it is the Malaysian Federal Governments administration centre and it was only designed in the 1990's.

But… it is a whole city designed and built since the 1990's. It is so different to the rest of Malaysia that it was well worth a look. It has wide roads and footpaths, there is a man-made lake at the centre and there are gardens everywhere. Putrajaya is about 20 minutes away from KL, once there we hired a taxi for a couple of hours to take us around the city as the local public transport is still being put into place (this was a great idea as it was a super hot day and after 5 minutes of photo taking we were thankful of the air-con blast). I will cut the waffle today and let the photos do the talking.

Aimee enjoying the breeze on the bridge

It was designed as a garden city and there really are lots of gardens

One of the seven bridges that cross the lake

Even the skyscrapers have been designed to be different from each other

The national convention centre that looks like a landed flying saucer

The lake and more parkland

The water sports grandstand

Two of the (very fancy looking) hotels 

Mosque on the water front, it was huge!

Lots of the building had beautiful minarets

Eat your heart out Queen of England this is the Prime Ministers residence 

Kuala Lumpur

Colourful sky our first evening in KL

Our hotel in Kuala Lumpur was right in the middle of bustling Chinatown with all of the markets and shophouses. In the evenings the road below the hotel, Jalan Petaling,  was so full with market stalls it was hard to get out. The whole street is covered by a canopy so even (that should be especially) during a storm with rain pouring down, the market is still full of people after a bargain or something to eat. The rest of Chinatown is equally full of life; the roads are impossible to cross with cars squeezing into impossible spaces, bikes cutting up the cars and buses charging through anything in their way; if you can find the sidewalk you have to dodge the odd broken drain cover, food cart or motor bike taking a short cut; and the smells on the street careen unevenly from sweet and intoxicating to rotten-rodent-left-behind-the-freezer via exotic and mysterious in the space of 20 yards.

Somewhere in there is our hotel

Some of the markets were open late into the night

One of the many food stalls that create an obstacle course on the side walk

This tea room in China town had a great historic atmosphere 

and also amazing food

Next on KL's mixed up menu; Little India is about 10 minutes walk from Chinatown and has some really colourful architecture and tasty eating options. We tried breakfast, lunch and tea curry options on different occasions and I have to admit  I may have had curry twice on one day. I miss KL already.

Colourful Hindu temple in front of bland new office block

After getting all cultural (and sweaty) exploring the beautiful and atmospheric temples  in Chinatown and Little India we decided to have a day cooling off at one of KL's super shiny malls. Coming into the modern, manicured surroundings of the mall and surrounding gardens showed yet another side to KL. There were families enjoying every kind of food you could hope for (Aimee had Pizza I went for the curry again), kids hanging out spending their disposable income on the latest fashions, security guards vetting potential shoppers into exclusive stores and outside an even wider mix of people relaxing in the tranquil gardens under the shade of the Petronas Towers. The Petronas Towers may not be as new as the first time I saw them but the stainless steel is no less gleaming, they look like they dropped from space. If the malls and building projects are anything to go by, then the Malaysian economy is moving in the right direction. 

So very shiny; KL's Petronas Towers

Park behind the towers and the central business district

Inside the mall of the future

The towers look even more space age when illuminated at night

Us goofing around with shiny park decorations

After our day of modern luxuries (we even got to the cinema) we decided to get all cultural again and visit the Hindu religious sights at the Batu Caves. The caves are now very easy to visit as a modern light rail line runs right up to the bottom of the steps making it an easy 30 minute journey from KL (and cheap, it cost RM3 return). It was a steep sweaty climb to the caves but the view and temples (and monkeys) were worth it. All of the Hindu temples we have visited have been very vibrant and the Batu caves were no different, there were crowds of devotees making offerings at the various shrines and temples in the complex that gave context to the colourful sculptures and paintings. At the foot of stairs up to the caves were several more colourful temples, flower sellers, restaurants and even a sacred cow who appeared to be enjoying all of the food and attention that was being laid on for her.

One of the huge statues at the entrance to the caves

The main cave space

Detail on top of one of the temples

Very cheeky monkey

I am still trying to get the perfect image of a flower seller stand, they smell amazing

After this already epic post I will save the interesting city of Putrajaya for the next post. I will sign off with a few more images of the interesting sites we saw around KL.

Stained glass, in a rain shelter

Detail of the very beautiful old Kuala Lumpur train station

Pavement outside a Mosque

Aimee ponders her fate with food stall fish balls

The moment of no return 

Result

We do have to do laundry its not all having a great time