The trip to the Cameron Highlands was relatively smooth. Of course, I had left Georgetown in good time to make it to the bus station in Butterworth - which was an hour early! Then I was told the bus would be leaving half an hour later than I'd expected, so indeed I had 90 minutes to kill!
I arrived in Tanah Rata by mid-afternoon and soon met up with Sarah, Lucy and Rachel from the UK. We were soon all ponchoed up and braving the rain to Twin Pines (or Twin Peaks as I kept calling it), a cute little guesthouse with a cheap room for 4! Bonus! There we met Suresh and Wan, the friendly staff who helped us settle in in no time and kindly advised us not to book a pricey tour around the area, but to hike up Mount Brinchang ourselves! Out came a map, and soon we had details of which local bus to catch, where to get off, how long the route should take, and where to get tea and scones on the way down! Wan also recommended we hitchhike back - or even flag down a police car, as they'd be happy to give us a lift!
So, on Wednesday morning, off we set to the bus station and were soon dropped off at the base of the mountain, ready to ascend. Now readers, you may remember that I wasn't overly keen on the trekking I did in Chiang Mai, but we all thought that as a small group of 5 (including Courtney from Australia) that we'd be able to go at our own pace, and not have a mad guide up at the front, with no patience for the slow ones (i.e. me!) The climb was steep in parts and we did take plenty of rest stops, but it was good fun. I'd elected to keep on my sandals, rather than my hiking trainers, as I had only just got the mould out of them from Chiang Mai! So, my feet got very muddy, very quickly. Indeed, after a short time, I stopped bothering to work out the cleanest route, I just stomped right through the mud!
All the girls thought this was hilarious, and especially so when I was knee deep in "quickmud" and asking how Bear Grylls recommended you extract yourself from said situation! The last 100m stretch was incredibly tricky and involved using tree roots as a ladder up to the top, with a particularly muddy stretch through a tunnel of branches. We did take our time, but 2 hours 20 minutes was a pretty respectable ascent. At the top, I braved the observation tower, as not to miss the spectacular views, even though much was shrouded by the clouds...
View from Gunang Brinchang
Then it was a simple task of walking along a paved road, all the way down again. This was actually more strenuous than the upward climb as there was nowhere to clean my muddy feet, which were sliding around in my sandals! It took a fair while to make it to the glorious tea plantations below, spectacular swathes of green, stretching out over the hills. So, by 1pm, we decided we more than deserved a scone, slab of chocolate melt and a hot cuppa each!
We did indeed hitchhike back with a kindly Malaysian guy in a pickup truck - 2 in the cab, 3 in the back, the latter (including myself) thought it would be more fun, until the rain became torrential and we nearly froze! Rachel and Lucy were in hysterics throughout - I was not and it took several hours back at Twin Pines for me to dry out, clean off and warm up. Not impressed! That evening, we just chilled out at the guesthouse, Wan gave me lots of advice about Kuala Lumpur and how to travel around all the bits of S.E. Asia I've missed this time.
On Thursday, we were off to Kuala Lumpur, home of the Petronas Towers, tallest buildings in the world... until 2004!!! It was another lengthy (i.e. lengthier than we had be told) bus trip, but pretty painless. Pretty painful was the walk to the guesthouse Wan had recommended, especially as Indiemma Jones took the group on a wild goose chase all around the city... well, the map wasn't to scale!!! Eventually, we made it to Pondok Lodge, which was more than double the price of Twin Pines, but after the heat and heavy loads on our back, no one had the energy to find an alternative. However, after only one night of thumping bass from a bar below, everyone decided to join me when I said I'd be moving quarters!
On Saturday, we were too tired to get to the Towers early enough to secure a ticket up to the Skybridge, so after moving to the Green Hut Lodge around the corner, (same price, quieter but smelling of sewage and durians...), we headed out for the day on the Hop-On Hop-Off open tour bus. It was very pleasant and we stopped off for lunch and a nosey at the Towers anyway. It was less pleasant by the end of the day as the traffic was horrendous and it took 90 mins to make it but a few miles, but luckily we made it back home before the afternoon monsoon kicked in. That evening, we splashed out on a rather expensive meal at a rather expensive Korean restaurant! We had bimimbap and it was excellent and really authentic - and at £6 each, still a bargain, just 4 times more expensive than our usual Asian dinners! Plus, I got to speak lots of Korean to the owner, showoff!!!
Sunday was the day - our alarms went off at 6am and we were in the queue for the Skybridge by 7am, and even then there were still a fair few people in front of us. It was a long wait, but we made it into the first group to ascend at 9am. The lift was incredibly fast - 41 floors in seconds - and then we got only 10 minutes on the bridge, but it was a box that just needed to be ticked and was worth the wait! It was then time for breakfast, which I got Josh and Ben (would I'd last seen in Nha Trang) to buy for me - well, when they bumped into us in the queue at 8.30 and asked my to get tickets for them, it was only fair payment for not having to get up at the crack of dawn like we did!!!
Josh, Ben and I headed off to the KL Tower that afternoon, which afforded better views of the city and a great chance to look back upon the Petronas Towers from high up. After grabbing dinner in Chinatown, we walked back to them that evening to see them lit up at night...
88 Floors of Magic!
Yesterday, Ben and I took a bus out to Batu Caves (and went back to the Towers AGAIN last night, but that was so he could buy a travel guide for Oz!) and today I dragged the poor chap around the city looking for geocaches! We had a 66% success rate, so I can't complain, although it took hours longer than anticipated and it was soooo hot!!! Anyway, I've repacked my bag for the flight to Bali tomorrow (i.e. crammed all the heavy stuff and books into my daysack) and I'll be up at 5.30am in order to make it to the airport by 7.45! Kuala Lumpur International - 70km outside Kuala Lumpur! How does that one work??? Oh well, I'll let you know from Bali...
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