Malaysia: Trekking, Tea & Travel Friends in Cameron Highlands
After eating our way through Kuala Lumpur, we decided to take the 4 hour bus ride to Cameron Highlands for some outdoor adventure. We’re so glad we did! We had the best day exploring Cameron Highlands with our guide, Appu, from Discover Camerons, a free-lance tour company in the Highlands. Appu filled our day with adventure and lots of fascinating information.
You can find more information about Discover Camerons here: http://discovercamerons.com/
We started our morning by cruising in our kickass army-green Land Rover to a tea plantation to be the first group to take pictures strolling through the lines of tea plants. The view of the tea plantations within the rolling hills of the Highlands is truly breathtaking. We couldn’t get enough pictures of the landscape!
Then we headed up the windy, bumpy road to the top of the peak. On our way, we pulled over for some trekking in the mossy forest. This hike took us straight into this dense forest covered in moss, ferns, and orchids. It was fascinating to see moss covering the branches in front of you and feel the trampoline like ground as we were standing on meters of built up moss. During our trek, we learned about Cameron Highlands through Appu’s passionate eyes. Turns out, the mossy forest in the Cameron Highlands is older than The Amazon (!), but still isn’t considered a national park. As Appu described, these beautiful forests that provide so much rain and nutrients to the surrounding areas are being destroyed by tourists recklessly standing on branches to take pictures and large companies tearing down entire vegetation for new developments. Haven’t we all learned to #savetherainforests!?!?
As you’ll see in our GoPro Video above, we also learned that the purple flowers growing near the tea plants (they aren’t tea flowers!) can be used to show how smoking effects your lungs. When smoke is near the flower, it does not change, but when a burning cigarette is near the flower it is immediately damaged and changes colors just like your lungs! Nature, being amazing again!.
After our trek, we made it to the top of the peak where we were walking above the clouds. We hiked through more forests and climbed to the top of a lookout tower. While I enjoyed watching the clouds roll through the skies below us, we can only imagine how beautiful the view is on a clear day!
Following our time in the clouds, we headed to the BOH Tea Plantation cafe. Here, we got the opportunity to sip on deliciously light “Palas Supreme” Malaysian tea and tour through the tea factory with our new friends from the tour. The tea making process is wonderfully simple, but mastered by the Malaysians!
Our fun-filled day ended at a strawberry farm where we walked through the lines of strawberry plants, snacked on freshly picked strawberries, and indulged in mouth-watering strawberry milkshakes. (Johnny and his sweet tooth couldn’t have been happier!)
This already amazing tour was made better by our guide Appu and our new friends from around the world who are also all traveling for an extended period of time. Our fellow travelers hailed from Canada, Netherlands, France, England and Columbia. So many people living the dream, you can too! 🙂 We had a blast swapping travel stories, giving suggestions for future destinations, and laughing over how many thousands of pictures we’ve all taken of the same things, like monkeys.
If you’re ever passing through Malaysia, be sure to carve out a day or two for Cameron Highlands and hit up Discover Camerons for a tour with Appu. It rules. There are tons of tour companies in the area, but we can say first-hand that their tours won’t disappoint. While we only stayed in CH for one night, we could have easily stayed another day or two and enjoyed the many trekking trails in the area. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to check them out for ourselves, but many of our fellow travelers on our tour spoke very highly of them.
https://www.facebook.com/DiscoverCameron/
Until next time, Cameron Highlands!
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