Day 352: Too many monkeys

In the morning we headed out onto the main street and bought some snacks and lunch ingredients from a convenience store for our day out at Penang National Park today. Then Kate took us to her pancake guy, off whom we bought a bunch of the lovely brown sugar and crushed-peanut pancakes, before we moved over to the fresh fruit juice guys, off whom we got some pineapple and orange juices in plastic bags. Kate and Zoe then went back into the little convenience store to get a few more snacks, emerging just as the bus arrived. The back of the bus was kinda full, so we took seats at the front – bad move. The front of the bus soon got extremely full and we all had to stand up to let old folks sit down, and were soon crushed up and swaying around as the bus made its way through George Town. In time, however, the passengers thinned out and we managed to get seats. 

The bus terminated at the park, so we disembarked with some other tourists – the only other people left on board – and walked up to the entrance, where we signed in, and discovered that, disappointingly, the canopy walkway was closed. Heading into the park we quickly saw some long-tailed macaques – not our favourite animals – and then some langurs. A bit further on, we saw a small family of macaques approaching us on the path. After our experience in Khao Sok, Kate and the girls were understandably nervous at having monkeys so close, but they very nonchalantly walked past us with barely a glance in our direction.

Not long after we emerged onto a long white-sand beach. Up ahead, I spotted a small monitor, and further down the beach we came across a much larger one lying flat out on the sand, soaking up heat from above and below. Shortly after we got back into the forest I noticed a flying lizard on a tree beside the path. Now I'm not at all proud of this, but as we're all (Sarah excluded) so desperate to see a flying lizard fly, I took the desperate measure of picking up a stick and getting the lizard so agitated that it eventually leapt off the tree and glided down to an adjacent trunk. Hooray! 

Soon after that, we reached our destination – the ominously named Monkey Beach. We looked around for any sign of marauding macaques but the beach, which was lined with a series of little shelters that had apparently once been basic restaurants, looked quiet, so we dumped our bags, stripped off and went in for a swim. It was extremely hazy today – the result of the fires currently burning in Sumatra – and although this seemed to keep the heat down, it didn't do anything about the humidity, and we were incredibly sweaty, which made a swim most welcome, even if the water temperature was, as always, far too high to make it properly refreshing. 

Kate was first out of the water and as she stood by the shelter where we had left our bags she was approached by a female macaque. I got out and scared it off and then set about making lunch (good old tuna and cucumber sandwiches) as the female was joined by a male – the pair sitting in a nearby tree and watching my every move. They eventually got bored and moved off down the beach, where they climbed up on a bench and began rummaging around in the bags of a guy out for a swim. I chased them off again, but they were soon back watching us eat our lunch. All the while, more and more monkeys were arriving, and by the time we had finished eating there must have been more than 30 monkeys around the beach. After lunch, I walked over to photograph a group sitting on top of a shed. As I got close, I heard a noise just to my left, looked down and saw a large male macaque, teeth bared, glaring up at me. A hiss to my right revealed another large male a few feet away, also in full bared-tooth glare mode. I slowly backed away a little and then ran at them, making a few hisses of my own and watched with some satisfaction as they scampered away. 

By now, boats had started to pull up at the beach, disgorging guides and tourists. A Muslim couple arrived just beside us, her in full burka, and their guide set about cooking them up a big seafood meal. Our initial plan had been to continue on up the hill to where an old lighthouse is situated, but we chatted to one of the guides who said that the main reason to walk up there is the view, of which there would be none today thanks to the haze, so we packed up and headed back towards the park entrance. After a while, a light rain began to fall, mingling unnoticed with the buckets of perspiration that were already soaking our clothing. By now we had run out of water, and had lost so much to our external cooling system that we were starting to get a bit dehydrated. So, we were elated when we finally arrived at the park entrance, walking quickly to the nearest kiosk and buying a big bottle of cold water, which didn't even last until the bus stop. 

When we got back to the hotel we all had a shower and changed out of our skanky clothes, before heading out to the Monalisa Cafe and then to the funny little Indian restaurant that Sarah and I had bought our naans from last night. We ordered three naans, which were delicious, and a chicken curry, which wasn't, before moving on to Ho Ping for rice noodles, beer and pork buns, and then finally to Kate's lotus ball cart..

Day 351: On familiar ground

This morning, after packing up, we walked down to Lotus Food Corner for some more roti pancakes and fresh orange juice then hopped aboard the coach and headed down the mountain – and into the requisite crawling traffic. The bus dropped us back near the malls and we walked back to the our old hotel, the Malabar Inn, where we hung around in the room until it was beer o'clock. Then it was back to the Monalisa Cafe for some beer, chips and cards. The guy serving us noted our interest in card games and returned with two fresh packs – freebies from various beer companies. 

For dinner, we went to a Chinese restaurant called Teksen that Tony had recommended – and judging by its popularity, gets recommended by a lot of other people, too. The food was good, but the portions were small and expensive, so we were still hungry when we left. We wandered the back streets for a while to see if we could find something else to eat. Kate hit paydirt first, coming across a cart selling sesame-seed covered red bean and lotus balls and buying a couple of each. We then swung by Ho Ping, where Zoe got a barbecued-pork bun, and finally stopped in at a very local-looking tandoori restaurant where Sarah and I got some really good naan straight out of the tandoor, which was set up right out next to the pavement.

Day 350: Mossy forest

We went back to Lotus Food Corner for some roti pancakes (which came with a delicious curry sauce) and fresh orange juice for breakfast. We then bought some lunch ingredients from the minimarts beside our hotel, before walking down to the start of Trail 4. One of the reasons we had come up to the Cameron Highlands was that we had read that there was a series of trails through the forest that you could walk around without a guide. As is too often the case, the walks, we discovered, are intermittently signposted, but we got off to a good start, quickly finding the beginning of our chosen walk right where we expected to be and were soon walking along a well-maintained path through some attractive rainforest. Not long after, we emerged into a large picnic area, where the girls inevitably wanted to spend some time in a little playpark. 

Back in the forest, we started to have some trouble with unmarked junctions. The map Kate had photographed before we left wasn't much help, but we just followed our instincts and made it to our next important landmark – the Forestry Department office. On the way, we stopped at another unmarked junction and while we tried to get our bearings, we heard a noise in the undergrowth, which eventually resolved itself into a couple of little brown shrews. At the forestry office, despite the presence of a big map, we had a bit of a struggle figuring out how to get onto Trail 6. When we finally got going, we soon got going uphill, clambering over roots and through large patches of mud. After a while, we reached a ridgeline and the path flattened out a bit. The trees became a bit thinner and more stunted and everywhere we looked, everything was festooned in bright-green moss. 

We walked for some time, the track rising and falling as we crossed a series of small creeks, until we finally reached a cement shelter set at a track crossroads. We stopped there for our traditional lunch of tuna and cucumber sandwiches (on some quite nice wholegrain bread), sitting gingerly on the cold cement benches, which appeared to have a sheen of condensation on them. The plan had always been to get to the top of a nearby hill, but rain had been predicted and after seeing the strength of yesterday's downpour, we weren't keen on getting stuck in the forest without umbrellas, so we abandoned our summit bid and headed down, eventually emerging from the forest on the edge of a small farm, where we walked past rows of rather moth-eaten cabbages. 

At the bottom of the hill we discovered a large group of people visiting what we eventually worked out was an 'agriculture park'. There were various displays of various forms of horticulture, including a very impressive collection of pitcher plants and the inevitable rows of hydroponic strawberries. Adjacent to these was a counter selling strawberry ice cream. We bought a couple of tubs, assuming that it would be made with some of the lovely plump red strawberries growing all around us, but were most disappointed to discover that it was actually just artificial pink muck that didn't taste even vaguely like strawberries into which a few bits of cut up fresh strawberry had been placed. Our dismay at being so thoroughly duped was then leavened by the discovery, as we walked out through the entrance, that the people around us had actually paid to get into the park. 

Once we had got our bearings, we walked back into Tanah Rata, where Kate got a mug of tea (the other crop for which the Cameron Highlands is known) and I got a particularly awful coffee. In the evening we went to a little Indian restaurant near the hotel for dinner, and then wandered around a fruit and veg market that had been set up across the road, picking up a few things for tomorrow's drive back down to George Town. 

Day 349: Getting high

The alarm went off at 6am and while I packed up, Kate went out and foraged for some food – arriving back with some very nice pancakes filled with crushed peanuts and sugar, a packet of Twisties and some orange juice. We were then downstairs and waiting for our minivan to the Cameron Highlands at our allocated 7.45am pick-up time, but there was no sign of the van. When it got to 8am, Kate went into the hotel and called the number on the ticket and was told that it could come as late as 8.30 – and sure enough, it came not long after that.

We were the first in, and were soon joined by three English backpackers and a trio of Swiss girls. We negotiated our way through the busy streets of George Town and then the driver announced that we were travelling over one of the very long bridges that connect Penang to the mainland – this one is 14 kilometres long, while the one over to our right is a slightly staggering 34 kilometres long. We soon hit the freeway, where the driver really put his foot down, sending those of us in the back seats flying into the air every time we hit a bump. After a quick refreshment stop, we joined the road up into the highlands, passing through thickly jungled hills along an increasingly windy road, along which our driver recklessly sped.

Our next stop was a hydroponic farm, where a sea of lettuces sprouted from long, white rectangular tubes, and strawberry plants hung from the ceiling. The Cameron Highlands is a major agricultural area, specialising in strawberries, and when we set off again we began to pass more and more areas where the jungle had been cleared and replaced with rows of polytunnels. The highlands are also a popular retreat from the heat of the coast and we passed a lot of construction – mostly hideous apartment blocks. That popularity also manifests itself in some pretty atrocious traffic and as we got closer to our ultimate destination, our progress became progressively slower. Eventually, however, we reached the little town of Tanah Rata, where we stopped outside the bus office for some time while the others bought their onward tickets. We then dropped them off at their hotels and swung back around to just across the road from the bus office, where the driver stopped and pointed out our hotel. So, we could have just walked there before, then... We grabbed our bags and wandered over. Climbing a narrow set of stairs, we reached the reception desk, where we were met by a seemingly slightly wary Indian couple who didn't appear to have our booking. After a while they sorted themselves out and gave us our key and we let ourselves into a very basic room with two double beds, a TV and a pretty skanky bathroom.

It was lunchtime by now so we headed out in search of a place with the rather unlikely name of Chapati Urban Restaurant, which was right near the top of the TripAdisor ratings and which we discovered perched near the top of a hill overlooking Tanah Rata. While we waited for our food to arrive we were closely observed by a small, serious girl with a large bump on her head. The food was pretty good, although we had been talked into ordering too much of it by the woman who served us.

On the way into town, we had noticed the familiar HSBC logo, so we headed down there to refresh our cash reserves and then meandered about for a bit, to get a feel for Tanah Rata. There wasn't much to see – it's very much a tourist town, with a row of shops, restaurants and hotels along the main road and not too much else. A bit off the main drag, up near our hotel, was a cute, quirky little place called the Barracks Café – it was set up inside a row of those semicircular huts used as army barracks (as these once were, apparently). Cute, but a bit too Western (read expensive), so we headed back to the room, where I had a bit of a nap as it rained outside, heavily. 

In the evening, Kate and Zoe went out to scope the restaurant situation, eventually settling on Orchard Food Corner, a very local place where we got some pretty decent noodles and some nice turmeric chicken, all washed down with some fresh orange juice (as about 60 per cent of Malaysia's population is Muslim, we're increasingly finding ourselves in restaurants that don't serve alcohol). After dinner, we walked around the town some more. I found a wine shop with a pretty good selection, including some classed growth Bordeaux from good vintages at absolutely eye-watering prices. We bought the girls some chocolate for dessert and I bought a pack of playing cards to replace our poor overworked, poorly treated pack.