Cameron Highlands

This is a long-delayed account of our time in the Cameron highlands, in the central part of peninsular Malaysia, where we were too busy walking and sorting out our law school choices to post much in the way of blogs. Now that I have a couple of long, solitary flights, on to Miami and then from there on to Spain (I know, Miami does seem to be the wrong way to head on a trip to Spain), I’m able to catch up from some notes that Meryl and I made earlier in the trip.

The Cameron Highlands, which range from about 3,500 to nearly 7,000 feet, were one of the most delightful parts of our trip, and the cool air – it never got above 80, and we needed lightweight long sleeves in the evenings – was blissful after the heat and humidity of southern Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand (Bangkok felt like the inside of a dishwasher). The region takes its name from William Cameron, a British surveyor who hacked his way through the jungle into the mountains in the late 1800s, though they weren’t settled as a hill station until the 1920s. Today the highlands are a major fruit-growing region for Malaysia, strawberries are a dominant product, and a popular weekend vacation spot for people seeking to escape the heat of Kuala Lumpur and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. There are three major towns, Ringlet, Tanah Rata, and Brinching; we stayed in Tanah Rata and took a number of walks around Tana Rata and up to Brinching five kilometers to the north. Despite the development, most of the mountains remain covered in jungle, and there are fourteen or so official trails that have been cut through them.

The terrain reminds me of the Appalachians in West Virginia, rolling ridges that fade into the distance and trap clouds in the upper reaches of their valleys. But the area is quite wet, and the lack of a winter – temperatures remain constant year round this close to the equator – makes for very different vegetation: Huge trees, covered in vines and epiphytes, and, at the higher levels, moss (which does lend an Appalachian atmosphere to the highest peaks). Wild bananas grow at the lower elevations.

The area remains one of the most British-feeling parts of Malaysia: two of the country’s leading tea producers farm plantations there, and the hotels and restaurants all offer tea and scones, along with cream and locally-made strawberry jam, as a shelter from the afternoon rain showers. There is also a popular golf course and, on weekends in Brinching, a night market specializing in fruits, vegetables and street food.

Many of you know that I adore walking, and so here’s a brief, day-by-day account of how we spent our time in the Cameron Highlands.

Arrival day: We had a long but pleasant drive up from Penang to Tanah Rata, which is the largest highland town. We ended up staying in a fairly basic, cheap hotel, because we arrived right before the skies opened, giving us an incentive to end our search. After waiting out the rain and exploring the town for a bit (and checking out other, nearby hotels), we took a cab up to Brinching, where we dined at the night market. Meryl left for this trip assuming that she’d be able to sample local specialties as street markets across Asia, but this ended up being her first chance – the food in China, Vietnam and Thailand looked, filthy, greasy, or just plain bad. Siem Reap, being a 100 percent western town, did not appear to have much in the way of street food. We sampled some ten dishes, including noodles, chicken roti, a bbq chicken sandwich, strawberries dipped in warm honey (two different kinds), almond and corn filled pancakes, coconut pancakes, roasted sweet potato, roasted corn on the cob, and strawberry ice. Meryl spent the rest of the evening smiling.

Day 1: We spent the morning checking out of out hotel and into the Cameronian Inn, a pleasant place, extremely good value at less than $15 per night, with a charming café and garden. We then got a late morning start to hike up Guning Brinching, the second highest peak in the area at about 6,500 feet. There’s an observation town on top, where we met two Poles (as well as a huge extended Indian family and a group of Malay students). From the peak, we walked down a road toward Brinching, stopping en route to investigate a side trail – which we’d end up hiking on Day 5 – and saw our first pitcher plant. Back on the road we passed the lovely Boh tea plantation and stopped to have tea and a scone while hiding out from the rain, where we met back up with the Poles. The rain outlasted us, so we, in the company of one of the Poles – the other hitched a ride from the plantation – had to walk an hour down through to rain to reach the main road. We got snacks at a vegetable stand, and then, courtesy of the Pole we were walking with hitched a ride the 9 km back to Tanah Rata in the (covered) back of a pickup truck.

Day 2: We hiked a short distance the under-whelming Robinson waterfall, before heading up to the top of Guning Berembang. We hiked down the other side of the mountain and got out by a big Buddhist temple just before it started raining. The path, which our hotel’s guide described as “semi-tough,” was extremely difficult and made us go straight up and down at least six hills while we worried about the afternoon rains setting in. Fortunately for us, however, a taxi had just dropped off a visitor to the temple and was free to pick us up for the ride back.

Day 3: We walked to Brinching on a back road, and then hiked up through an Orang Asli (indigenous people) village on a not-too-traveled path to the top of a small peak. We then trekked down a few hundred feet before climbing again to reach the top of a larger peak, where we discovered that the construction of a major power line relocated one of the trails on our map. We searched until we found what appeared to be another trail down, marked by periodic, six-inch high concrete blocks. This trail, though clear at our feet and easy enough to follow, gave us a real sense of the jungle closing in just a few feet ahead. We eventually got out to a road; we went the wrong a way for a few minutes until we reached another Orang Asli village. We turned around and hiked out to the main road, where we found a cab. Although the trail guide had promised a tea plantation (scones, perhaps?), none was in evidence.

Day 4: We had planned to spend day four on a tough hike up the two highest peaks in the area, Guning Brinching and Guning Irau, but we overslept and decided that we did not want to risk being left out on a poorly maintained, steep trail during the rain. We ended up hiking down a trail past Robinson falls to a tea plantation road – which sounded nice in the guide, but had too much traffic for pleasant walking. We abandoned our plans to walk along the road to the plantation and hiked 2.5 km back up the trail. Our luck with the weather held – it started to pour just as we got back to our hotel.

Day 5: This was our rescheduled tough hike day – we planned to do everything we did on Day 1, plus a five-hour side trip up Guning Irau, the highest peak in the area (2110 meters). It was brutal. We woke up at 6:40, had breakfast at an excellent local Indian place that earned our dinner patronage several times, and hit the trail up Guning Brinching by 7:50. We got to the top about 9, stopped to admire the view, and walked 10 minutes to the turnoff up Guning Irau, the same trail we explored for a few minutes on Day 1. The trail was awful – washed out, steep, and poorly maintained. Using our hands as much as our feet to navigate through exposed tree roots and vines, I think we both came to understand how “jungle gyms” earned their name. At least the final hike down the road past the Boh tea estate back to Brinching – the same road we walked down on our first day of hiking – was mild, and the rain held off. At the bottom, we went to a honey bee farm, which is a sort of overgrown tropical flower garden with bee boxes in it. To make lavender honey, for example, they simply place beehive boxes among rows of lavender flowers. Malaysia must lack American tort laws, because we were free to simply wander the rows of flowers and trust to luck that we’d avoid getting stung. A saleslady by the exit sold us on some honey, and, as a treat after the hike, frozen honey ice. Yum. We also picked up some veggies at a local stand near the honey farm, and then walked down the road until a cab picked us up. We celebrated the end of the hike by having a steak dinner at the Smokehouse, an old colonial hotel that hosts the nicest restaurant in the area. Back at our own hotel, we had delicious scones, with fresh strawberry jam and whipped cream, for desert.

Day 6: We spent the morning and early afternoon relaxing (and looking up law school information on the internet). Late in the afternoon we set off up path 5, a pleasant walk part way up a flank of Guning Berembun. We then connected to path 3 and path 2, the tough, hilly stretch we had done on day two. We walked back from Binching, passing by the golf course and along the small road we walked up on day 3. We went to a cute restaurant, the T Café, for a snack.

Day 7: We got a last start again, on account of more law school business. We walked up path 8 to the top of Guning Berembun (which we’d done on day 2), and then down path 5.

Day 8, or last day: We went up path 7, which had a nasty beginning through lots of scrub and brambles – Meryl was ready to turn back at one point, but I cajoled her into continuing up. We were rewarded after the first 40 minutes, when the trail hit the jungle line and opened up (The brambles must grow in faster than do jungle plants). We walked up to the top of Guning Berembun – we were getting pretty familiar with the view from the top by then – and then we went all the way down path 3, which ended near the golf course. We then walked part way around to connect up with path 4, a very mild, paved walk billed as “for the less active visitor” that got us back to Tanah Rata in about an hour, including a side trip up a hill to a viewing watch tower. On the way up to the tower the scenery, which had managed to vary substantially on every trail, changed yet again into a mid-Atlantic type pine forest. The paved walkway ended at a very pretty little waterfall with a bridge over it.

We left the Cameron highlands the next day, much relieved to have finally chosen Yale as our law school. (For me, it was essentially a financial decision: Yale is about $5,000 per year cheaper than Stanford and Harvard, largely because of New Haven’s lower cost of living, and it has the most flexible loan forgiveness program if one or both of us choose public interest jobs after graduation; Meryl required some convincing!)