In the jungle

The guesthouse serves Western breakfasts. Normally I like to try different kinds of food, but if there's ever a time I'm intolerant of other cultures, it's at breakfast. It was nice to have an omlet. I talked to a Dutch guy who's going to Thailand today. He said you have to go to Ipoh and get a ticket to Thailand there. After breakfast I bought my ticket to Ipoh. Hopefully I won't get stranded there.

Then I went to the bus station and took a local bus as far up the mountains as it would take me, to the Bee Farm. There's alot of stupid shit like that up here: the Rose Garden, the Strawberry Farm, etc. I figured I'd check out one of the legitimate sites, a tea plantation, so I had a 2 km hike up the road. It was quite beautiful, with hills everywhere covered with tea plants, which look like rows of neatly trimmed hedges. They even grow on practically vertical hills. It would have been peaceful too, if it wasn't for all the cars honking their horns before going around corners. Safety first.

The tour of the tea factory lasted about two minutes, and I couldn't hear our Muslim guide over the machines. She was nice, though, so I tried to ask her how far up the road the summit of Gunug Bringchang, the highest mountain here at 2000 m, was. She either didn't understand me, or didn't know, and just said it was easy on motorcycle, but difficult on foot. But I'm never happy unless I climb the highest mountain, so I asked a guy down the road, and he said 5 km. Not bad. Of course I'll have to get back, but I'll worry about that later. I passed a father/son from Singapore who were also going up on foot.

In the highlands

I was going to take Trail 1 down, but at the top I met a German guy who said the trail was difficult and some guy had gotten lost on it for a week. He was going back down the road, but I wanted to check out the view. Unfortunately, it wasn't that good due to the fog, and the ugly cluster of communications towers. As I hung around the Singaporeans arrived, and were quite determined to go down Trail 1. Then a guy emerged from the trail covered in mud. He said it was a steep climb, but was well-marked. I wanted to see some Malaysian jungle, so after a rest the four of us set out. It wasn't so much a trail but a mudslide. The "path" was overgrown with roots, which was good because they provided a place to step to avoid the ankle-deep mud. The fact that we were going down made it more difficult. After awhile it got really hard and we were going straight down a muddy slope, with only vines to hang on to. When the path became blocked by thorny vines we finally realized that we had wandered off the trail. So we had to climb back up the slippery slope, about 100 ft. I lost my footing several times and slid, covering myself with mud. Luckily we made it back to the trail, which was easy compared to that.

That night I went out for Steamboat with Nissa, the Sweedish guy from the trail. That's a local specially, and is like fondue, but with meat and seafood. It was alot of work but was "fun-do." Nissa has done what I plan to do and taken the Trans Mongolian from Europe to Beijing.