Slept like crap on the bus. The ride was very twisty and turny, as it travelled through the interior mountains of Malaysia. And the bus was flying, when it went around corners, everyone in the bus roller all over their seats. In Canada, we have "watch out of deer" signs along the highway. Along this highway, they had "watch out for elephants" signs! No kidding. The bus was also VERY cold, the air conditioner was sure in top working order.
We arrived at Ipoh about 4:50AM. We were swarmed with taxi drivers asking us if we were going to the Cameron Highlands, and trying to sell us taxi fares there. We had to keep telling them no thanks, we were going to take buses, as it was much cheaper. Even though they weren't getting our fare, they were still very helpful about getting us on the bus and pointing us to where we had to catch the bus, and where we had to switch buses along the way. Very friendly.
The local bus station opened up at 6:00AM, so Court and I got on a bus to Kempar, then at Kempar, get another bus to Tapah, then from Tapah, a third bus to Tanah Rata, the central town in the Cameron Highlands. Finally got to Tanah Rata about 10:00, and started walking to Twin Pines guest house, when a mini-bus stopped and started telling us about Father's Guest House. They told us it was cheap (18 ringget/night), so I checked it out in the Rough Guide, and the Rough Guide said Father's was the best of the budget accomodations in Tanah Rata. So, we hopped onto the mini-bus and went to Father's, checked out the room, and took it. It's located on a hill at the edge of town, just a couple of minutes walk to the main street. It has a very nice courtyard, and an incredible setting. They also have hot showers!
We showered, and I must have stood under the hot water for half an hour! It's been so long since we had hot water, not since Vietnam, more than 6 weeks ago. It felt so nice. We had breakfast, then walked around town. We changed our flight to Sydney to June 4, we fly out of KL at 20:45 on June 4. We decided to do an easy hike (there are many hiking paths around here), so we found the start of hike #7. #7 goes to the summit of Gunung Beremban, at 1841 metres. Along the way, we saw REAL, LIVE, WILD monkeys in the jungle! As we passed, they started jumping from tree to tree, making a ruckuss (sp?). Some of them would stop and sit and stare at us which allowed me a couple of decent picture opportunities. Awesome!!! Quite a hike, very difficult. So much for doing an easy hike. We came down via hike #8, which takes us to Robinson Waterfall, which was quite nice.
We finished the hike and got back to the guest house about 4:45 and had supper.
The Cameron Highlands are cool, in both senses of the word. It's incredibly green and beautiful here, lots and lots of vegetation, very well maincured yards and parks, lots of beautiful shrubs and flowers all over. Very nice. It's also very cool, temperature-wise. The daytime temperature runs in the low 20's. And they get a lot of moisture here too.
Courtney watched "Red Dragon" in the movie room at the guest house, I did some other stuff (seen the movie already), then we walked downtown for a while, got a snack, then back to the guest house and went to bed at 9:00. We were totally wiped from both the long bus ride where we didn't sleep and the hiking.
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